Installing Linux like it's 1998

[@ActionRetro]

Thanks again to Harry’s! Click here Harrys.com/ActionRetro to redeem your Trial Set for just $5!

[@cleverlyblonde]

That sponsor insert was as smooth as your shave. Well done! 😃

[@ActionRetro]

@@cleverlyblonde ahaha thanks

[@minty_Joe]

@@ActionRetro Oh cool! You got the rocker switch type used in the missile silo scene at the start of the movie WarGames as your power switch. Those are awesome!

[@atruceforbruce5388]

Should have brought up a old mirrored geocitities web page

[@ParsnipCelery]

I appreciate you getting your sponsor and money but one of the best razor things I've ever bought was the Norelco One Blade. Literally one of the very best razors I've ever owned.

[@SockyNoob]

I'm definitely on board with the idea of covering more vintage Linux distros.

[@garvintimmann]

please do this again with more linux distros

[@NeverlandSystemZor]

YES!!!! I would love see the old Mandrake, Suse, Debian, etc distros... Maybe even Lindows/Linspire (a very very weird short-lived project) and early Ubuntu.

[@nazgulsenpai]

When I was 12, I bought Red Hat 5.2 from a local bookstore called Waldenbooks. It was just sitting on a shelf and I had heard about how revolutionary it was. Totally wiped the family computer, never could get my modem to work (winmodem) and the display was monochrome so I just played games in black and white until I reinstalled Windows 95. Still, it kicked off what would be a lifelong passion and career. Those days of early Red Hat and Linux Mandrake are some of my fondest memories. Right alongside pranking friends and the school with BackOrifice.

[@jeffcullen6573]

I was 14 when the same box came home from a book store. A couple of weeks later, I had an old 486 sharing out our dial-up internet connection to a few Windows machines over the 10Mbps LAN. Nothing's really changed... basically still doing the same stuff (only bigger) 25 years later! BackOrifice brings back memoies too... the joys of big flat networks at school :D

[@louistournas120]

A friend gave me a book about Redhat 6.2 in 1999. He wanted to be a techy but later gave up and went into business. I installed it on a spare hard drive but I did not have a driver for the winmodem. I wasn't sure what to do and was too lazy to read the book. I swapped back the hard drive and went to Win 95, which I was familiar with. Nowadays, I run Kubuntu and do gaming, programing, video editing on it.

[@RedSntDK]

Cult of the Dead Cow's BackOrifice was awesome. Used the keylogger feature to get the dialup password at my school. Perhaps the most devious thing I've ever done before or since 😇

[@GaugePlays1980]

Winmodems were the devil. I also used AOL. Ugh, we didn't get proper dial-up internet service in town until '99 or '00. So my RH install went back to 95 pretty fast.

[@RBMK1500]

i remember having a super hard time in the late 90s with some suse linux (only god knows the version) that i tried to get IP-over-AX25 to run and failed miserably.. then some years later i tried again with mixed results. and now i run linux only and really learned to love it over the past few years and i became one of the go-to guys for linux questions in my job. but i only have great memories of the days using sub-seven... ay good times.. :'-)

[@LeslieLanagan]

The title of this video reminds me of my favorite story in life. My mother doesn't know a thing about computers. Years and years ago, I asked for that distribution for Christmas. She tells the guy at Best Buy she needs a copy of Red Hat for her daughter. The guy says, "wow. That's a big operating system for a little girl." My mom said, "she's 20."

[@parastie]

I remember picking up a copy of "Linux for Dummies" that came with a free copy of Redhat! Eventually I moved on to Mandrake Linux which came with an early version of KDE.

[@garvintimmann]

same

[@grafxgear]

5:20 You say that but the DOS days were not much simpler. Look at the size of the DOS 5 user guide and reference. I remember being absolutely frustrated having to read through the DOS guide the first time i had to make my own boot disk with custom config and autoexe file. Extended / expanded memory was required to get the hand to appear in the cockpit of Wing Commander and i was determined to get it working. I learned a lot from that book that eventually led to my first job in the gaming industry. A lot changed with Windows 95 including basically useless manuals.

[@paul_boddie]

Throughout the 1980s, people kept on saying that Unix was the next big thing but that learning to use "the commands" was "more complicated" than DOS. I think people just told themselves what they wanted to believe rather than pay proper attention to the observable facts. Still, it made for a few column inches in the industry press.

[@dsouth7754]

Imagine it being a summer night in '98, and browsing through newsgroups late into the evening on RHL 5.

[@Stealth86651]

Reminds me of how I came upon linux. Was in high school and a buddy of mine was really good with computers. Was curious and asked him if there was something other than Mac/Windows and he gives me a Redhat LiveCD along with the Redhat Bible, thing was heavy. Eventually learned my way but man was that different than having thousands of tutorials and stuff like we do now.

[@ObliterationOfMankind]

and it WAS GREAT!

[@Juanguar]

Same here I came across Ubuntu back when they sent you free CDs so I ordered one and my Linux journey started from there

[@WaterDragonGames4]

Learned like that with Ubuntu 12.04. Figured out how bootable USB drives were made the manual way and how to open iSO files on Windows XP using 7zip!

