First Linux?

[pbharris]

it was late1994 or early 1995, i played mtrek way too mch and the ms windows telnet client sucked (i was used to the UNIX machines at school). a fellow said run UNIX on a PC, and gave me a copy of slackware. i installed it on my 386 and was off to play too much mtrek. i hated having to compile my kernel to get modem support - that was tough and i never got my cd working. when win95 came out and tried it and used it for a bit then bough a copy of a linux book with redhat in it which was a bit nicer, it had fvwm2 and i figured out to get my CD working. i used glint to install packages heheheh... i still dual booted and used linux to play mtrek and windows for all other stuff. i graduated in 1996 and started using linux more and more because it worked better. now i have been using linux for almost everything since 1998.

[gmoreno]

Now before I even went off to college I was working at Radio Shack and there was an ibm computer we started to sell and it has OS/2 wrap. And I thought that was SO cool.

Well during my first year in college 1997 I meet one of my best friends and on a trip to Fry's Electronics I saw him staring at a software package. So I asked him about it and he siad that it was some type of very customizable os that he had been hearing about it. When I heard that I judged what ever os he was talking about as flaky since there is several os that I had looked at and were all flaky.

Later on I saw that different websites had options for linux. Like download.com had a section for linux and some other sites as well. So I started asking around about linux. And this fellow told me that it was like unix and that his brother recieved some cd for free from some people. So I decided that I wanted to try it. But I had to wait till I was out of school. I didn't want to be stuck with a non productive computer with papers to write.

So When school was out... In summer of 1998 I tried to figure out how to download linux and install it. Well I soon found that that it was going to be inpossible to download it with my dial-up modem. So one day I went to staples and they had a box that said Linux 5.1 *I* think it was Mandrake. I saw it in Costco and I picked up the box and installed it. I knew NOTHING about linux or unix. After tons of installs I got my system working. I was lucky to have a non-win modem. All I had to do is to change the jumpers to have it work as non pnp.

I after HOUR and HOURS I installed Wordperfect but then I found out that my printer didnt work with linux so I had to get a new one. But I loved linux from the start. I was always a command prompt type of guy and I loved console.

Somehow I found out about LNO and I learned a lot from LNO.

I think I started off with Mandrake 5.1 then I got upgrades upto 6.x and then I decided to get Slackware but I waited for another summer to try it. After a year with slackware I got tired of trying to satisfy a dependency and not even nowing where the hell to get the dependency needed. SO I switched to Debian and thats what I am using now.

[Schotty]

Well I got hooked on UNIX at Milwaukee School of Engineering. A dude that was in my class was amazed how only the Instructor, himself and I were just in love with the DEC lab and most notably Digital UNIX. So he told me to get some "Red Hat Linux". I inquired why -- and was told I could run something like Digital UNIX at home !! Well -- as the true geek I was then, I grabbed him and rung the one piece of info I needed out of him -- where to acquire!

So off to Barnes and Nobles I went. Found the PC section, then the Mac section, and finally the Linux section. Hmm choices .... Slackware, Debian, RedHat .... Debian's book was too small. Not thick enuf. RedHat was alot bigger. But the hugest of them all was Slackware. 15 Minutes later, I was back at home and installing Slackware 96 (3.1 IIRC).

At first I was cheering with joy with only spending a month to get sound working. Then after several months of putzing around I got my modem working. It was probably a real trip to see me go online with "Netscape" the first time in Linux ;D

From there it was history. Seeing KDE and GNOME mature from their 1.0 days (and for GNOME, pre 1.0 days too) has been rather interesting. Seeing how shitty each was, and how twm and blackbox were the only ones that didnt barf out, was cute too.

But thats that. At least the noobs have it easier ;D

[Stuart]

God. how long ago was that..not sure.. it was shortly after my infatuation with the dying BeOS.. Anyways, I was actually challenged to get Linux running on my box, so being the cheap, dirty bastard I am, I download Grey Cat Linux (a tiny distro which I love dearly - umsdos), and slapped the DOS patch on Windows MEand BAM! there ya go! I had linux .. In 10 weeks I was bored.. So I grabbed Corel Linux. I hated it. I hated it so much I reinstalled WinMe. then I came here and bummed a copy of Mandy8.2 from LC, and holy shit I was surprised. A fancy install, lots of games, and quick.. man. I got online as soon as I found the modem drivers, and was I ever happy . a few months later, I decided to try Red Hat. So I started downloading (on 56k btw) and got 2 cds of RH7.3 and installed. it was nice. I used it until RH8 came out and I got a local w/ broadband to get it for me. I liked it, for a few days. then I hated it. So back to Mandrake it was.. Then I got the same guy to get me slackware(who then pointed out I was becoming a distro whore).. mm slackware...felt like Grey Cat (which I missed - alot)which was based on slack3.5 go figger.. figgered out how to setup X (so many months and still a newbie).. I was checkin up on dear old greycat and a new version was out, so I used that (for a month or so) then It was back to Slack. then I grabbed a friends copy of SuSE 7.2.. Didnt really like it, but I had heard good things about it, so I decided to bum a newer version off of someone and good old vvx was here to help me with my distro-whore-ness and I am using SuSE still. (tho I just got it lol)*SuSE now dual boots on my parents machine while I run Slack on my K6-2*

[GhostDawg]

Well when I built my first PC, a P-133mhz system around late '98, I had been hearing about linux for a long time and always curious to try different things. I had installed Win95 and got a copy of WinNT but had a hard time getting NT installed properly.

