Bought my copy at a flea market. Installed it on my Compaq, 233mhz or so, 128mb. Got it going by booting the system using the floppy. The article doesn't mention it much, but the distribution came with a booklet helping you install the distro. and an intro to unix. This was my start. For a while all I had was the text interface as X and GUI was a problem to get going. Then the modem, you ever try to dial up, never having used computers before, using new to me everything. Still love it to this day. I also went and got my RHCE, which was pretty hard. Anyway, enough remembered...
GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)
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Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)
#72Good times. My first Linux distribution was a copy of RH 6.1 that my parents bought me from OfficeMax. They weren’t too thrilled when I nuked the MBR on our family’s Windows 98 box, but they’ve subsequently benefitted from nearly 30 years of free tech support haha. Took me another year or so before I finally got X working on our Dell laptop, because I had to install a patched X server to work with its Rage Mobility g…
>We all have to start somewhere, and the manuals that came with that install were priceless to me.
I made a comment above and it's worth repeating again, the manual was indispensable.
Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)
#73I remember this era. It was Slackware, Caldera, TurboLinux, Mandrake and lots of hours with `./configure; make && make install` executions, reading Linux magazines and big fat books on getting it up and running (losing "precious" data in the process as well). Seeing scary fsck messages when booting up a PC that wasn't properly shutdown. I also remember that there was WinLinux 2000 for those who where scared having a…
I miss the era of "startx"!
Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)
#74That brings back memories! As does running the desktop from one’s .xinitrc: panel & background-properties --init & keyboard-properties --init & mouse-properties --init & fvwm2 -f .fvwm2rc.gnome Honestly, I think that there was a lot to love about that straightforward, discoverable way of doing things.
I still do this. And no systemd. I like simple things that I understand and can do from first principles.
no udev?
Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)
#75Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)
#76Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)
#77First time I installed linux was around 98, something went wrong and I could not boot and once able to boot could not get on the net. Went through all the information I had printed out and the books I had to no avail, called everyone I could think of. For the next week I had daily bus rides to the library where I would get on IRC to ask any question I could think of, download anything which might help, take lots of n…
:) It's difficult to imagine this today, but back then most households had a single ("the") computer shared by everyone. This was a challenge for adventurous geeks interested in Linux for two reasons. First, you couldn't get help with setting up Linux from the internet if the computer was out of service or you couldn't get online (getting your "winmodem" recognized and working was an endeavor all by itself). So I totally relate to your trips to the library. I used to print all the possible manuals and tutorials up front before attempting an installation, and have all the drivers I might need on floppies ready to go.
But most importantly, if you messed up the Windows installation for any reason (Linux was unusable after all in those days for mere mortals...), you broke the machine for everyone else in the household. I remember getting into trouble for this several times, and tinkering with Linux was always a rush because of it. I finally got my own _personal_ computer a few years later, which was a huge relief.
Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)
#78Why does this Gnome beta preview have TWM windowing? Was the Gnome kind not available yet?
The article notes Gnome didn't have it's own window manager yet. I'm slightly surprised it's using TWM, rather than something like FVWM95, I'm sure I used an ancient version of Red Hat that used that, but it might be the author's preference. (Edit: another poster says FVWM95 was the release after this...)
I remember when GNOME used the Sawfish window manager. This was after that but before Metacity.
Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)
#79I'm glad how we have come in terms of UI/UX since then!
> I'm glad how we have come in terms of UI/UX since then!
Yes, we thought twm and Win 95 sucked. Now we have Material design which sucks many li. /s
Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)
#80Gnome was indeed garbage then
> Gnome was indeed garbage then
And now it's a landfill.