Debian Founder: How I Came To Find Linux 136
An anonymous reader writes: Ian Murdock has pretty solid open source cred: in 1993 he founded Debian, he was the CTO of Progeny and the Linux Foundation, and he helped pave the way for OpenSolaris. He has published a post about how he initially joined the Linux ecosystem. Quoting: "[In 1992], I spent most evenings in the basement of the MATH building basking in the green phosphorescent glow of the Z-29 terminals, exploring every nook and cranny of the UNIX system upstairs. ... I was also accessing UNIX from home via my Intel 80286-based PC and a 2400-baud modem, which saved me the trek across campus to the computer lab on particularly cold days. Being able to get to the Sequent from home was great, but I wanted to replicate the experience of the ENAD building's X terminals, so one day, in January 1993, I set out to find an X server that would run on my PC. As I searched for such a thing on Usenet, I stumbled across something called 'Linux.'"
How did you come to find Linux?
How I found Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
I was studying for my M.Eng in electronics and we were using Sun workstations for EDA software. After I graduated, I joined a startup company that produced chip layout software. We had purchased a bunch of Sun workstations, but they were going to take weeks to arrive.
So we loaded up a few PCs with Slackware Linux from about 40 floppy disks (took two of us an entire day to finish all the installations) and started our development on the PCs while we waited for the Suns to arrive.
Re: (Score:2)
I saw a post from this linux torvalas dude.
A month later I bought a PC.
I had minix floppys running, had the file system built and had been starting to build the gnu tools, and a co-worker Joe showed me SLS.
A week later, a bunch of us in the office made a bulk order for 200 floppies. It was much easier! It started as something like 15ish floppies, and was 70something floppys before the cd version came out.
How I Found Linux (Score:2, Informative)
I knew some FreeBSD guys but nobody wanted to help me install it and back then it was horribly confusing. Then I saw slackware, downloaded the A, N, and D floppy sets, and followed the prompts... and I was running Linux on my 386DX25 with 8MB of DIP DRAM, and 120MB IDE disk.
Today, Linux still wins out over BSD because it's easier.
BSD fans will tell you that this is a feature, and then five minutes later bitch about something they don't have because BSD is less popular
Re:How I Found Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
I became a UNIX bigot in college in the late 80's. I remember following William and Lynn Jolitz's series "Porting UNIX to the 386" in Dr. Dobb's in the late 80's/early 90's. My first experiences with DOS PC's were disappointing, as I saw them as a big step backwards. My first download was something called Monkey Linux. A zip file that spanned 5 floppy disks, that when extracted to a DOS directory was bootable as a UMSDOS FS running a derivative of Slackware. I followed a pointer to the official Slackware package mirrors, and never went back.
Re: (Score:2)
Today, Linux still wins out over BSD because it's easier.
What? This isn't true. Didn't you *just* imply that you didn't use the BSDs in any significant ways? Has it occured to you that you're not qualified to make a proper comparison, as a consequence of knowing only one of the two things you're attempting to compare?
BSD fans will tell you that this is a feature
And hence this is complete bullshit because the premise is wrong.
and then five minutes later bitch about something they don't have because BSD is less popular
And then ten minutes later enjoy the stuff they do have, because it is solid, well-designed and well-documented, rather than ran
Re: (Score:3)
That's really interesting. When I was in highschool our school had a Netware network. We had a computer lab for physics and computer science that had no Internet access, but the teacher let me bring in my own computer (some kind of very early 486) that I installed RedHat Linux--I think 4--on and ran a NAT and http server for about 40-50 computers. That was really cool (and I really wonder if any school around would let a student have that kind of access to a school network now).
A friend of mine at school wa
Re:Fucking hogwash! PC-BSD is easy to install. (Score:4, Interesting)
You're full of bullshit, son. PC-BSD is very easy to install, and very easy to use.
Was it very easy to install, and very easy to use in 1994? Because I didn't just discover this "Unix" and "Linux" shit last week, son. And the answer is no. The installer was poorly documented and the attitude of the BSD types tended to be "figure it out yourself" ... forgetting that they'd had someone to help them figure it out, or some applicable background, etc. Such a libertarian OS. And look at how popular it is today!
Re: (Score:2)
Today, Linux still wins out over BSD because it's easier.
Was it very easy to install, and very easy to use in 1994?
I don't see how it perhaps being difficult 20 years ago supports your claim that it would still be difficult today.
