The Linux Distributions of 1992 • Hacker News Board

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#51

Post by bitwize » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

EvanAnderson wrote: post #36

fmakunbound wrote: post #28

Around that time, I vaguely recall Linux switching from DWARF to ELF, some kind of libc5 (libc4 ??) to libc6 migration in the the ecosystem and a Sanyo CDROM driver that needed some source code edits to work for my model causing me endless grief as a kid exploring beyond DOS. Great times!

I was running either a Slackware or SLS distro when I did the a.out to ELF transition. I remember the libc migration occurring but I don't recall the details. It amazes me that I pulled it off given how little I understood about how the system actually worked. My experience, up to that point, was with MS-DOS and being a user on a Xenix system (but not a sysadmin). I was really, really excited to have a Unix-like OS a…

Slackware was a bit late transitioning from libc5 to GNU libc. I dropped a copy of GNU libc from Red Hat onto my Slackware box, and binaries that expected GNU libc pretty much just worked.

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#52

Post by anezch » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

terrywang wrote: post #12

Grew up in China, the first Linux distro, in fact non-Windows OS was Red Bar Linux 6.3 (I form of CDs sold in those pirated software shops, never saw Linux on floppy), no one else around me use anything other than Windows (99.99% pirated). It opened up a door for me, later on I bought Mandrake Linux 8.1 (with Chinese input method and fonts - displaying CJK was pain back then). Fedora Core 1 was my main desktop and th…

I live in Indonesia and have a very similar experience and situation (99.99% pirated Windows) with you. From Mandrake 8 to Fedora to Ubuntu 6. I remembered the time when I got my Ubuntu and Kubuntu CDs posted. The experience of using apt to download and update packages were a mindblowing experience at that time. That and the simplicity of Ubuntu was the main reason that I managed to persuade the management in the company where i work to migrate from win98 to ubuntu.

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#53

Post by icedchai » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

EvanAnderson wrote: post #36

fmakunbound wrote: post #28

Around that time, I vaguely recall Linux switching from DWARF to ELF, some kind of libc5 (libc4 ??) to libc6 migration in the the ecosystem and a Sanyo CDROM driver that needed some source code edits to work for my model causing me endless grief as a kid exploring beyond DOS. Great times!

I was running either a Slackware or SLS distro when I did the a.out to ELF transition. I remember the libc migration occurring but I don't recall the details. It amazes me that I pulled it off given how little I understood about how the system actually worked. My experience, up to that point, was with MS-DOS and being a user on a Xenix system (but not a sysadmin). I was really, really excited to have a Unix-like OS a…

I remember doing that, as well. I had Slackware running with some custom patches. I had to upgrade the kernel, libc, ld.so, and a bunch of other stuff. For a while, I had a system that ran both a.out and ELF binaries. This was back in 1996 or so?

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#54

Post by allenu » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

unmole wrote: post #41

hef19898 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> Linux fans as, well, bizarre sometimes arrogant pseudo programmers. To be fair, some of us were smug as hell. I once picked an argument with a guy simply because he was wearing a Microsoft t-shirt.

Ah, in those days I remember friends referred to Microsoft as The Evil Empire.

I think there was also a little bit of "friendly" debate over the superior OS at the time. (I ran OS/2 Warp for a number of years myself.)

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#55

Post by cogman10 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

rel2thr wrote: post #47

Crazy how much old software had ties to universities ( tamu Linux, BSD, wuftpd ). Are there any modern examples of this or have universities gotten out of the software game

I think it's more the case that the linux ecosystem has gotten too complex for a university student or professor to wrangle on their own.

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#56

Post by lholden » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

I grabbed SLS off a BBS in mid to late 1993. I was 12 and had a 386 with 8mb of ram and a monochrome display. I didn't at all use X11 at the time, but I loved that I could switch between virtual consoles, had real multi-tasking, and had a C compiler.

Funny side note... we had just watched Jurassic Park, which sparked a conversation with my dad about Unix. Dad mentioned that Linux was like Unix and was free. I had no idea Linux (or Unix) was a thing until this conversation, but I had to check it out. When I discovered that it had a C compiler... I was absolutely hooked.

This was such a pivotal moment in my life and was a major contributor to my eventually becoming a professional programmer.

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#57

Post by banana_giraffe » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 5:26 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 had a very similar "I can get a whole operating system for free?" eye opening experience when I got Slackware on a bunch of floppies.

I also picked tcsh for my main shell based off some blurb I read and spent a few months unlearning what I learned when I was actually given a task to maintain a Linux system a few years later.

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#58

Post by oflebbe » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

fmakunbound wrote: post #28

Around that time, I vaguely recall Linux switching from DWARF to ELF, some kind of libc5 (libc4 ??) to libc6 migration in the the ecosystem and a Sanyo CDROM driver that needed some source code edits to work for my model causing me endless grief as a kid exploring beyond DOS. Great times!

I remember occasionally contributing to libc at that time. libc4 was a.out, at least that was the name I remember. libc5 was the first ELF libc and libc6 is glibc.

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#59

Post by tonyedgecombe » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #16

tomrod wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS really needs to release a Linux Excel.

Not sure if that's ever gonna happen. I could imagine, now that Steam tool care of a huge junk of gaming, Office is the main thing keeping a sizable number of people on Windows. Imagine if MS was reduced to MS Excel...

Once they have ported it to Electron ...

Re: The Linux Distributions of 1992

#60

Post by flyinghamster » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

I still have an InfoMagic 6-CD set from April 1996 and a retail copy of Red Hat 5.1 among my old disks. I'm almost tempted to try one of them out in VM for old times' sake.

On the InfoMagic set, there were:

* Disk 1: Slackware 3.0 and Debian 0.93R6

* Disk 2: Red Hat 3.0.3

* Disk 3: Sunsite Archive

* Disk 4: GNU and Kernel Sources

* Disk 5: tsx-11 Archive

* Disk 6: Demos and Red Hat for Alpha