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Happy birthday – 30 years of Linux

ubuntu.com

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Re: Happy birthday – 30 years of Linux

#13

Post by bdz »

johnchristopher wrote: post #8

I remember installing Ubuntu 4.10 and then discussing it on a forum and someone was like "no mp3 support ? what stupid distro is that lol".

I was in high school and that was the first time I've ever seen a live CD. A full functioning OS running on a CD? School PCs were running XP and most things were locked down. But lo and behold the magic live CD made you do a lot of things otherwise were not allowed. Good times. I always had a live CD with me for years (and it was actually really useful)

Re: Happy birthday – 30 years of Linux

#14

Post by ASalazarMX »

room505 wrote: post #10

My first linux distro was Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake). Was just trying to learn by myself how to use and understand linux. Fun times. Happy Birthday! Edit: I was probably one of the few that actually liked the orange and brown theme.

Mine was SUSE Linux. It came in a magazine CD, and I installed on my clunker PC then. Had to ask a week off work because I couldn't stop playing with it.

It was an eye-opening experience compared to Windows because you weren't just allowed to tinker and even recompile the OS, you had to if you wanted to make things work like they effortlessly did in Windows, and then take it to some weird extreme. It was a lot of learning.

I'm just happy there are user-friendly distros now, because nowadays I can't devote hours just to setup my VGA card and a mouse with five buttons :)

Re: Happy birthday – 30 years of Linux

#16

Post by dleslie »

I used to order boxes of Ubuntu CDs, when they still shipped them for free, and would hand them out to students at University; the pitch that it had a full free office-compatible suite and a C compiler was enough to get people to readily pick up discs.

Re: Happy birthday – 30 years of Linux

#17

Post by oktwtf »

bdz wrote: post #13
johnchristopher wrote: post #8

I remember installing Ubuntu 4.10 and then discussing it on a forum and someone was like "no mp3 support ? what stupid distro is that lol".

I was in high school and that was the first time I've ever seen a live CD. A full functioning OS running on a CD? School PCs were running XP and most things were locked down. But lo and behold the magic live CD made you do a lot of things otherwise were not allowed. Good times. I always had a live CD with me for years (and it was actually really useful)

I recall getting a shipment of about 50 CDs simply by asking for some online. I handed them out to just about anyone, mostly peers at school, however I remember having some left over and tossing some out during Halloween amongst some candy to some young kids too. I like to think at least a few of them got used and hopefully introduced a couple to a lifelong addiction to Linux.

Those dark, dark hours/days/weeks with Xorg really made me into the hacker I am today. If the forums weren't there, read the docs, if the docs weren't helpful you could read the source. Not being stonewalled while discovering how to work with one's computer is a wonderful experience.

Happy Birthday to such a wonderful OS!

Re: Happy birthday – 30 years of Linux

#18

Post by racl101 »

dleslie wrote: post #16

I used to order boxes of Ubuntu CDs, when they still shipped them for free, and would hand them out to students at University; the pitch that it had a full free office-compatible suite and a C compiler was enough to get people to readily pick up discs.

I remember my first year of Uni having to go to the lab just to find a Sun work station (running Red Hat) so I could do my comp sci assignments and hope that there was one available otherwise I'd have to make the trek to the building again. During the winter months this trek was arduous.

It was so great in my 2nd year after learned about Ubuntu, figuring out how to install it on my Windows PC and being able to dual boot and then being able to do my assignments by connecting via SSH. Was able to do my assignments quicker and from the comfort of my rented basement (far away from campus).

And it was even better to just be able to experiment on my own laptop and not worry about screwing things up on the campus workstation.

There's so much good stuff available to make learning programming quicker but I look fondly on those early '2000 years because it makes me appreciate how far Linux and FOSS has come along.

Re: Happy birthday – 30 years of Linux

#19

Post by CameronNemo »

johnny53169 wrote: post #15

I'm so grateful for Shuttleworth ongoing support for Ubuntu for 17 years, it all costs a lot but Ubuntu has been a key contribution for Linux. It's important to praise good contribution IMO

Ubuntu is only ~17 years old. Shuttleworth is ~48 years old.
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