[@Shonicheck]

Different - yes, better? Quite questinable. Modern tutorials are more attuned to "formed" crowds, since they are the ones actually maintaining them, so the "little guy" that just trying to get in, gets overwhelmed by a circle references of those, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, learns nothing at all, because "tutorial" fails to explain anything and just provides something that "works". Those manuals had actually atleast some effort put into them, since printing stuff like this costs money, unlike crappy online tutorials, no one really cares about, since they are virtually free to post en-mass atleast. They were also atleast somewhat coherent, as in each part of the book atleast tried to adhere to previously established notions, since only a few people got to work on the book, but online tutorials, wikis, knowledge bases? They are more like a chaotic mess of knowledge barely held together by a somewhat coherent underlying structure, which is while apropriate for the theme is a mess to actually try and learn from. Not that they(aka those long ass printed manuals,books,guides,etc.) were great, by any means, and not that i would suggest that modern knowledge pieces should go up in flames, rather i'd say that books/courses/manuals that were specifically desgned by someone in general are a better way to learn any topic than just randomly stumbling on issues and googling how to solve them(not that the latter would 100% eleminate the latter)

[@louistournas120]

@@Shonicheck Linux and open source apps are better in the sense that they can’t force you to upgrade. There is very little reason to not upgrade. I think most of is desktop guys do upgrade. The GUI is very customizable. I use KDE. For Windows, it is way to limited. MS seems to limit customizability with each Windows release. You get the source code if you care about that. I don’t. I have only modified the source code of 2 projects, for my needs. Another benefit is that open source software will never turn into a software as a service. The downside: Linux is a second class citizen. Most hardware companies ignore it. The open source AMD drivers are way behind Windows in terms of features, however, the performance is great. nVidia puts a lot of effort into their closed source drivers. You get feature parity with Windows. Windows is the king of the desktop. MS did a great job from Win 95 until now. A lot of those old apps still runs on Win 10. Installing apps is easy. Installing drivers is easy. Linux did a lot of catching up but still has a way to go. Also, Linux needs a API. Something that has a uniform look. Right now, I can tell that some apps are written in GTK and another is written in Qt.

[@writerpatrick]

I remember installing Linux in 1998. The trick was that you needed to have a complete list of your system specs so you could enter them when asked.

[@PerryCodes]

You haven't done Linux right until you've entered monitor sync settings :)

[@3rdalbum]

I didnt start using Linux until Ubuntu in late 2005, but I remember multiple people going onto Linux forums even into the 2010s saying they'd downloaded Red Hat 5 and asking for help to install it (on modern hardware). No idea why they didnt choose something more modern, or if Red Hat had such powerful brand recognition that they thought it was the best one to start with, even if it was more Old Hat than Red Hat.

[@maxdatsun]

Around same time I also installed Ubuntu on a Compaq Presario Laptop that came originally with Windows Me.

[@Jossandoval]

I miss those purplish Netscape icons... EDIT: Holy crap! I went to see if Xeyes (10:04) was installable in my MX-Linux box, and not only it was there, but it was already installed! And it still works! I'm not moving to Wayland until they have a port of Xeyes.

[@d_sanu]

wayland eyes

[@zdrux]

I miss getting a 895-page "bible" with every piece of 90s software! So much free information!

[@dremcfleuve]

I remember my dad buying this version of Linux and spending weeks trying to make it work until he gave up. I still have the CDs and manual. Also now I need to setup my dreamcast to go online to try frogfind for fun

[@LuccianoNova]

I remember a years ago people revived phantasy star online and im pretty sure people still play

[@HeffeJeffe78]

RHL 5 was my first encounter with Linux. Installed it on a Sony VAIO and started learning from there. Ended up with me becoming a system admin for a while, and now a full-stack dev. Was a great jumping off point!

[@KimYoungUn69]

Hello world

[@garciajero]

i was a happy teenager the first time i've installed linux and use windowmaker for a long time too , loved this video

[@SianaGearz]

Hey so my school physics teacher, he got curious at a book store, bought himself a Linux SUSE 6.2 i think and... i don't know probably wrecked his system install or got frustrated, and he was giving it away in class, saying "probably the operating system of the future". I was the one to grab it. The retail price was 98DM, which comes out to 50€ or about $55. Considering it came with a 500 page excellent printed manual and StarOffice, not bad at all. I already had experience partitioning the PC and i had dual booted to OS/2 and maybe even BeOS at that time, or did BeOS and QNX come later... i forget... anyway yeah i expected that i knew what i was doing, and i was, and the supplied handbook was extremely helpful of course (i DO read the manuals), and i fell in love with it. Especially with KDE which i continued using up until the end of version 3. I did have PowerQuest Partition Magic for partition resizing and backups.

[@1337penguinman]

I remember finding a CD inside the back of a book in my local college library. I, also, accidentally wiped my entire HDD. So, yeah, it was learn or enjoy my new paperweight.

