Early 90s back at University, we downloaded Slackware on 1.44 Mb floppies ...

-- Patrick

Hi.

I discovered linux via a school mate, he always was talking about it, so I decided to try it, I started with the old RedHat 5

I'm a faculty member at an all-Microsoft campus. I first used MSDOS, then Windows 3.x, then 95, 98, XP...and resented having to learn different - and to me, not really better, user interfaces every few years. Especially with the Office Suite. When XP's replacement was announced, I installed Debian Sarge. While I've had issues interacting with the campus environment, I'm quite happy being able to use the tools I want.
Unfortunately, my laboratory instruments require Windows software, so the lab still uses Windows - running on virtual machines.

We had started teaching an Intro to UNIX at Anne Arundel Community College in 1988 using MIX so our transfer students would get a jump on the competition at UMD and UMBC and I noticed the newsgroup discussion in comp.os When the initial Slackware version came out we implemented it on one of our lab PCs -- an old 286 with a busted spacebar we named "wormhole" -- and it ran for a year without a glitch. We soon converted the entire lab to Red Hat Linux and never looked back. Back in those days it took about two hours to do a complete load from six floppies. Now we use a centralized server running RHEL and ssh in from our Windows PCs in the labs or home. Lately we've begun teaching Linux using $25 XtraPC USB drives which contain a recent Ubuntu distribution, so the students can take them home. Dick S.

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Because Science!

When I was an undergraduate student I did a summer research project in the Astronomy department, and all the computers ran Solaris (this is circa 2003). The next year, I switched groups and started using Debian. When I went to graduate school, we used something...OpenSUSE? Not even sure, but I got Slackware installed on my laptop as my first personal Linux machine. Then a new University meant a new OS - CentOS! Now I'm a professor, so *I* pick the OS, and I run Slackware and Xubuntu.

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In 2010 I bought my first house. I starting meeting some of the neighbors and one of them was a Linux SysAdmin at a University. I worked as a Windows Desktop Support tech at the time and had never heard of Linux. We had our interest in technology in common which led to a lot of hanging out and him showing me his Slackware desktop. I was awed. I tried Slackware first and failed miserably. Then I tried Mint and then Fedora and eventually found my home in Debian.

About 14 years ago from my Nephew when I was 55 years old.

I built my first computer in 2002 and I was absolutely NOT going to install Windows. I searched the internet on my blueberry iBook for alternatives to windows and found Linux. I knew absolutely nothing but I purchased some Mandrake cd's and a "Teach Yourself Linux" book. Luckily, I chose a hardware modem so I was able to get on the internet. Now I run openSUSE Tumbleweed.

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Found RHL5.iso's alongside .nfo's... the .nfo's I figured out from a .txt file but with no net access yet, at 17 had to call him about the .iso's? That sent me to the local library for the real bible(: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13838572-linux-bible) plus it came with more .iso's!

It was 1997 and I was a OS/2, Windows 95 guy and I joined a company that was centered on Solaris, so I had to learn Unix. Someone told me that I should learn Red Hat 5.1 and that would get me on my way. I have never looked back!!!

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All I wanted was to not lose any more dough on lost product activation codes, so in 1999 I bought a Caldera distro in a downtown Ottawa computer store. Was a steep learning curve getting the 14.4 modem to work on the Freenet, but after that I was hooked. Later switched to Mandrake (version 5.2 ?). Debian installation was too difficult back then, but later I managed to get Slackware 6.1 up & running.

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Slackware in the '90s.
It'd take me a week to get most of gnome working.
Sound a whole day.

14.4 modems. Grrr.

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Working at a company using Sun Solaris. Worked a lot at home with dial-up and, later, DSL. Had a Win98 piece of junk, not the computer, the OS. Network Admin suggested Slackware as the most like System V. Loaned me the CDs. Loaded it up on the Dell as dual-boot. Worked on that for, hm, about 2 weeks and blew Win98 away, reinstalled as a Slackware only box via DSL and never looked back.

Has a lot of experience with System 3, System V before Slackware with minor adjustments let me work locally or remotely and I was (and still am) a happy camper. Slackware 14.2 is going onto two workstations and two data base servers is a couple of days.

That was sometime in the 90s, I don't remember when (but Slackware did come on CDs, not floppies). Coming from UNIX to Slackware was easy as pie. Did try a couple of other distributions (for about a day), it's been Slackware all the way ever since.

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windows 98SP2 kept having to rebuild the Internet connection stack ... got fed up and tried SUsE and Red Hat. Installed Win XP, finally, and went with that for a few years. Found Xandros, tried it, better than Windows. been going on several Deb-based distros ever since. Now on Xubuntu 16.04, and LinuxMint 18 on the netbook.

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Back in 1994 there was this game called "Doom", you might have heard of it, it was pretty popular.

A couple of quirky things about the game, it ran on a DOS machine, but it really did a lot of it's own stuff. It wasn't a full OS but it was using DOS as a way to get it's own code elevated.

Shortly after Doom came out and it was a huge hit, someone ported it to this "alternate" operating system called "Linux" and I thought that was interesting. I had Doom running under DOS, but I was curious to see if running it under a different OS made any difference at all.

Of course back then we were dealing with dial-up and there weren't any unified packages or package managers. You had to assemble your OS by hand.

Well, I found a book that had all the Slackware files I needed to get Linux off the ground so I bought that and went to down. The first step was to use the software to make a Linux "Root" floppy and a "Boot" floppy. There were 5 different choices for Root and 5 different choices for Boot. I picked the first pair of them, booted the machine and... the CD-Rom with the rest of the files didn't work under Linux.

OK, fine, let's try another combo... reboot back to Windows (3.1), make a new Root and Boot... and... no CD-Rom.

OK, it takes a while to select and make a pair of Root/Boot disks so let's cut to the chase... Off to the store, bought a box of 50 floppies and made all 25 two disc combinations.

None of them worked. The CD-ROM just didn't work with Linux. So why? It's a standard... wait... is it a standard?

Opened the case, no, not a standard CD-ROM, it's attached to some kind of custom SCSI card. OK, fine... Back to the store, bought a new CD-ROM (I needed a faster one anyway), then slaved it to the IDE controller.

PRESTO! Linux booted, recognized the drive, installed the OS, Slackware up and running, installed Doom, worked!

Flash forward to early 2001, I was being certified by SAIR as a Linux professional. The final exam was to build a machine from scratch, get Linux up and running and install an application from the Internet. I did Doom. I even got the sound working. I was the only guy in my class to get the sound card working too.

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