I didn't have internet access, except for a 56 kB/s modem at school, to which I could use every 1-2 weeks for a few hours.
Good memories. I started using Linux in 1994 when I was 12 (first attempt was in 1993, but our computer only had 2MB RAM then). Then started the tug of war with my younger brother how much of our 40MB hard drive could used for Linux and how much for DOS + games.
We only got 56k6 in 1999 or so and DSL in 2004 or so. I first got Linux distributions on CD-ROMs distributed through magazines (lucky to get a CD-ROM drive in 1993) and later through Wallnut Creek or Infomagic CD-ROMs. Learned through an early Dutch Linux book that I found and by reading through all the HOWTOs.
In 1998 a friend and I had a small business of ordering Cheapbytes CD-ROMs from the US and relabeling them and then selling them for much more locally. His parents had a credit card and they had internet at home, so we could do business :). Through some miracle (choosing free Tripod hosting), our website is still online in its 1998 glory, including screenshots:
The last straw for me was when they installed systemd everywhere instead of System-V init or BSD-style init.
I disagree with the conservatism. A lot of new Linux developments are really exciting, e.g. NixOS has felt like a paradigm shift and part of it is made nicer by modern init.
> In 1998 a friend and I had a small business of ordering Cheapbytes CD-ROMs from the US and relabeling them and then selling them for much more locally.
I ordered a few discs from cheapbytes in the US because it beat downloading ISOs on dial up...
Usually I'd just get the install CDs and then I'd rely on the package managers to upgrade to the next release, even though it took a long time. So I think I only ordered 2 discs from there.
But I wonder if you had access to a CD burner? They were common by 1998, you could have easily ordered 1 copy on cheapbytes and burned your own copies, might have saved you some international shipping.
But I wonder if you had access to a CD burner? They were common by 1998, you could have easily ordered 1 copy on cheapbytes and burned your own copies, might have saved you some international shipping.
Not sure when we got our first CD burner, but when we had this small Linux CD business in 1997-1998, they certainly weren't common where I lived. IIRC it started around the same time (probably got our first in 98 or 99). But at the beginning 'pressed' CDs were cheaper than CD-Rs and people who bought them also preferred purchasing 'real' CDs (CD-Rs had a reputation in the beginning of not being very reliable).
I gave Linux on the desktop a good shake once, back in 1994. I installed Debian from a dev branch that came on 15 floppies. I was running it on an AMD 5x86 160 with 24MB RAM and had a lovely 17-inch (unusual for the time) trinitron display from Nokia. I used it for about 4 months, then went back to Windows 95.
An interesting hitch was that I needed to purchase a commercial X-Window system to get color from my Tseng ET-4000/W32p graphics board. XFree86 would not hit the modes I wanted. It cost $99. Here is the manual:
Good memories. I started using Linux in 1994 when I was 12 (first attempt was in 1993, but our computer only had 2MB RAM then). Then started the tug of war with my younger brother how much of our 40MB hard drive could used for Linux and how much for DOS + games.
We only got 56k6 in 1999 or so and DSL in 2004 or so. I first got Linux distributions on CD-ROMs distributed through magazines (lucky to get a CD-ROM drive in 1993) and later through Wallnut Creek or Infomagic CD-ROMs. Learned through an early Dutch Linux book that I found and by reading through all the HOWTOs.
In 1998 a friend and I had a small business of ordering Cheapbytes CD-ROMs from the US and relabeling them and then selling them for much more locally. His parents had a credit card and they had internet at home, so we could do business :). Through some miracle (choosing free Tripod hosting), our website is still online in its 1998 glory, including screenshots:
https://linuxlop.tripod.com
The last straw for me was when they installed systemd everywhere instead of System-V init or BSD-style init.
I disagree with the conservatism. A lot of new Linux developments are really exciting, e.g. NixOS has felt like a paradigm shift and part of it is made nicer by modern init.