So finally I decided to try Linux, I really didn't know which one to get, only two I had heard of from computer news mags. and they were Redhat 4.x and Caldera's Openlinux. I decided to try Caldera's version 1.2 first...at the time I believe 2.2 was the latest for them but I didn't know that. I ordered my copy from Linuxmall.com.

It was so good and I really enjoyed it more then Win95. But I had to always keep a copy of windoze for work reasons on my home computers. Then I built another computer, a p-233 and decided to try the latest RH ver. 4. whateva and I didn't like it as much as CO, I think now because it had Gnome for the desktop and I had to download and install KDE 1.x for CO. Then I decided to try Mandrake 8.0 and did like that since it offered KDE & Gnome. So I kept that for a long time and bought a new 10gb HD and put only Mandrake on it and used just linux for a long time.

Just the past year I decided to try Slackware and Debian and really enjoy those now.

And I still have the p-133 system with Caldera's Openlinux installed on it but I hardly use it anymore! ;D

[CP]

I remember back when I first started using linux I got a copy of RH5.2, and man I thought it was utter shit. I installed it, pissed around for a few hours and totally lost interest in it. About 6 months later, I was reading a comp mag, and there was an ad for a linux book. Just a really simple little pocket book, but it came with RH6.1 and Caldera Openlinux 2.1
It was about this time that I joined LNO, because there was a little speel about it in the back of the book. I installed Caldera first, after remember my suffering with RH5.2, and it installed easily, and I liked it. I couldn't do that much, just a few simple games, and surf the net, but it was fast, and I didn't have a single crash. And what I liked best was KDE. The way I could change everything on my desktop, I was totally at my own whim. And I've moved on a long way since then, through Debian, and LFS then slack, then back to Debian, back to Slack, tried mandrake for a while, and finally back to LFS, but now I just want to get Slack installed again, but am waiting the fortnight for my highspeed internet. I reckon that if I hadn't found linux I would be one of those idiotic people who think they are great because they can do all the simple shit in windows, change the screen resolution, or even if they're really clever install drivers :O
CP

[mcdougrs]

Wow I don't remember what first got me into Linux. I was a MS Windows junkie. I knew how to get around in Windows PRETTY WELL, well everything but the NT versions. But what 0I do remember is that when I got my laptop about 3-4 years ago I knew this kid that was like a Linux god (at least at my school) and I asked him if he would help me install Linux... I think it was RH7.0. But we couldn't get my network card to work relyably. So I ended up ditching that, and then I got a copy of SuSe (don't remember the version), it came with a magazine, and I got it from another friend of mine at work.

But since then I have taken a class in Unix web administration and we used RH7.3 (that was pretty nice). And now I have a dedicated computer, the same laptop as above, with RH8.0 with a web server and ftp running. I can't wait until the new RH comes out because I keep having troubles with 8.0. I just can't be content with what I've got I need MORE so I keep running into problems.

[Tyr_7BE]

[quote author=Schotty link=board=17;threadid=6248;start=0#59150 date=1044223813]

At first I was cheering with joy with only spending a month to get sound working. Then after several months of putzing around I got my modem working. It was probably a real trip to see me go online with "Netscape" the first time in Linux ;D

From there it was history. Seeing KDE and GNOME mature from their 1.0 days (and for GNOME, pre 1.0 days too) has been rather interesting. Seeing how shitty each was, and how twm and blackbox were the only ones that didnt barf out, was cute too.

But thats that. At least the noobs have it easier ;D
[/quote]

True eh? It's absolutely staggering when you think of where the linux desktop was a mere 3 years ago. There were still cries for a "real" browser (NS 4 was the de facto standard...Moz just wasn't what it is now, Opera didn't exist, and Konq was a PIECE OF CRAP). KDE and Gnome looked clunky and awkward. The amount of hardware supported was probably a third of what it is today, if that. Blackbox and WM reigned supreme, because those were really the only reliable popular WMs out there. KDE2 really changed things, and Gnome 1.x helped out a lot too.

Different world alltogether now. Just the other day I was telling my newbie friend which browsers I liked and why. He was frustrated that there were so many choices and no default. How the tables have turned.

[gorn]

my /first/ linux install my friend helped me with on my mac, i never used it really though and eventually uninstalled it.

later i started to get reinterested in it and tried redhat on my pc, but couldnt get X working so gave up. then i got a SuSE cd at a 2600 meeting, and i had an old 486. so i installed it on there and had great fun then broke something, so instead of making boot disks again i figured id just use my good pc to install it then swith the hd back. suse cds boot up to a gui! my video card worked! that was enough reason for me to just format my windows drive right then. and i did. then i had trouble getting onlne but eventually managed. this was maybe a little over 4 years ago? yes its been a long while.

i dont remember when i switched to slack, but i remember it being hard because i had avoided the command line so much in suse. but after i got the hang of it i loved it. and still do.

[binary_boy]

I was becoming increasingly irritated with blue screens, lockups, etc, so I decided to try Redhat 6.0. Was on my 200mhz pentium, around early 1999. I remember downloading the distro with my modem thinking "this will never work". I imagined all sorts of error messages, etc. Upon my first boot I was amazed that I was presented with a login prompt. I didn't know what to do next. Finding out has been LOTS of fun!

I liked Redhat a lot, it was a good distro for newbies. I started experimenting with Debian (didn't like it), FreeBSD (ok, but not quite as versatile as Linux) and Slackware. Slack has been the fastest, most stable, most workable OS I've ever used. I've never looked back.

(btw KDE 3.1 freaking ROCKS)