[@therealfodder]

Great video - the nostalgia was strong with this one! I'd love to see Slackware attempted (tempted to have a go myself). My first Linux experience was in early 1994 - someone slipped me a copy of a 'boot' and 'root' disk that just had 'version 0.97' written on it - it got me hooked. A couple of months later PC Plus magazine in the UK ran a cover CD that contained Slackware 2. I didn't even have a CD-ROM drive at the time - I had to get a mate to suffer through writing all the floppy images for me!

[@kaitlyn__L]

Cute icon! Is that a green Moomin?

[@therealfodder]

@@kaitlyn__L Cheers! No it was from an iPhone game I made back in 2010 called Anagramalama Fear the Llama (not on sale any more - not an ad lol!). Close up does look Moomin-esque I guess - never noticed!

[@annihilatorg]

Yeah old x86 Linux! I enjoyed Mandrake back in the day. I used to buy a bunch of Linux magazines back in the early 2000s just to get the new distro of the month on CD when I didn't have internet at my apartment. It came with StarOffice for free! Slackware's Zipslack was also something I tried and would be fun to see again. You'd think I'd be halfway competent with the GNU/Linux now 20 years later, but no!

[@forbiddenera]

I just installed xcpng yesterday and can confirm the installer looks identical 25 years later.

[@stemid85]

I used to love playing Konquest on Red Hat back in the late 90s.

[@kingedwin]

Non-Linux users: Ah, yes. The typical modern Linux experience.

[@louistournas120]

@@d4r1us_drk I would respond to that by saying that Apple is anti repair. For example, they don’t provide schematics to 3 rd party repair shops. They don’t provide the diagnostic software. For example, they make deals with chinese manufacturers for their chips. They force them to never sell a IC to anyone else. For example, Apple shops don’t have technicians anymore. If you take you Mac to them, they ship it to Apple to have it repair. I think it is about controlling access to who has the schematics and repair tools. For example, they use obsolescence tactics. Reduce the performance of old iphones and claim that it is to prolong battery life. Make the battery non user replaceable. All other manufacturers are following Apple’s business model. In some models, weld the battery to the motherboard.

[@nickwallette6201]

The only thing worse than Apple zealots is Linux zealots. And the only thing worse than Linux zealots is anti-Apple zealots. Just let people like what they like. I don't need a laundry list of reasons why you don't like something. If you don't like it, don't use it, and it should occupy 0% of your time / energy / headspace.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@d4r1us_drk The thing is, "the right thing" depends on the person. I have a foot in all three camps. I've been a PC guy forever. I use Linux for all kinds of stuff. And I've switched to Mac for my day-to-day. I don't love that they're sealed boxes, but when I buy one, I buy it as a tool, for a certain lifetime, and I buy what I'll need for that foreseeable future. It's a different strategy than when I buy PC components, which I might try to buy with a mindset of using it in a "continuous upgrade" fashion. It would be great if Apple stopped trying to lock people in, and just let the luxury of their solid hardware and solid software do the selling for them. But if buy something with the awareness of it being a consumable appliance, then it's not the "wrong" choice. That's the part I can't comprehend about people. We all have different needs, expectations, and value propositions. There's something for everyone. By all means, put pressure on Apple to stop being such pretentious a-holes about the product's lifecycle. PLEASE do. But allow people to make their purchasing decisions without assuming they were just too stupid to know what they were doing. Some of us know full well the disadvantages, and decided it was still worth it.

[@louistournas120]

@@nickwallette6201 "And the only thing worse than Linux zealots is anti-Apple zealots." ==I don't know any Apple zeolots but I have encountered Linux zeolots since I am into Linux now. Previous to that, I have been a Windows user since Win 3.1. It is rather unpleasant the attitude they have. If you mention a problem, they reply with it is fine, it works for me. It’s like other people, newcommers are irrelevant. They reply with: Why make a GUI version when there is a CLI, making a GUI is more work, making a tutorial that says to use the CLI is easier since the CLI is the same for all Linux (This isn't even true all the time), why doesn’t nVidia make their drivers open sourced (Dude, look at Windows. All the drivers are closed source and they work fine. This is because there is a DDK available.) All these problems are tied together. Manufacturers don’t want to open source their drivers. Driver’s contain their IP. You can’t force them to open source. Software vendors are not going to open source either: Adobe Microsoft, Corel, Inprise and whoever is left these days. Name me a software vendor (Not OS vendor) that makes the big bucks by open sourcing their products. Look at all the AAA games. All of them are closed source. People regard Linux as a OS for gurus. Probably online tutorials and the Linux zealots give that impression. Gamers: These are a portion of the population that probably knows how to install Windows. Why would they come over to Linux if the video drivers are incomplete or buggy or the game doesn’t run well. When your userbase is low, bugs have less chance of being discovered. When you userbase is low, your programmer base is low. Not enough programmers available to deal with the hard bugs. Game makers are aware that releasing a Linux native EXE for Linux is a headache. Too many bug reports and small userbase.

[@Blessed2bFresh]

😂😂 yep

[@Lagrange_Point_6]

Man, I hadn't seen xSnow running for YEARS! Installed it while watching the vid, of course. Really good fun. Takes me back. You can really crank all of the settings to the max on a modern machine with NVidia graphics.

