What do you remember about your first Linux install?
 

The LQ Poll series continues: What do you remember about your first Linux install?

--jeremy

I remember being ecstatic that I had discovered something besides Microsoft Windows.

I don't post here much (this is my first since 2003!!!) but I really cannot resist this!

My first install (around 1998 or so) was REDHAT 7.0 that was described in a book I bought titled "Learn Linux in a Weekend"
I think the paperback book was priced at somewhere around $15 and I was shocked to find 2 installation CDs stuck on the back cover.

It took me about 45 min to go from a bare hard drive to a completely working operating system + KDE , complete with a dialer, Mozilla browser and an email client!

No one I knew had cable, DSL or anything other than dialup!
This thing worked right out of the box and I could browse the internet with my first "pop-up" blocker! and NO BSOD (except in the form of a screen saver!!) !!! I was in "Heaven" And all FREE (like Free Beer!)

I went from REDHAT 7.0...... to 8, 9 and then switched to SuSE Linux and Opensuse
And although I am currently trying KDE NEON (Ubuntu 18.04LTS) on this laptop, My current "daily-use" desktop still runs SuSE (Leap 15.1)


I had my issues and growing pains etc...... but I'll never go back to Windows for "regular" computing!


Cheers,



Rick

I was so nervous, I could have blown chow.

I remember I never did get online. This was the 90's, and I had a winmodem on my pc, and never did manage to get that thing to work. I also remember thinking if I could get it online, it would be my new OS, as I vastly preferred it to Windows, which had already started irritating me (this is around the time 98 was released).

RedHat 5.0 floppy disks on a Compaq Presario with MediaGx taking care of the video (after a bit of a learning curve). I was a total newbie with guts. After install I had a black screen with a blinking cursor. For a few months I worked between the Windows boot and learning email, web, and usenet on console in Linux until, with the guidance of the developer of the video module for mediagx (reading his docs about 3 times), I wrote the correct modes for X configuration and got a GUI. I was one very proud person and have been grateful for what I learned in the process. That was 1998, so it's been 20 years now.

It was the Spring or Summer of 1992. I had just gotten pieces to put together a PC Clone with an Intel 386SX 25Mhz CPU, and 1 or 2 Megabytes of RAM. A friend loaned me his 3.5 inch disks, and I put it on the hard drive.

After that , I was not sure what to do with it as there was not a lot out there about it, and not a lot software to be had. One usually would go to the local Software store to get what they needed. Sometimes on local BBSs. Removed it a few days later.

Next was in 1998 when I got a Linux book which came with a Linux distro on a CD: Caldera Lite it was. 'Lite' because the desktop GUI was a trial, and it you wanted to continue to use it, pay $99 USD. It also had an open source version of the game 'Doom.'

I remember thinking that's alot of damn floppies! It was Slackware 2.0, I was a little late to the game. :)

This comes in handy when missing the sound of dialup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvr9AMWEU-c

SLS - 45 floppies downloaded over a 2400 BAUD modem
 

I had been playing with Minix and when I heard about Soft Landing Software, I downloaded the 45 floppy disks over a weekend in my office (amazed that the dial-up line stayed up). I think the cast-off PC had barely enough memory and a 10G hard disk, but monochrome X11 worked out of the box ! This was in the Windows for Workgroups era.

Slackware 10.0. The thing I remember most is being glad for cfdisk, because it is a lot like the old DOS fdisk, which I knew.

My first view of Linux was Knoppix (in 2004), and I couldn't believe all the software that came on a single CD, and the fact that it was FREE! My first installation was Xandros and I've used some form of Linux ever since (~2005, I think?)

As an AT&T employee I got Bell Labs UNIX training as part of my job. I was very happy to find I could run a UNIX-like system on my PC and avoid the problems that came with MS Windows. I live not far from Walnut Creek, CA, the home of Walnut Creek CD-ROM. I made many trips to their bricks and mortar store to get my start with Linux. Remember Ygdrasil?

Success

So I posted on how I did it.

How long it took to download all the CDs on dial-up; early Slack

I remember being interested in Linux. Microsoft Windows was a joke from the time it came out, and I was always looking for a viable alternative. I bought a book on Slackware, and another (both containing installation floppies) on Red Hat, but both of those required more technical knowledge of my computer than I had and I was just a tad timid about taking my computer apart to learn what was needed. Then Mandrake 8.1 became available, I don't remember how I got the disks but I tried it. As that was back oin the Dawn of Time, I don't remember much about the process, but I finished it and it was successful. It was not up to doing everything I wanted to do, as a desktop user (not too big on the command line since they took my DOS away). But I kept it up and updated it until 10.0 would not load on my machine, so I went and tried SuSE (a couple versions before they made OpenSuSE).