Are you trying to make a point here or are you just "arguing" for the sake of it?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see how it perhaps being difficult 20 years ago supports your claim that it would still be difficult today.
Can you just mash enter (and type a username and password, perhaps) and get an installed system?
Re: (Score:2)
Can you just mash enter (and type a username and password, perhaps) and get an installed system?
I've never used PC-BSD, but the stock FreeBSD installer is pretty close to that.
Re: (Score:2)
I can only speak for NetBSD, which these days I install by unpacking tarballs, but yes, the installer is pretty much like that. Granted, you'll have to arrow-up to 'yes' when it asks you the 'last chance to back out' question, and again before it overwrites the master boot record. I'm rather happy it's that way.
Re: (Score:1)
Linux and BSD's are about on par when it comes to install-ability. Here's something cool-but-useless. Remember Windows NT 4? I managed to set that up using nothing but the Boot-rom's on the network cards and a single installation. So I was able to repeat that later with FreeBSD.
Where BSD tends to fall down is much of the same reason Linux does. Some drivers are just not available because the hardware you're installing onto is too new, and unlike Windows, BSD and Linux are practically useless without an inte
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Was it very easy to install, and very easy to use in 1994? Because I didn't just discover this "Unix" and "Linux" shit last week, son. And the answer is no.
It was easy for me. I installed and used it on my work desktop PC at work then. Then again, I'm a system programmer/admin -- who's also been around for a while -- and at that time I *also* maintained SunOS, System V, DG-UX, HP-UX, SCO (shudder), VMS and Windows. Perhaps somethings just come easier to some than others - ie. Your mileage may vary...
Since than, I've also managed system running other Unix variants: Convex (C1, C2), Cray (2, YMP), DEC Alpha, SGI (several) and Linux PCs (RHEL, Ubuntu) -- in ad
Re: (Score:2)
Such a libertarian OS. And look at how popular it is today!
I assume you mean "libertarian" simply as a general pejorative? Interesting, since FreeBSD has long had a very formalized governing structure, elections, etc. I'm not honestly not sure what you would describe as libertarian about FreeBSD other than the fact that they -- like Linux -- are open source. FreeBSD is doing quite well today. It's certainly not as widely used as Linux, but from what I can tell it's growing and more than self-sustaining.
How I found Linux (Score:2)
Back in '91 a friend at Uni showed me an announcement on a mailing list of a minux like PC unix clone called "linux".
I didn't have a PC at the time so didn't try it.
In fact it wasn't until August '94 and kernel version 1.0.13 that I started using linux.
I consider myself late to the party.
Now I run ubuntu on my server, Mint on my desktop and laptop.
I've been using Linux for over 20 years and cannot imagine being without it.
From SLS to Slackware (Score:3)
At the time I had this big expensive intimidating Solaris box on my desk that I hardly dared to touch.
Linux seemed a lot more accessible.
I tried something called SLS (Soft Landing System) to installed it but failed.
A few months later I found Slackware (1.0) and I tried again together with a colleague, this time I was successful, kernel version 0.99 or something, that must have been 1993, 22 years ago...
I've been running one or more Linux boxes (usually headless) ever since.
Re: (Score:2)
Heh. I'll reply to this non-anonymously. :-)
SLS was fun to play with, but sadly that's all I did. I grabbed a boot and root diskette image plus the A and B series diskettes from a local BBS in the Twin Cities sometime in 1993. SPS 099pl13 or something. Moobasi BBS? Anyway, I also grabbed the X series for XFree86, but I couldn't get it to work (I might've had a Diamond Stealth VRAM at the time which didn't play nice outside of Windows), so I mostly just putzed on the command line.
By the time I tried Slackwa
Pile of diskettes (Score:3)
free, Free, and Better (Score:3)
In 1997 a friend told me about Linux so I checked out a book from the library (the book had a CD with Slackware). I installed Slackware (XFree86 worked out of the box*!) because it was free. Soon I was using Linux because it was Free. Eighteen years later I continue to run Linux because it is Better.
* I later switched from Slackware to RedHat because I could not figure out how to get rid of panning!
My Boss (Score:1)
(1996) Newly minted CNE two weeks on the job. My boss handed me a box that said Caldera Linux on it and said; 'get this setup. The Sequent box(ironic) is getting full and a bit flakey and there's no budget for a replacement.'
I was like; 'WTF is this? I barely know anything about the Sequent system, I'm not qualified for this.' He said; 'you'll figure it out. Just get it done.' Boom Linux!