[@MikeWood]

I just did the same. :)

[@garvintimmann]

i tried running on the current Sparkylinux xsnow and xpenguins. they are in synaptic package manager but do not work on my LXQt window manager

[@nickwallette6201]

Just last year, I dusted off a Windows 95 app called "Twinkle Bulbs" -- which makes your Win 95 desktop all festive for the holiday season. It asked me to register, so I found the author's new website and contacted them to do so. I never heard back. :-(

[@livefreeprintguns]

My first ever distro was Red Hat 4.2 but quickly moved onto Slackware 3.6 as for some reason pppconfig under Slackware worked flawlessly for configuring dialup where as under Red Hat I was never able to get my modem to initialize correctly. Memories!

[@MendenLama]

I think this is a reseller's box set. The original ones were black with a stylized figure wearing a red hat, no tux. I still have an original RH 5.2 box set for the Alpha platform lying around here, probably from 1998 or so. It must have been around 1995/96 that I began using Red Hat after trying Slackware and Suse Linux. It can be that I have some old Suse cd caddies lying around in a dusty part of my shelves. The original boxes vanished mysteriously, I guess.

[@StevenLynn]

Oh the flash backs. Those were the days. I wonder if I still have my RedHat 5.0 release. Probably in one of the bins that got moved around as I and is now in my garage.

[@der.Schtefan]

OMG. I am getting waves of melancholia and sitting here with tears in my eyes. Back in the day I was already at engineering school, with a 300 kbit/s cable modem at home, often skipping engineering classes to learn more by just being online and hacking my machine on Linux. And heavens, all that erotica picture downloading and categorization software I wrote back then in Motif, TCL/TK, and later Qt

[@megan_alnico]

Mandrake Linux was my go to back in the day. Yes OpenStep, and Afterstep were fancy looking but KDE really helped me ease into Linux. Also Enlightenment was the l33t window manager of the day.

[@LeslieLanagan]

I am a woman in tech, and having someone named Megan make that comment absolutely made my day. You're an OG like me and we've been in the trenches.

[@nalinux]

Enlightenment was so nice ...

[@aaronperl]

Enlightenment was such a promising project. If only they had stopped rewriting it every other week they might have released something great ... did they ever release anything past 0.16? 😆

[@ellenorbjornsdottir1166]

@aaronperl enlightenment still exists & still sucks (I tried it on a tablet)

[@panopolis8051]

@@aaronperl yes, not sure what version they are up to now but I remember 0.17 took many years to release. Enlightenment 0.16 was amazing at the time though, fast and beautiful

[@EnronnSierra]

KZbins algorithm must have told you to make this because I have been searching for vintage Linux reviews and installs for weeks now. I am thinking of picking up an IBM Aptiva and getting a 14 inch CRT so I can play with old Linux myself. Installing in a VM is next to impossible.

[@PecorinoRomano]

I remember back in ‘98 when Linux was in every PC Magazine’s CD-Rom together with a bunch of shareware software and demo for windows… glorious times

[@Darxide23]

I also had a copy of SUSE from a Hastings bookstore as my first dive into Linux in about 1999. No idea what version it was, though. It came as a book on SUSE Linux, but came with a "free" copy of SUSE inside, which I think is why the bookstores were selling it. Although Hastings did have a software section, so who knows.

[@anon_y_mousse]

I miss Hastings. So many movies and video games rented there and books bought, and they had better prices than every other single focus store that could call itself a competitor.

[@TheSulross]

of course 90s Linux was all about computing in a world where dirth of device driver support. And before Linux dynamically loadable modules, device drivers had. to be compiled into the kernel. What really stood out, though, in 90s Linux computing were the joys of getting X-Windows to do a decent job of working with one's display driver. Besides driver support for the graphics card itself (unless one were content with some vanilla super VGA level of capability) was the careful configuration of X11, which entailed using tools such as XF86Setup and xf86config. I have a 464 page book that is a deep dive into XFree86 - an X11 implementation. And also have the three volume programmer's guides to X11 at the techinical level of implementation. Used those to create a Linux service that made it possible for two people to remotely share the same desktop session. (Citrix supported that capability but it was misding from X11.)

[@Michirin9801]

Wow, like, my dad just opened a box he hadn't opened in years the other day, that he'd forgotten what was inside, and amongst other physical copies of OSes and other computery and electronic things there was a complete-in-box physical copy of Red Hat Linux in there that he bought back in the 90s! He offered it to me, but I don't have what to install it on or frankly the space for much of anything else in my room right now, otherwise I might just have taken it!

[@JanuszKrysztofiak]

Ah, RedHat 5.2 was my first Linux distro. These were days before Xorg autoconfiguration, well, before Xorg itself (it was XFree86). X config file was first generated by a script asking strange questions such as one's video card RAMDAC, etc. - I was unlucky to have a simple and exotic video card, so getting X to run was a lot of trial and error. Another challenge of the time was Internet access via dial-up modems. The problem was many modems were not full-hardware modems (all it took was to issue proper AT&T commands), but so-called "winmodems" that off-loaded part of their job to the CPU, thus requiring a dedicated driver to work (in most cases Windows-only). The desktop experience was rough; there were no quality-of-life Free Desktop standards in place yet. Linux desktop has gone a long way, and I find it more pleasant to work with than Windows (Windows has improved in some areas and receded in others lately).

