[TriLUG] Your personal Linux Distro History (was Re: FEDORA 7 LINUX First Impressions? (was: F7 First Impressions?))

Reginald Reed reginald.reed at gmail.com
Sat Jun 2 19:10:38 EDT 2007


Ahhhh the memories!

I don't even remember the first actual version of Slackware I started
with, but I started flirting with Minix and Linux back in '91 or '92.
I remember downloading all the floppy images to my VM/CMS account at
the University of Central Florida where I was working.  Downloading
them to a Novell Netware home directory and creating the actual
floppies on a PC running DOS.  The IBM mainframe was the only thing I
had access to that had direct Internet access.  How sad!  I know that
I was up and running VoIP applications with the GSM codec over dialup
connections in '93.  I ran the first version of RedHat for Sparc in
'95 or '96 on an old SparcStation 2.

Its pretty funny because I always considered myself a young geek, but
I'm turning 38 later this month.  My first Unix experience was just
after high school, 20 years ago (woah!) when I was running Xenix/286
on a 8 MHz IBM AT clone I built from scraps, including 2 full-height
5.25" 15Mb(!) MFM drives, (Seagate ST-419's).  That machine was
actually a UUCP node, only two hops from UUNET
(uunet!tarpit!bilver!thumper).  I also was one of the 'yes' votes for
the creation of comp.os.linux back in '92.

--Reggie

On 6/2/07, J.C. Jones <jonesjc at intrex.net> wrote:
> My Linux history --
> 1. I downloaded slackware from sunsite.edu to floppies over a dialup
> connection and installed it to a very slow pc with limited memory. It
> was so slow that I almost gave up on linux. Not enough memory for X, all
> command line for me at the time.
> 2. Next was Redhat 6.? followed by  Redhat 7.2 and finally redhat 9. I
> even installed RH9 to my wife's desktop pc. She has used it until
> recently when I installed Ubuntu 6.06.
> 3. Now I have two servers running FC5, one laptop running FC5 and Mepis,
> and one other desktop running Ubuntu 6.06
>
> jcj
>
> Jason Faulkner wrote:
>
> >Hrm... full history?
> >
> >RHL 7.3 --> RHL 8 --> SuSe (8? not sure) --> RHL 9 --> Debian Woody (I
> >broked my windows install with this one) --> FC1 --> FC2 --> Gentoo
> >--> Debian Testng (sarge) --> Ubuntu
> >
> >Nowdays, I use either Gentoo, Debian, or Ubuntu.
> >
> >On 6/1/07, Tanner Lovelace <clubjuggler at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>On 6/1/07, Jason Faulkner <jason at oldos.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Oooh. It's not FC anymore, is it? I can't believe it's up to 7. My
> >>>first distro was RHL 7.3 -- and I used RHL/FC all the way through FC2.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Wow.  RHL 7.3  You're really young. :-P
> >>
> >>My first distro was Slackware in early 1994.  Back when it was distributed
> >>on lots and lots of 3.5 inch floppies.  From there I flirted briefly
> >>with Yggdrasil
> >>before moving to Red Hat.  In 1998 I switched from Red Hat to Mandrake 5.1
> >>(it started at 5.1 since it mirrored the Red Hat version at the time because it
> >>started as Red Hat + KDE).  I used Mandrake through 10.2 and then switched
> >>to Kubuntu with Hoary Hedgehog on the desktop and Debian Sarge on servers,
> >>which is where I stand today (latest versions of both of those).
> >>
> >>In between there, I helped create two Linux distributions for my work at Oculan
> >>back when it was alive: One was called Onix and it was basically a version
> >>of Red Hat 7.3(?) that would run from a 128MB flash card and I'm not sure the
> >>other one actually had a name but it fit in 8MB of flash and was based on
> >>uClibc.
> >>
> >>These days I'm much more likely to be using OS X on my laptop (and trying
> >>to bring native KDE to that).
> >>
> >>How about others?  What's your personal linux distro history?
> >>
> >>Cheers,
> >>Tanner
> >>--
> >>Tanner Lovelace
> >>clubjuggler at gmail dot com
> >>http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
> >>(fieldless) In fess two roundels in pale, a billet fesswise and an
> >>increscent, all sable.
> >>--
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> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
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>
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