Almost 20 years later, I'm still using Linux almost solely. But, I'm still no where near capable of launching my own dist
How I Lost Linux (Score:1, Insightful)
I was a Debian user for many users. For most of that time it was the best OS I'd used. It was stable, it was reliable, it was easy to safely update, and I knew I could rely on it. Then that all changed. Systemd was integrated. I'm open to new technology, so I was willing to give it a shot. However, as I soon found out, this was a horrible mistake. After a Debian update installed system I had nothing but problems. This update also updated the kernel, so I chose to do a reboot. Long story short, my system did
Re: (Score:1)
23 years!! Holy crap I feel old! (Score:3)
Living in Allston in the early 90's and some friends of mine (L0pht, NewHackCity, CDC, etc...) ran all kinds of boxen. Solaris, Mac, and something brand new called Linux. I loved the power and efficiency. I loved how configurable it was. I wasn't even in college at the time (broke adult).
Slackware on a 486dx4-25. Gotta admit, I miss the days of hacking hardware to get it to do what you want.
God, remember when Linux fit on a floppy?
Re: (Score:2)
I was at a local Hamvention and in a bin of CDs there was a Slackware CD. Seemed simple. Create a boot diskette and root diskette and watch it LILO. And the rest was history.
On the minus side, back then prepping for a Linux install meant cracking open the box and copying down the chip numbers and DIP switch settings on your network and video cards so that you could answer the config prompts correctly. On the plus side, even then it was more friendly and better supported than what you got for OS/2, despite O
Slackware (Score:4, Interesting)
I used UNIX and "The Internet" back in the 1980s, but Linux didn't come to my attention until the mid-1990s when I encountered a Slackware box-set of CDs that a colleague was playing with. I subscribed to the updates for a couple of years, but found that Linux "wasn't ready for prime-time" at that point, it was problematic getting a reliable modem connection to the Internet (yes, it could be solved, but after hours of using my Windows box to browse the internet for solutions for the Linux problem.....) So, I would install each new release, play with it for a few days, then wipe it. After a couple of years of being told that sound support is unimportant and "real" people have ethernet connection to the Internet, and nothing really useful in the distributions that wasn't readily available on other platforms I already had, I cancelled my subscription.
I didn't really start using Linux in earnest until 2005-ish when I got full AMD 64 bit support in a home system I built up with 4GB of RAM - using the only "true" 64 bit OS available at the time: Gentoo. I kept Gentoo around for about 5 years, but was migrating to Debian/Ubuntu as my distro of choice on work and eventually home systems.
Re: (Score:1)
My experience has been (Linux since 1997, on the internet at home since 1999) to install Linux first, because then I'll have a way to download drivers for the Windows install. Back then, Microsoft had just added the ability to download drivers automatically, and apparently thought it would be really great to download the modem drivers, rather than including them (like Linux always did).
Re: (Score:2)
Odd. I used minicom to establish the modem connection and then pppd (before pppd could dial) to give me tcp/ip connectivity and I had zero issues. Perhaps your phone lines were unreliable? I was using Slackware during that time so the problem was not with Slackware.
Re: (Score:2)
That might have worked for me, god knows I read enough HOWTO guides, forum posts and other breadcrumbs and didn't come up with a working solution.
My problem was that whatever I was using worked "out of the box" - a fresh install would boot up, connect over PPP or some such (18 years ago, sorry if the details have gone fuzzy), and I could browse the internet all day long. Then, when I would reboot, it would be gone and never work again. Very frustrating.
Windows drove me there (Score:3)
Several years later, 2006 to be exact. I again found myself struggling with some Windows XP activation issues, poor performance and a near constant effort of maintenance to keep the POS (last word is not "Sale") running. My gaming days where over, I'd gotten into more outdoorsy, drug-typie, other sex-experiences and decided that I'd give it another shot. So I got another hard drive (this time eager to at least keep a working OS around while I tinkered). I Installed Ubuntu 6.06 and dove into the rabbit hole. I had no clue at first and it took about two years until I somewhat knew what to do and how to fix stuff but boy was it worth it.
Now, almost ten years later my main machine still runs Ubuntu, I use Fedora and various other varieties at work. I Work for a company that develops Linux centric software. It's been a fun ride, I've been provided a Mac by my employer and run Win10 in a VM for various things but nothing compares to what Linux has given me - freedom. Nothing beats that feeling the first time I realized that it had been four years since I had switched to Linux at home and missed nothing.