[@Gummybeer]

This was my first linux as well, it came free with a magazine with WordPerfect on a seperate CD. I tried to dual boot as well, but there were not much help when all you got was an empty screen with the letters "LILO" on it, I had no idea at the time that you had to press [TAB] to show boot options. Good times, built character!

[@physalis17]

A GANOO SLUSH LOONIX Video?! 👀🐧

[@Clubtender]

This brings back some memories. I got this exact Red Hat 5.2 package that you are showing and a Mandrake that came in a "Linux for Dummies" book at the same time in the late 90's.

[@Biaanca5036]

Y'know what I really miss? Splash Screen logins that were slow enough to see happen. Some of the splash screen loading artworks were so cool looking

[@suspectfox]

I remember buying and installing Mandrake Linux in the late 90s, which was based on Red Hat and used K desktop. Would love to see that running again.

[@WhatTheFlash-cx6ox]

My first Linux was Mandrake, I think the actual first version under this brand, around ‘98 I was at junior college, doing a computer course, and although I didn’t get exposed to Linux on that course, I think it was the first time I basically got bored with looking at windows and DOS and yearned for something else. Couldn’t afford a Mac, so I tried Linux. It was an absolute nightmare! Took ages to get basic things working, including the internet connection. I have memories of scribbling down errors on a night, waiting until college the next day and then looking for answers, more waiting until I got back home at the end of the day to see if my research had paid off. Arrgghh, I still recall the frustration, and I’d also completely wiped my disk at the time, so no fall back OS. Eventually gave up and went back to windows, where I stayed until I was in university and was exposed to Solaris for the first time, which thoroughly reignited my love for posix operating systems. Now I’m mostly a macOS guy, but I use Linux a few times a week and I no longer have a dislike for windows, they all have a place.

[@snapverse]

Finding drivers for any device on any Linux distro (enterprise or not) was such a pain back then.

[@MichaelBright3000]

Still have Slackware, Redhat and SuSe in CD cases from that era along with Windows NT, OS/2, SCO Unix and Netware. The things we had to know to get an OS installed back then was just crazy. IRQs, memory, disk cylinders and blocks.

[@gorilladev]

taking back man, taking back where i had no idea what i was doing. and everything was new

[@SteveM0732]

I had that boxed set back in the day. If it wasn't my first Linux experience then it was probably the second. I think the book was a big draw for me until I started to read it and realized it wasn't very good. From there I think I got the "Linux for Dummies" book which was actually written in a way to help you learn. Regardless, it seemed like everyone was using Red Hat back then. I tried Mandriva next, which was a little more beginner friendly. But after I lost a battle with RPM dependencies I discovered a boxed copy of Debian 2.1 that came with Myth II and I have been Debian, Ubuntu, and/or Pop ever since.

[@DV-ml4fm]

Compusa and other big name computer stores sold box sets of linux and BSDs. As well as books and magazines about linux. The good ol' days.

[@aaronperl]

I also installed Linux for the first time in 1998, also on my frankenstein Pentium 200 MMX. It had been a 486/66 from 1993, but I had recently had an opportunity to upgrade it to a Pentium (with a straight-swap of the 30-pin SIMMs to 72-pin DIMMs, so I was able to afford to keep all 32 MB of RAM). I had to upgrade the video card, since the one in the 486 was a VESA Local Bus ATI mach32. I replaced it with the Matrox Millennium II, which I later discovered was a great choice, since there was a dedicated X driver for it. I installed Slackware 3.4 that my roommate had downloaded over his work term (since he had highspeed internet access at work, it still wasn't widely available yet. And the place I was working still shared a dial-up connection for the small office). I installed it because I didn't want to fight for a spot in the UNIX lab to do my CS assignments. It turned out to be the perfect OS choice, because the language/compiler we were using did not work with the unstable version of libC that Red Hat (and others, pretty much all distributions except Slackware and probably Debian) we using. Distributions were incompatible with each other at the time, even if they used the same package manager, because they all used slightly different versions of libC 2.0, which was the development branch (and included a stern warning NOT to base your distribution on it). Red Hat has left a bad taste in my mouth ever since then, because of that. I immediately fell in love with Linux. This is how a computer was _supposed to work_. 25 years later, I still use Linux as my primary OS, although I did eventually move on from Slackware.

[@anon_y_mousse]

Cool story. My brother had high speed internet at his apartment back then and I downloaded Slackware that way. I actually still use it to this day and just yesterday finally upgraded for the first time in 2 and a half years to 15.

[@billv4987]

I ran the non-deluxe version of this in 1998. I had forgotten about the default gui with the Start button as I switched to Afterstep almost immediately.

[@neilmartin83]

I had my first Linux experience with RH 5.2 which came with a magazine back in 1998! Had to learn how to install the graphics drivers for a horrid SiS 5598 chip after installing the distro itself… what fun… 😂

[@SenorJohnMega]

That was my first linux distro, I installed it on a Compaq Presario 2266. It had a cryix processor which made it quite a pain. I had to get a dedicated modem PCI card because the onboard one was a winmodem and wouldn't work at all. I was rockin FVWM95. Man, right in the memberberries. Awesome video!

