First Linux Experience

[Kurt Granroth]

Wagner, Steven G wrote:
> With Betty posting about RH9 I got thinking about my first experience with
> Linux. RH6.2 (Cartman) on a dual boot Pentium Pro 233MZ with Winbloze '98.
> feh, last time I paid M$ for anything!
> 
> Anyway, I'd be interested to hear about other member's first experiences
> with Linux and what you're using today. I'm now running OPENSUSE 10.1 on
> laptop and desktop (though desktop will be reverting back to hardened Gentoo
> as soon as I get some free time).

Ah.. memories.  I first got into Linux with Slackware back in '93 and
'94.  At the time, it was pretty much Slackware or SLS (and a third one
that started with a Y but I always forget how to spell... like
Yggadrisil).  I was turned on to Linux by a classmate after I discovered
this scary OS called "Unix" for the first time.  All of our computer
labs ran SunOS (pre-Solaris) and I hadn't the first clue how to do
anything on them.  I was told that I could get a free version of Unix
for my PC that would allow me to learn how it all worked.

At the time, it was a toss-up between Linux and FreeBSD, though.
Neither was noticeably more popular than the other.  The deciding factor
was the LDP -- the Linux Documentation Project.  I printed out the
System Admin Guide, Linux User Guide, Network Admin Guide, and tons of
others out on our lap laser printer (and got yelled at for doing so...
those books were LONG) and spent hours reading about 'mv' and 'ls' and
'XFree86' and 'kernels' and 'TeX' and so many other wonderful and new
things.  Those books were absolutely amazing!

I downloaded all 23 (is that right?) floppy images at school and copied
them into the brand new disks from the 100 disk set I bought just for
the occasion.  I couldn't have used CDs even if it was available like
that since I wouldn't have a CD-ROM drive for a year or so yet.

This was installed onto a 386 with maybe a 1G hard drive, 4M memory, and
a crappy 15" screen (or was it 13").

Since then, I've used all of the major distributions and have finally
settled on SUSE.  It does everything I want it to do and more.
Recently, I tried Ubuntu to see what the fuss was about and while I
liked it, it wasn't quite SUSE and so I switched back.

Kurt