Looking for IE alternative (Score:1, Insightful)
In high school (circa 2002) I asked a coworker for an alternative to Internet Explorer because it made web browsing so slow. He told me he found this program called Firefox which was fast "because it was open source". I tried it and when I told him how fast it was going for me, he told me "there is a whole open source operating system! You should try it!"
And here I am.
SLS, later Slackware (Score:3)
Somewhere in mid 92, playing around with the SLS disks I found on my favorite BBS. The sysop later posted the "new" Slackware disks, and I never looked back.
It was so great then, I could have a full Unix workstation and not pay a metric shit-ton of $$$ for media and license.
Man, the mid-2000s! (Score:1)
GNU Tools (Score:2)
I was working for a VAR that used Xenix and later SCO Unix and AT&T Unix (NCR Towers). Somehow I ran across some GNU tools. I got a tape of some GNU utilities. In any case I had become familiar with GNU. I started to hear about Usenet and wanted to get on the internet. I got a prodigy account and subscribed to some Unix newsgroups. Somewhere I saw reference to Slackware. By that time I was using a local ISP that has a limit on how long you could stay connected but unlimited from midnight to 8 in the mor
Comment removed (Score:3)
fork not implemented (Score:1)
Back in 1998 i was learning perl and trying out the examples for client/server programming on my windows 98 box, and I got "error: fork() not implemented".
So I looked up fork() on the net and found out it was a UNIX system call. I had only a dim notion of Linux being "some new os" by the time, but when i found out it was essentially Unix, i was hooked. At the same time I was wondering how such a useful system call could be missing from Windows.
Finding Linux (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Coherent!
So you were the other user!
I tried using Coherent, but without any other support from the community. Finally shrugged and went back to Windows. Then in 2006 I stumbled across Mandrake/Mandriva and discovered a new world.
Novell Netware Emulation got me into Linux. (Score:4, Interesting)
I was a largely MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 user in the 1990s, but in late 1998, I found that I hated Windows 9x. I felt like the days of my completely controlling computers were starting to slip away. I also had ambitions to be a Network Administrator pst High School. So on a 25 Mhz 486 SX I installed a very Rudimentary thing called ZipSlack. My first experiences on the Internet were on a Tandy 1000 TL using a Dial up PPP Connection. I found out that ZipSlack could emulate/simulate the PPP Connection and NAT my Tandy over the Tandy's Remaining serial Port. When I didn't need the Network connection, I could reboot into MS-DOS 6 and play my DOS games.
Fast forward to 2000 and I found out that my new Mandrake Linux 7.1 Pentium 200 that replaced that 486 could not only NAT Internet connections, but using a software called Mars NWE, simulate a Novell Netware Server and provide logins to DOS Computers, and Windows 95 machines alike. It wasn't very stable, but it worked to my astonishment. Months later that became a Samba 2.0.6 Domain controller. Combined with seeing KDE 1 at the time and I was like "This is the future"
The Domain created by that 2.0.6 Domain controller still exists to this day, running Samba 4.1.19.
PCW Cover CD (Score:3)
I had just arrived at uni, had not yet used unix (but would soon since the physics dept at brum uni had a lab of X terminals and a Ultrasparc server). I read PCW magazine regularly, and one month Slackware was on the cover cd. Virtually instructions, and as I was new to the web, searching for help was alien. I figured out how to boot my 486 off an install floppy. I guessed cd from dos, had read about ls somewhere, but the way I finally figured out how to delete a file (del didnt work, nor did era) was to run Xconfigurator, then startx, and use the openlookalike file manager. When it asked 'do you want to remove...' I had that epiphany, switched to a vt, logged in and, rm worked! I found out many programs by reinstalling and noting package names as things went on, and used them as hints once i was logged in. Ultima 7 was a great adventure game, but Linux and the task of making anything work at all was my new adventure.
My memory isn't that good ... (Score:2)
We're talking about something that happened 20 years ago in the basement of a library. Some representatives from O'Reilly were talking about one of the latest developments, ELF, and brought along some free goodies. Soon thereafter I bought a thick book from a competing publisher that included Slackware on CD-ROM. I marveled at how easy it was to install compared to OS/2 (involving only a boot disk and kernel parameters, rather than custom boot disks) and set about learning the thing.
Back in the day.... (Score:2)
My IT job, 1997?