[@jasonblalock4429]

12:30 I ran LiteStep on a couple Windows machines around this time and I loved it so much. It was particularly funny whenever anyone tried to use my computer, and had no idea what to make of the GUI.

[@anon_y_mousse]

Those were fun times. I ran that on my Win98 box for a time before I went Linux only. I've been told that Windows' interface is still so garbage that people would love to replace it. Yet it's less customizable now than it was back then.

[@sandmanxo]

Good to see afterstep again. I ran it on Debian back around 1998-2000 timeframe as my primary OS and manager. I finally went back to windows once 2000 was released I no longer used Linux as my primary desktop. I totally forgot about afterstep and how.muxh I liked it back then.

[@captjc]

5:22 I bought this same box set at a flea market back in ~1999-2000ish when I was new to computers. I had to RTFM to install it on an old 486 Packard Bell. Sadly, I gave up when I could never get it to properly configure X11. It wasn't until a few years later with Red Hat 9, also bought as a boxed copy, that I could get everything to properly install on my then Laptop.

[@kumarp3074]

My first Linux PC was when I just graduated college and built a machine with Red Hat 6 installed on it. It started me on the path of using Linux as my primary OS.

[@perinoid]

My first Linux install was from floppies! It was Slackware with a 1.2.x kernel. Good old times at the university...

[@5argetech56]

My first experience of Linux was in 1999 *"Corel LinuxOS"* Boxed with an inflatable Penguin in the box! Such memories.

[@flekkzo]

Well that’s a trip down memory lane. Used to run these things back in the day. Had that exact model monitor too! I really would love a computer like this, but for a slightly different reason. It’s so I can connect to all the various retro things that a modern computer normally can’t. Gives me drives, serial ports, etc! I want to boot that IIGs of mine via the modem port :) So I’d love to see this monster machine talk to the rest of your local menagerie. Wouldn’t that be cool? Also BSD :)

[@ffwast]

You might be interested in industrial motherboards. They put all kinds of legacy ports on those to keep old machines running.

[@alfredklek]

I appreciate the computer you used in this video. My first Linux box (Debian 2.2) was even more jank. AT case with no front or side panels, power switch flopping in the breeze and a 5 1/4 floppy that I got for free but never used for anything. My 19 year old self thought that aesthetic was really cool. I know I was influenced by depictions of computers in "Pi: Faith in Chaos" and Lain but I think that the idea of a computer hacker also using hacked up junk hardware was pretty pervasive at the time.

[@therealjpster]

I still have my Caldera OpenLinux 1.2 install CD. Every time I installed it I had to recompile my kernel to add the OSS drivers for my ISA sound card. I recall it came with a trial version of the Looking Glass desktop. Worth checking out!

[@MelKjeller]

Fantastic video, my first Linux was Mandrake Move from the September 2004 issue of PCPlus (Issue 220). My first installed Linux was SUSE 9.3 from PCPro July 2005. Not unlike yourself, I didn't know how to dual-boot so I lost my Windows install. But it was a fun experience all in! As an aside, any sections of this video (including the sponsor section) where you're talking there's a low electrical buzz/hum on the audio track throughout. Not sure if it's a faulty mic or some kind of environmental interference.

[@haplozetetic9519]

I was a little surprised to see all the comments so similar to my own experience. This was the first distro I used when learning Linux, except that it was 5.0 or 5.1. I would have been lost without the included book to get things working. I tried various window managers including Afterstep, Windowmaker, KDE, and various others before settling on Icewm for the long haul. After some distro hopping, I settled on Mint for a long time, but currently run Debian with Openbox. It feels like home.

[@tenfourproductionsllc]

Thanks for the flashback. Also makes me appreciate what Ubuntu did by making installation of linux so much easy for the common folk like me.

[@xXTheoLinuxXx]

I remember that I had an issue with the soundcard too back in the day (SUSE). I had to edit a config file manually and it was solved.

[@dsuess]

Oh man, this too was my first experience with Linux (give or take a RH version). Still got the now-faded Red Hat stickers that came with it

[@alexandrecouture2462]

Fun video! I'd like to see Puppy Linux 2.14

[@GaugePlays1980]

Ahh this brings back memories. I bought a copy of 5.2 packaged in a shareware jewel case for $5. My 17 year old self fighting with my old 486 with 16MB ram, and after 2 days, actually seeing the xwindows desktop.

[@nfinzer22]

My first Linux install was RH 5.2. Previously I had used shell accounts but I finally dual booted my win98 box. I was about 13 or 14.

[@wjckc79]

My first experience with Linux was in 1996 with Slackware on a 486 DX50. I had just put together a new Windows 95 system. Probably Cyrix based. made the floppy disks myself. What times. Never did get X to start. Not until Mandrake. Ahh Winmodems. Those really truly were the days.

[@ratinthecat]

My first Linux experience was also Red Hat 5 from a big thick book purchased from Barnes and Nobles.

