My first distro. I remember buying a Linux Magazine that gave installation CDs as a bonus and had a quick walkthrough to install it.
I ended up deleting windows from my pc by destroying all partitions...It has been quite a ride :-)
Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old
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Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old
#12That was my first exposure to Linux in 1995. I remember downloading 30-something floppy disks over a painfully slow T1. I deployed our company's sendmail email server a few months later, running on an old PC. In 2006 I switched to Linux as my daily driver and if I need windows these days, it runs as a VM.
Check out Mr. Fancy T1 line over here. I remember downloading Slackware floppy images over 28.8 dialup. Talk about pain. I recently stumbled on a dusty box of them whilst cleaning out the attic.
Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old
#13Just want to make a note that Slackware 14 (the previous major version), from 2012, which shipped with the 3.2.29 kernel, is receiving updates as recently as today.
Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old
#14Brings back memories! I cut my teeth on Slackware 4 and then 7.
Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old
#15I ran Slackware for ~6 years, my first serious distro. It's kind of the perfect learning distro for Linux - a super stable base, but if you want more you need to learn how to do it yourself. You didn't need to compile your own kernel or set up tons of configuration just to boot, but if you wanted certain graphics drivers or other software, you quickly learned how to write shell scripts and manage builds and dependencies. I remember spending quite a few hours learning how to build my own media stack with mpv and all dependencies (Slackware only shipped with MPlayer in those days, and with no system ffmpeg). I found it to be a much better experience for that than other distros like Arch or Void, those are just too much at the beginning. Because of Slackware, for a good while my most comfortable programming language was bash!
I stopped using it when I had less time for tweaking my computer in my life (I moved to Debian), but it was a very formative experience. Good defaults, but with all the power to change whatever you want and the simplicity to make it manageable.
Happy birthday Slackware!
Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old
#16Slackware was my second Linux distro, after SLS. I ran a heavily customized Slackware for about 4 years: custom kernel, aout->ELF upgrade, many packages built from source.
Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old
#17Am I remembering right that I got it from tsx-11.mit.edu?
Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old
#18My first Linux distribution was Slackware 2.0, bundled with Linux Unleashed book in 1995's Summer. I had to copy all the floppy images from the CD-ROM into the hard disk and then boot the installation from floppy, as my IDE CD-ROM still wasn't supported by the Linux kernel 1.0.9, and my Trident card was downgraded to 800x600, as X couldn't do 1024x768 with it. Happy birthday Slackware. EDIT: kernel version.
I had the same book and Slackware 2.0 was also my first distro. I think the book is still in some box at my parent's house.
I remember trying to figure out how to compile the kernel for everything in my desktop.
Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old
#19That was my first exposure to Linux in 1995. I remember downloading 30-something floppy disks over a painfully slow T1. I deployed our company's sendmail email server a few months later, running on an old PC. In 2006 I switched to Linux as my daily driver and if I need windows these days, it runs as a VM.
It was T3 that was the bomb back then, wasn’t it?
In 1995, many early ISPs were still on fractional T1s or even 56K leased lines! I remember upgrading one from 56K to T1 in mid 1995. T3s were rare: large regional ISPs and backbone providers.
Re: Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old
#20In 1995 or so, I wanted to play with something not-Windows, but wasn't yet advanced enough in my degree to have access to my school's AIX setup. Bought a Slackware disk set, and a BSD (probably FreeBSD, honestly don't remember), took them both home. Slackware had drivers for my weird non-IDE CD-ROM drive, the other one didn't, and it's been nothing but fun since then.
Without Slackware, I would not have learned how to build a web server, wouldn't have learned about UUCP (which thankfully I haven't needed to use in about 20 years)... basically the entire course of my life would have changed.
(Entirely random aside: I returned the opened BSD disks for a full refund. Remember when you could do that without them assuming you copied the disks?)