I had been out of work for a while, and was at an unemployment "get into work" workshop, and one of the chaps spotted a local paper article mentioning an internet cafe opening in that town, and he knew I wanted to work in computing (I'd self-trained and then properly trained in C programming). I typed and sent a letter (WordPerfect 5.1, thank you very much), and the owner asked to meet me. So we met, and even though he'd already appointed a member of IT staff he liked the look of me and offe
wierd... (Score:2)
I found it on usenet.
spent weeks downloading Yggdrasil install disks and finally got a base install running. when I finally downloaded enough to run X I was pissed that 90% of the software was designed for 17" monitors that could do 1024X768 and the largest I could afford was a 15 that was only useable at 800X600
I remember trying to play nettrek over a ill gotten credentials to log into a local university dial up connection to access the internet, on a pan and scan desktop on that little monitor.
Slackware 0.99.14 (Score:2)
Back in around '92... Was doing some highschool activities in the Unis physics building and they had Sun machines, they also had older Sun machines in the computer club. One guy there loaned me the 30-odd floppies to install slackware 0.99.14 and it took a weekend or so on the 386SX I had at home. Used it mostly to read alt.sex.stories from home. ;)
Minix... (Score:4, Interesting)
A friend was using Minix for a class, and he read the Minix Usenet group and saw Linus' first post. He told us about "this guy (in Finland?) writing Unix for a PC", and we all said "nah, that's got to be a joke". The joke is on us, Mr. Torvalds!
Softlanding Linux System (Score:2)
In 1991 I was an Atari ST user. I'd learned C, written some software to connect it to Usenet, and spent most of my time in a command line or MicroEMACS rather than in the graphical interface. At that point it was clear that Atari was headed for oblivion, and I jokingly told some of my friends that I was thinking about kicking it aside for something really crazy -- a PC running Minix, or maybe even that new Linux thing people were talking about.
The following year I used the U of M Gopher system to download S
CSU Hayward... (Score:2)
I goof'ed off in high school, taking ROP & technician track classes. This was back when they taught things like "Electronics Repair" in high school. I went to a local community college, and re-did the entire math sequence thru Calculus, took chemistry, etc... I spent a lot of time in the library, and found myself following the Jolitz BSD effort in Dr. Dobbs. I learned TCP/IP networking via packet radio (Ham radio), using Phil Karn's software. I met a Unix Sysadmin at a local ham radio club about th
OS/2 Warp vs. Slackware (Score:1)
Around 1994 (yes, I guess I'm getting old) I had already seen friends at university fiddling with rather large stacks of 3.5" floppies, downloading Linux from some large FTP mirrors, while I was happily using the solid OS/2 Warp 3 (after TOS on Atari, then DOS, Win 2-3 on PC).
When stumbling upon a computer magazine's offer, ca. 1995, with a couple of CDs containing Slackware, I tried that. Back then, we had to fiddle with modelines to get X11 working, no ISDN support yet, dialing in needed chat scripts, etc
The same way (Score:1)
Well... :).
I was looking for an X-server for my PC.
Then I started looking on NewsNet for such a thing, and I found Debian
Version 0.93R6, in 1996 it was I think, on a pile of diskettes I think numbering 23.
I read the first ideas about what Ian wanted the thing to be and immediately liked his attitude and approach. It was what kept me with Debian, even when later RedHat and others came and gained popularity. I knew with the solid technical and social basis and fanatic aspiration towards architectural perfec
Had to remove it to see the beauty of it (Score:1)
90 at IBM (Score:2)
I landed my first real compute gig working at IBM. My boss was ok with me tinkering with anything in the hardware closets (I was in intern at first). Soon I had a RS/6000 on my desk next to the mod 80 it was a dream. Soon I had internet access from my desk and everything went from there.
slackware (Score:2)
A stranger in a dark alleyway slipped me disk A1 of Slackware saying "hey kid, give this a shot, you're gonna love it. If you want more, you know where to find me". Over the next weeks (months? It's hard to say since that time was all a blur) I kept coming back. Once I finished with the As, I moved onto the Ns and APs, then got into the harder stuff...the Ds and Ks. Before I knew it, I was making my way to the alley every couple hours for my next X or XP. When I went back for disk E1 is when my friends conf
It was installed on my laptop at Best Buy (Score:2)
>> How did you come to find Linux?
It was installed by default on the laptop I bought from Best Buy. NOT!
More seriously, bought a 386 then floppy-copied it during an all-nighter at a friend's house. I'd been a user on Unix systems before but never an admin so I used the box to build out a home intranet, share the modem connection, etc.