[@macsnafu]

Oh hey, that looks familiar! I don't remember the exact version number, but I bought a copy of Red Hat Linux at Wal-Mart and tried it out. It was my first encounter with Linux.

[@bremershaper]

I am running X since KDE 1.0 beta. It came on a cd disk with a German PC Magazine. The distro was a SuSe. You had to know the RAMDAC for installation. I had a friend who knew where to find this. And in those days I thought a zombie is a movie character 🙂but I learned quickly.

[@der.Schtefan]

Uhm, actually, I got 300 kbit/s cable Internet access in 1997, and regularly installed Linux via the network (i.e. The Internet). Booting from a floppy, using the local university as mirror. Hand picking all packages. At one point, the installer's DHCP stopped working, so I memorixed my static IP, DNS severs, etc to this day! 😂 I think it was SuSE, as this was very popular in German speaking countries of the time.

[@JapanPop]

I installed Slackware 2.0 on an old 486dx-33 that I cobbled together from a recycler in 1995. It was fun! Couldn’t even drive x windows on that graphics card. Good memories.

[@aaron96244]

This bring back memories installing the CDRom from Linux for Dummies 20-some years ago.

[@kylek6922]

Great times,Still got my old CaseLogic 200+ somewhere with a bunch of old Windows, Mac OS & Linux install discs and a couple I made and burned with multiple OS installers and a bunch of utilities like antivirus scanners and partition tools etc.

[@snarfusmaximus]

This brings back a lot of memories. RedHat 5.2 was the first distro I tried because it was available as a magazine cover disk. I put it on a PC witha 486DX2-66 and 16M of RAM and it actually ran pretty well. It kickstarted my hobby of repurposing old machines with Unix-like operating systems. I recently scored another 486DX2-66 machine, as my old one is long gone, and plan to set it up as a reminder of where I began.

[@blokkadeleider]

That brings back some memories. My first steps Linux were on Slackware 3.0. Used Slackware, Gentoo and currently Ubuntu Studio on my linux workstation. I'll admit that most computertime these days is on my Mac Studio. But yes, configuring X, I loved Afterstep back then, the DNS that would never automatically load after install...

[@HeadsetGuy]

Bless you for using a Compudyne mouse.

[@garvintimmann]

i forgot how noisy computers were then

[@retropuffer2986]

Well that brings back some memories. Good 'ol Redhat! ☺

[@boneske]

My first experience with Linux was with SuSE Linux 6.4 back in 1999. I believe I bought my copy at CompUSA for $50. I installed it on a 486sx2 Packard Bell. It took my two weeks to figure out how to get X configured.

[@kbm2055]

I remember purchasing boxed Caldera Linux set and installing it on an HP computer. I couldn't get X configured on the integrated graphics so I ended up buying a real cheap video card and that did the trick.

[@darthkielbasa]

I got a copy of Linux in a magazine in the 90’s. I tried to install it on windows not being fully aware of what exactly it was. I knew the kids in IRC were using bitchx and tear dropping me and I wanted to partake. Also reminds me of the lack of drivers for my modem at the time. Oh the memories!

[@bilko991]

Oh this brings back some memories! I first installed and used Linux in 1998, Red Hat Linux funnily enough. It was quite the experience! The installation went surprisingly well and I had no problems dual booting with win98. I used it for about two years before something went wrong X windows and it just stopped working entirely, I never did fix it or figure out what happended there. Those two years were a lot of fun!

[@keylowmike85]

I had one of those hodge podge PC towers but my introduction to Linux was Red Hat 7.3. A copy of it came with my Linux textbook in college. Good times.

[@37Kilo2]

Red Hat was my first experience with Linux in 99/2000. It frustrated me so badly that I avoided Linux for another 10+ years.

[@joelg6740]

Reminds me of messing with Red Hat 9 in my childhood bedroom surrounded in pieced together machines at just 9 years old. I know I tried many different distro around that time but RH 9 I clearly remember. Been using *nix for everything since.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

🎵It's all about the Pentiums🎵

[@MediocreTCG]

Wanna be hackers?

[@sneekeruk]

I remember buying a 2 cd set of Slackware 3.0 back in the mid 90's, from memory getting xwindows working on my 486 was near impossible, then used a few flavours over the years. My first job after dropping out of uni was using an ICL DRS6000 mini which was upgraded to a Fujitsu Dual pentium pro with 1gb of ram, which was a lot in 1998. The ICL used their own unix, but the ppro ran Sco Unix.

[@paul_boddie]

That ICL DRS 6000 was an interesting beast: SPARC-based and running ICL's own Unix implementation, DRS/NX, apparently.

[@tbimages38345]

Wow! I had a copy of Redhat 5.1 that I found at a store in a local mall back around 98 or 99. I installed it on a self built 466 mHz Intel Celeron (yeah scary) with 128MB of RAM, 24x CD-ROM, and a US Robotics v.90 modem. That was a fun experiment. I had dual hard drives, one was Win98SE and the other was the Redhat installation. Fun times!

