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GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)

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Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)

#51

Red Hat Linux on the family PC in the 90's changed the course of my life.

can I ask how it has changed the course of your life? I've deen daily driving Ubuntu with KDE for about 2 years now. it's been great and I've had a lot of fun exploring things and learning the GNU tools in particular. I've been interested in contributing to some projects but that hasn't been very accessible so far.

I have never been paid to write code, and my formal CS education is limited to AP Computer Science, and a one-credit Java class in college. But like 2OEH8eoCRo0, I can say that Red Hat Linux changed my life. Experience running Linux from kernel 1.2.13/Red Hat Linux 2.1 onward at home, and contributing small bits of code to a project or two (and RPMs to community repos), got me into a career at Wall Street after college, covering hardware and software companies (including RHAT) as an equity analyst during and after the dotcom bubble.

Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)

#53

I love those old project codenames. They were all connected to each other, but different. Manthattan -> Apollo (both were “Projects”). Apollo to Hedwig (both were characters), etc.

I don't anything will top Fedora's 'Beefy Miracle'.

RIP Beefy Miracle...

https://beefymiracle.org/

Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)

#54

People still don't believe me when I say this was a real thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_VxrcNgUlM (Red Hat Linux Once Featured A REDNECK Translation)

We tried this out a middle schoolers at an installfest in Alabama in the 90s, but something was broken with the resulting install and had to wipe it and start over. Funny that 25+ years later I learn that the problem could have been that the locale was set to en_RN…

Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! How about a description?

It looks like Lode Runner, but even more simple as I remember. Not sure if it came together with KDE. So long ago.

https://apps.kde.org/kgoldrunner/

Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)

#57
post #38

I 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…

> ./configure; make && make install This was what eventually lead me to Gentoo, if I'm going to have to compile some things why not all the things? And being able to install mpg123 without installing X, that was nice.

I had the opposite, lots of that lead me to Debian instead. It wasn't so much the pain of compiling something once, but the ongoing pain of updating.

Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)

#58
post #17

First Linux I bought was Walnut Creek Linux CD-ROM. Second was Redhat. I would still be on Redhat if it were not for IBM and their bad faith source-available interpretation of the GPL. Then I bought Mandrake and used it as long as it was Mandrake and not the thing that became Conectiva. Then I heard about Ubuntu which would mail free CDs anywhere in the world. I was in education back then and my students would ask Ub…

Hah, I downloaded floppy disk images from Walnut Creek CD-ROM's amazing FTP mirror site, wrote them to actual floppies in my university computer lab, and carried those home to try out SLS and later Slackware.

Starting with Linux in 1993, I was already using it productively for years before things like SSH and VMware existed!

Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)

#59

First 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…

Wish I'd been that successful. I tried to install Red Hat in '98 with absolutely no support or help. Got the disks from a friend of mine whose dad was a SWE. I ended up (figuratively) crawling on my belly back to the computer shop where I bought the hardware to reinstall Windows. Not my proudest moment! But in hindsight very expected. When I switched to Linux full time around 2010 I started realizing how disadvantage…

I also first tried Linux (with zero unix knowledge) about 98 or 99 with RH5.1 which I think was the 2.0.3x kernel.

Frankly I'm amazed I got as far as I did despite it was mostly uninformed blundering about and bashing my head against the wall. I managed to figure out the specific AT codes to make my modem connect, and even managed to download and compile KDE 1.1 (the default UI was so ugly and clunky). KDE took about a day to compile from memory.

Re: GNOME and Red Hat Linux eleven years ago (2009)

#60

First 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…

Wish I'd been that successful. I tried to install Red Hat in '98 with absolutely no support or help. Got the disks from a friend of mine whose dad was a SWE. I ended up (figuratively) crawling on my belly back to the computer shop where I bought the hardware to reinstall Windows. Not my proudest moment! But in hindsight very expected. When I switched to Linux full time around 2010 I started realizing how disadvantage…

I don't think I can say that I was successful, various people on IRC were the ones who were successful and I was just lucky they were willing to compile kernels and make disk images for me since the library computers lacked the required software to do all that stuff.
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