Windows '95 ! (Score:2)
In 1995 I bought a new PC and installed "Windows 95" on it. I was so excited to have a brand new system.
OMG, what a giant steaming pile of shit it was! Windows 95 was completely unusable.
A nerdy grad student friend of mine suggested trying Linux, and having used a number of commercial unixes, I was very skeptical. How could something free be worthwhile? But I tried it. It was just as good as my DEC Unix workstation! It was rock solid!
At that time I swore that I would never use Microsoft software on my
Computer lab in high scool (Score:2)
My first real experience of Linux was seeing other people installing Linux on a machine in the computer lab at school. (probably around Windows 3.x time frame and I think possibly some version of RedHat). I didn't actually get to use it though (I did spend a lot of time in those labs and got busted trying to pirate Visual Basic off the Windows machines :)
I also had experience with it at University with various courses that involved Linux in some way.
As for personal use, my first use of Linux was installing
Live CD and/or VM (Score:2)
It is easy enough to run Linux from a Live (Bootable) media or to install a VM based Linux box. You do not need a dedicated box.
https://www.kali.org/ [kali.org]
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html [knopper.net]
https://www.vmware.com/products/player [vmware.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I did run a Linux VM for N900 development a while back but then I bought an SSD and reinstalled Windows and haven't yet bothered with reinstalling VMWare to use the VM again :)
CD-ROM via the TI-99 dead-ender community (Score:2)
Early 1995, still in high school. I was in a small town in Kansas. Absolutely disconnected from the pre-web internet. No BBSes or anything that wouldn't be a long-distance call. And my parents were fairly poor (okay... lower-middle income but horrible with money), so no long distance.
But geeky. My dad bought into the TI-99 after TI pulled out of the home computer industry because he could buy a computer for $50. There was a whole community of people who did fairly amazing things with 15-year-old hardwa
RedHat 2.0 in the beige box (Score:2)
A floppy, a CD, and a couple manuals. 0.9 kernel and fvwm as the X window manager. Found it for, I think, $25 at a Software Etc in the Red Cliffs Mall in St George UT. Since OS2 was a couple hundred and I was looking for an alternative to Windows 3.11 I picked it up.
I remember a Comdex in the late 90's when Linux was going corporate and every company seemed to be basing their distros off of Red Hat and SuSe and I asked an engineer why they didn't use Debian. The reply was "The problems with Debian are D
Bought RedHat 4.2 myself, sometime around 97 or 98 (Score:2)
I had considered slackware but I didn't have enough floppy disks and it seemed like a huge waste of time and money to buy all the floppies then download them over 28.8k when the cd in my awesome new tower was faster. Don't remember how much I paid for the box with CDs in it, but I still have the CDs somewhere.
I discovered Debian when redhat's 5.0->6.0 (libc5->glibc2) upgrade went completely fubar. I have an installation (of Theseus) that started as Hamm (Debian 2.0, which was already glibc2) and has
Linux in Shoe Box (Score:1)
I was using sunOS and HP/UX in the computer lab of my university. A frind of mine rented me a shoe box full of floppy disks. It was one of the first slackware distributions. A year later I could do the same (ie, installing Linux) using a more convenient cd rom. I'm still using linux but I switched to redhat and then to fedora since then
My first: 1.2.13 kernel (Score:2)
When I first went to college in 1993 I was fairly inexperienced on computers. I'd had a Commodore 128 and spent hours upon hours keying in programs from Ahoy magazine, but later in high school never really worked on a PC or a Mac. So when I got to college and was thrust into needing to use the computer labs, I quickly got frustrated by having to wait in line to use a computer.
I quickly noticed that these engineering workstations in the corners were almost never used - these were the SunOS days and most of
Pile of Suse Cds (Score:2)
I found a friend have the Suse cds, I think 9 of them and the Suse version was 6.1 wich came with a user manual printed on a book with a beautiful mathematical image on the cover(here it is the cover [laboratoriolinux.es])
I took me endlesss rebootings and formatting to install it and made it usable
Ahhh! the joys of yo
Started on minix in HS, then Xenix in a college (Score:2)
FreeBSD (Score:2)
Redhat Book/CD's (Score:1)
BBS (Score:1)
references in open source (Score:2)
In 1994 the network consulting company I worked for decided to become an ISP. As part of building up the systems to support that, on a craptastic System V UNIX from Novell they called UnixWare, I was installing all these open source tools and they all seemed to want to be compiled on something called Linux, by default. Getting some of them to compile on UnixWare was so much fun.