[@Longlius]

A few years after this, I started using Linux via Fedora Core 1 and ended up daily-driving it (except for booting into Windows for games) because IRC clients on Linux were light-years ahead of what you could get on Windows. Biggest issue in this period would have been the proliferation of winmodems making it impossible to use dial-up internet on most OEM PCs since they simply did not work under Linux. There were a few grey-area paid drivers like Linuxant but you really needed a proper modem or ethernet to use Linux effectively. After the winmodem linux kerfuffle, we immediately transitioned to the wifi-on-linux kerfuffle which wasn't as bad since you had ndiswrapper (still a pain in the ass though). I remember thinking how revolutionary it was when I'd boot up linux livecds starting in the late 2000s and find wifi working out of the box.

[@JVHShack]

There was a box copy of RedHat Linux 5.0 that included DOOM. I have yet to see that running.

[@pinkflamingo_2080]

Just finding your channel but I have to say that I really enjoy your enthusiasm. I have a loose interest in vintage computers and other technology and I have consumed content from a wide array of tech youtubers. I’ll definitely be hanging around here for more!

[@davidsmith9063]

I started my Linux journey from a barnes and noble SuSE box also!! what a trip!!! 🤓

[@notNajimi]

Being someone that got into Linux a good few hardware generations after this, the idea of paying anything for Linux let alone for a boxed copy is wild

[@dutchcanuck7550]

My first Linux distro was Slackware in the mid '90s. Someone in our office spent 5 days downloading god knows how many tarballs over a dial-up and transferring the boot/install images to actual floppies using an OS/2 port of dd. Installing was not what I would call user-friendly, but we used it for a few years as a CVS server until replacing it with Debian around 1998. Speaking of which, an early Debian release would also be "fun" (for certain highly-specific definitions of "fun"). Yggdrasil would also be a "fun" challenge, if you have any 486 machines kicking around.

[@mancomecanico]

I still remember botching my family PC when I was like 10 or so. I tried installing red hat and the installer was in english, language I was just starting to learn. Needless to say I messed up big time and got into a lot of troubles for it

[@athstreamsandmore]

I got started with Mandrake in a big box set! Man, times have changed. Thanks for a trip down memory lane.

[@00Klingon]

Would be kind of fun to see you try an even earlier version of Linux from around 1993-1994, back when people had to make the kernel from source code on an old 486.

[@marcelocorrea]

It takes me back when, while installing Red Hat, I fried a monitor because I had switched hsync and vsync and did something weird with the refresh rate. But instead of fuming with frustration, that episode made me eager to learn more about hardware, and then everything about computers, and to get a bachelors in computer science. Thank you for this video!

[@angieandretti]

My first Linux experience was also with Red Hat, maybe version 6.0 IIRC - and it was a single CD bundled into the back of an enormous book sold at the local book store. I wonder if book stores were a common pathway for early adopters to discover it. I was still a teen back then, without Internet access, so I had to find something I could buy in a physical store - and apparently the distribution model was to bundle "free" software with an enormous expensive book (it was marked originally $50 but I think I paid less than $10.)

[@sandrodellisanti1139]

wow, this reminds me of my very first Linux Installation in late 1998 Debian, before that i used BeOS 3.2,:so i started to install Debian as an absolute Beginner, to setup my old monitor was horrible, something like xf86config, so i did it, a resolution of 800x600px.. my first windowmanager was windowmaker, which i really liked, later enlightennent and KDE.. i've started my first creation for a desktoo Wallpaper with exactly this early Version of the Gimp ❤️ now in 2023 i'm using Debian Linux 12 with KDE Plasma 5 and have some new Desktop Wallpaper out (Amiga boing Ball and Others), so many greetings from Brunswick in Germany and please stay safe 🙃

[@danw1955]

I first installed RH 5.2 on an old P-166 Packard Bell with 64 mb. RAM and a 4 gb.. hard drive (mainly out of desperation with Win 95 crashing twice a week). The learning curve was crazy, but eventually I got pretty proficient with command line stuff, and later on, actually got a working GUI desktop. It was actually pretty impressive how well Redhat ran on that old box, and I would use it mainly for downloading large files and .iso's from AOL, and some local BBS's, since it wouldn't run out of memory and crash after 12 hours of continuous downloading on a 56k modem connection.😄 Ah, the good old days...

[@VulcanSphere]

Historical note: Macmillan Digital Publishing (publisher of this particular Red Hat Linux book and package, judging from the packaging this was released during Simon & Schuster/Viacom ownership) was later acquired by Pearson in mid-1998. Pearson absorbed what left of MDP into Sams/Que Publishing (and later sold the Macmillan trademark to the formerly affiliated British publisher of the same name in 2001, the British Macmillan Publishers later renamed its American subsidiary with the acquired trademark in 2007). And nowadays, Pearson still has operation in Indianapolis for its computing and technical publishing division (inherited from Sams Publishing, Sams was acquired by S&S, S&S placed Sams and its whole educational and reference division into Macmillan (USA) after 1994, Macmillan (USA) was later acquired by Pearson. Pearson only retained the educational publishing (Allyn & Bacon, Prentice Hall) and computing reference parts (Brady(games), Que, Sams) of Macmillan (USA) and sold the rest of acquired S&S assets (general reference, library reference, and miscellaneous divisions) to various companies in 1999).