The Linux Distributions of 1992

#1

Post by WoodenChair » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

The Linux Distributions of 1992
lunduke.substack.com

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#2

Post by kar1181 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

The ancient (read 90s) distros are a lot of fun to play with. Redhat still have a lot of their legacy distributions available and they are installable on vmware. You can learn a heck of a lot with really early distributions. I remember how complicated they seemed at the time but compared to nowadays it's pretty easy to have all the system components in your head at any one time.

I spent a week or so upgrading component by component redhat 5.0 (hurricane) to be able to run a more modern version of glibc learning a lot about the c runtime stack under linux in the process.

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#3

Post by icedchai » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:46 PM UTC

SLS Linux was my first distro. It was probably early 1993 when I first installed it, on a 386SX/20 with 3 megs of RAM. I think it was on 12 or 16 floppies.

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#4

Post by fit2rule » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:50 PM UTC

Yggdrasil OG in the house. I still have 40-odd floppies around, was a great day they shipped a bootable CD that went straight to X if you had the right hardware .. that blew a lot of our minds, back then ..

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#5

Post by nobleach » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 2:02 PM UTC

I recall being in a B. Dalton Bookstore in the mid-90's. I picked up a book that had "Linux" on the cover. In the cover it had a floppy disk or two. Something felt very wrong to me. You can't give away an entire operation system! Perhaps this was just some "free for educational purposes" thing? I went home and fired up WebCrawler on AOL and came across Yggdrasil. I had experienced Unix on an SGI system. And I was very familiar with AmigaOS, so this idea of a free Unix-like OS that I could install on commodity hardware was intriguing. A friend of mine bought the RedHat 5.2 distro from Best Buy and offered to let me borrow the CD-ROM. I was like, "that's piracy... no thanks". He said, "no, dude... you don't get it. It's free.".

Looking back, I sometimes think. "How could you have been so into computers and NOT known about this???" Then I remember. Information just didn't travel as freely in those days. It was simply possible not to know things. Even though I read computer magazines, they were VERY focused on Windows or Mac. Once I found a distro I could install from floppies (Dragon Linux I think) I messed around until I got X running. Then it was CD-ROMs from CheapBytes and LinuxMall. In 1998 and 1999 I bet I installed every distro one could buy for 2 dollars on CD-ROM! I was a full time user. I have been ever since.

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#6

Post by tristor » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

I ordered a copy of SLS on floppy disk from a guy out in Seattle or Portland (I forget) via an ad in the back of Computer Shopper magazine in the early 90s. I installed it on a Tandy 1000 RSX (386SX 25Mhz) my parents had recently replaced with an IBM PS/2 Model 77 (with a 486DX2 50Mhz). I was obsessed with Linux almost immediately because I could compile and run some of the software that I had gotten used to using on the UNIX mainframe I dialed into at the university nearby to get SLIP internet access. Stuff like Gopher, PINE for mail, etc.

That experience pretty much cemented my love of computers and determined the trajectory of my life/career afterwards. In a lot of ways, Linux saved me from working construction with my dad in the small town I grew up in and allowed me to escape.

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#7

Post by SemiNormal » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #3

SLS Linux was my first distro. It was probably early 1993 when I first installed it, on a 386SX/20 with 3 megs of RAM. I think it was on 12 or 16 floppies.

My first was Slackware. Back when they would mail you a CD of the distro for free.

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#8

Post by wiz21c » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

I think I remember that I started with something called TSX11 / SunSite... Is there any HN'ers who see what that was ?

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#9

Post by hef19898 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

nobleach wrote: post #5

I recall being in a B. Dalton Bookstore in the mid-90's. I picked up a book that had "Linux" on the cover. In the cover it had a floppy disk or two. Something felt very wrong to me. You can't give away an entire operation system! Perhaps this was just some "free for educational purposes" thing? I went home and fired up WebCrawler on AOL and came across Yggdrasil. I had experienced Unix on an SGI system. And I was ver…

I remember discussions back the day between Linux and Windows proponents. I was clearly in the Windows camp, seeing Linux fans as, well, bizarre sometimes arrogant pseudo programmers. That changed, now that Linux is probably the last OS I can run without a cloud account easily. Heck, I'd even pay for it!

Back the day I was a gamer, the main reason why Linux never really was an option. Later for work, it was Windows all the way for obvious reasons. Privately I am on Ubuntu now, along with LibreOffice. Won't go back, Windows turned into a major PIA when I tried to run different Teams and Office accounts not linked to the Windows 10 license due to home schooling and two kids. Gone were the days that a license key was all you needed. There is still a Windows boot partition, company hardware is Windows anyway.

The only thing I have a hard time getting rid of is Excel. I am so used to that...

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#10

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

[deleted]