Eventually I figured out Linux was an actual open source OS, and I tried some Slack disks, but it didn't run very well and had like
Back in 1994 (Score:1)
1994 (Score:1)
I found Linux because there was a CD-ROM shop in Dinkytown that had the Yggdrasil 'Plug and Play Linux' for sale. The first edition, which had a plain manual white cover with green ink. Yggdrasil at the time were calling it 'LGX' and I suspect they intended that to be the brand name of their product, not 'Plug and Play Linux' which they later adopted.
I had a '486 machine with the whopping 16 MB of memory in it that I had spent $600 on (the '486 cpu and motherboard were an additional $600) and the Windows
BOOT Magazine (Score:2)
In the mid-90s an issue of BOOT Magazine had an article about various non-Microsoft operating systems. Linux seemed to offer what I was looking for and RedHat 5.1 was my first successful install. I went to Mandrake with their first release and have stuck with that (now Mandriva) ever since. I was privileged to contribute to the RedHat Unleashed series with Bill Ball and write for both MaximumLinux and LinuxFORMAT magazines as well as contributing to the Mandriva documentation. It has been an amazing experie
Ian asked me. . . (Score:2)
if I had heard of this lynn-u-ex thing.
Via a BBS at first (Score:2)
My first exposure came via a BBS - they ran RemoteAccess, and they were experimenting with Linux. As part of that, that Linux machine would do UUCP or so every night, so you could get *gasp*, email.
So what they had was a door that basically connected to the Linux machine over serial to which you could log into that and use your email. It wasn't a full shell prompt - more of a limited menu of options, but regular internet email! I used it join the DOOM mailing list back in the day. I remember getting emails
Linux Fo' Life (Score:2)
Yeah, the subject line is kinda a joke...
I came up through DOS, then DESQview, then DESQview/X. In the early '90's, I was big into the local BBS scene, and as the Internet exploded into public consciousness a few years later, I got a dial-up ISP account so my BBS could download network packets from my e-mail inbox at night (It was much cheaper than long-distance charges and most of the big networks were switching to it). A friend of mine who was dating a SysOp at my ISP hooked me up with a .tcshrc file that
It's all Glyn Moody's fault (Score:2)
"The Greatest OS That (N)ever Was" [wired.com]
I bought this issue in July 1997, I guess? Put Slackware from a magazine on 26 floppies or similar that month, found the command-line too difficult, bought Red Hat Linux 5.1 or 5.2 a couple of months after that about the same time I discovered Slashdot. Been a member ever since.
High School Programming Contest (Score:1)
1994 was 21 years ago (Score:1)
Yggdrasil article (Score:2)
I was initially interested in learning UNIX but of course had no access to those systems. I read an article about Yggdrasil and knew I had to try that out. I got transferred out of town and got busy with a new job and let it go for a while. When I came back to it I found Slackware. The rest is history...Slack, Redhat, Centos, Debian, Ubuntu etc etc. Been using it on servers for years and eventually moved my desktop as well.
Via Slashdot actually, with nods to the PS2. (Score:2)
http://linux.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
http://games.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
At the time my internet access was via WebTV...hey don't look at me that way, it was CHEAP. Anyway, I figured that Linux on the PS2 would be a neat way of adding computing functionality to my PS2. I signed the petition to get the kit released in the US and pre-ordered the kit. I had no experience with Unix or Linux so when I pre-ordered I ordered me some Linux books from Amazon, including O'Reilly's Running Linux, Linux for Dummies, Comple
Wanted UNIX at home ... (Score:2)
Like some old timers around here, I was using UNIX professionally since 1987, and had to use a modem over metered calls from 1989 to learn more about UNIX.
I heard about Minix, and was following the Usenet group for it, when I saw a post by a student in Finland called Linus. It was not ready for installation on PCs.
I looked for other options, such as the various UNIX SVR4s from the likes of Dell and Everex. They required an expensive tape drive. CD-ROMs were not yet popular in the early 1990s.
Then in 1995, I
1996 (Score:1)
Back in high school, around 1996, I discovered FreeBSD and Slackware while scouring the USENET.
Installed both in turn on my Packard Bell 486DX2 to check it out. Didn't really know how to use it and didn't know anyone to talk to for questions. But was still excited on the idea of a completely free OS.
A year+ later I was in college and learning about it again, first in intro CS classes, this time using Red Hat and with many knowledgeable peers to learn from. Then I started building and configuring the kernel
Buddy of mine (Score:2)
Went to CMU for a month in the summer of '93. He came back with a somewhat professional looking CD that had the source code for linux, the slackware floppy images, and some other junk (maybe it was SLS).
We spent a day or two installing it on my 486sx20 (which actually involved creating a bunch of floppies, and installing from them IIRC).
Not much worked, for sure X didn't. I wasn't very impressed, so I stopped messing with it. Some time passed and I tried again (possibly with another CD). I remember eventua
In stages (Score:2)
I first got acquainted with Linux in about 1993, when a friend of mine got it on his 386. I think it was an early Slackware. When I got to the University a year later, we had some IRIX very nice machines there, and the computer department was all HP-UX. That made me learn Linux in earnest.
When I got my own computer, a Pentium 90, late 1994, I installed it to dual boot between Slackware and DOS/Windows.
I switched to SuSE around version 5.0, somewhere around 1997. I then started using Linux much more, as SuSE
Old school Slackware (Score:1)
The easy way to install '90s Slackware!
Step 1: Download Slackware packages to spare (old) hard drive. .[YourInitials] , Edit tagfile so that everything is either ADD or SKP.
Step 2: Copy tagfile to
Repeat Step 2 for each disk set.
Step 3: Turn off computer, remove spare HD, plug into new computer (alongside new HD), insert boot floppy, turn on new computer, swap to root disk when prompted.
Step 4: Run setup. When asked from where, select old HD. When asked for how, select your tagfile extension. Start.
Step 5:
My road to Linux (Score:1)
I fell in love with Unix in my college computer lab in the mid-90s. I really wanted to be able to have a similar system at home. Some of the guys there were using Linux to run a BBS, which evolved into the first ISP in our area. I got Slackware floppies and assistance from them and soon enough I was running Linux too! It's been my more-or-less full-time desktop (and everything else) OS since that time.
Windows was unstable, Solais/i86 was undeveloped. (Score:2)
The problem with windows was that the driver for my PCMCIA ethernet card made the system unstable. Most notably it was unable to reliably wake up from sleep. Solaris on i386 was available, but I considered it a weak beta. A few people at work were big fans of Linux, so I tried loading Redhat on my system. It only took me an hour or two to find the driver I needed (our windows guru had
College! (Score:2)
However, I used UNIX through a borrowed CSUF [fullerton.edu]'s remote shell account before I even went to college with dial-up modems. I used mostly to FTP (e.g., ftp.cdrom.com) and Z-modem (still use this old school BBS' file transfer protocol!). After I started going to college, then I learned about Linux in c(lass/ours)es and from (nerd/geek)s. They were mostly on their local machines (labs) and still remotely (mostly dial-up). And then, I finally installed Red Hat (RH) Linux (v5?) on my own box (dual boot with Windows
Dead Badger... (Score:1)
I didn't like the direction Microsoft was heading (Score:1)
I grew up with DOS and Windows 3.1 and while while some Apple IIs were accessible to me at the local library, I stuck with DOS and Windows 3.1 since my father was a debugger at IBM and this was back before the failed OS/2. I was also exposed to MVS on mainframes through my father, but unless you're insanely rich and just really want to run a mainframe, you're not going to be running a mainframe at home. Also in high school, I was exposed to UNIX for the first time which blew me away with how different it wa
Somebody got tired of my uninformed bitching (Score:2)
I used to talk shit about Linux in a community of users from mixed platforms. I was a jaded would-be refugee who had tried to escape Windows, and failed. I had low expectations for this Linux thing too, and trumpeted them loudly.
One of those guys was deeply offended by the fact that I was bitching about something I had never even tried. He wanted me to try it, and then continue bitching if I wanted, and if I wouldn't try it, he wanted me to shut the fuck up about it and give it a rest.
He mailed me some C
Windows XP pushed me to Linux (Score:2)
At the time, I was running Windows 98 on my PC, and wanted to move to Windows XP, which had just been released. Unfortunately, the drivers for my sound card and some other hardware was not available for XP (or even Win2K), so I figured "why not try out this Linux thing instead?"
I had had some limited experience with Suse 6.4 some time earlier, but from reading about the different distros, I decided to pick up Mandrake 8.2. I downloaded the whole CD set and even printed covers and everything for them. From t
Re:The Bomb (Score:5, Funny)
Heh, reading through these comments felt like those testimonials at pentecostal churches, "I found Jesus when..."
Re: (Score:2)
Linus appeared to me in a dream and told me to download Mandrake 7.0.