Hi there,

Just scanned the first linux box CD set I bought, Infomagic April 1997...

http://bugsplatter.mine.nu/image/infomagic-front.jpg
http://bugsplatter.mine.nu/image/infomagic-back.jpg

Wanted to try Slackware back then as it had later kernel, but the install
required a heap of floppies, so I started with RedHat instead. Stayed with
RedHat through version 6.2 which I kept for a while, ignoring 7, 8, and
disappointed with RH9 I surveyed available distros and switched to Slackware
at version 9.0 in 2004. Still with Slackware-11.0 on older hardware and
Slackware-12.1 on a newer box.

When did you start using linux?
How did you get hold of your first distro?
Were you a refugee from another distro?

Cheers,
Grant.

Hallo, Grant,

Du meintest am 04.07.08:

> When did you start using linux?

Fall 1995, with XLinux (UMSdos, looked like slackware/zipslack)

> How did you get hold of your first distro?

CD from a computer magazine

> Were you a refugee from another distro?

I had tried many other distributions (most of them diskette versions):
no one did run.
System: Laptop Olivetti Philos 33 (?); 386SX, 16 MHz (?), 4 MB RAM.

Viele Gruesse
Helmut

"Ubuntu" - an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".

Grant wrote:
> When did you start using linux?

1999.

> How did you get hold of your first distro?

i bought a book about redhat (don't remember which version) that came with
a cd. i stayed with redhat for about a day, then i went and bought the suse
boxed set. 6.1 i think.

> Were you a refugee from another distro?

well, if you're talking about the first distro, that seems quite unlikely,
right? ;-)

but as for slackware, i got my first slack cd in sept. 2001. suse was fine,
but i wanted to dig a little deeper into the system. i wasn't fleeing suse,
just wanted something new.

i once had a brief stint with debian, which ended when i tried to install
mutt on an X-less box. mutt (you know, a CONSOLE MUA) apparently depended
indirectly on X... nowadays i wouldn't notice such a thing anymore, because
my days on the linux console have long gone. i still use mutt (and slrn and
emacs) and do most of my file managing in bash, but always in X.

i also have zenwalk on a spare laptop i rarely use. zenwalk is fine,
because it's close enough to slackware not to get in my way. but there's no
compelling reason to switch.


--
Joost Kremers joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

On 04 Jul 2008 13:50:00 +0200, helmut@hullen.de (Helmut Hullen) wrote:

>Hallo, Grant,
>
>Du meintest am 04.07.08:
>
>> When did you start using linux?
>
>Fall 1995, with XLinux (UMSdos, looked like slackware/zipslack)
>
>> How did you get hold of your first distro?
>
>CD from a computer magazine
>
>> Were you a refugee from another distro?
>
>I had tried many other distributions (most of them diskette versions):
>no one did run.
>System: Laptop Olivetti Philos 33 (?); 386SX, 16 MHz (?), 4 MB RAM.

I didn't mention hardware :) Back then I had a '386DX + '387 system with
all of 8MB RAM.

Grant.
--
http://bugsplatter.mine.nu/

On 4 Jul 2008 12:01:45 GMT, Joost Kremers <joostkremers@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Grant wrote:
>> When did you start using linux?
>
>1999.
>
>> How did you get hold of your first distro?
>
>i bought a book about redhat (don't remember which version) that came with
>a cd. i stayed with redhat for about a day, then i went and bought the suse
>boxed set. 6.1 i think.
>
>> Were you a refugee from another distro?
>
>well, if you're talking about the first distro, that seems quite unlikely,
>right? ;-)

I'm sorry, what I meant to ask was did you come to slackware as a refugee
from another distro, like I did from redhat-6.2 after refusing to update to
7.x or 8.x and rejecting rh9 after a short trial ;)
....
>i also have zenwalk on a spare laptop i rarely use. zenwalk is fine,
>because it's close enough to slackware not to get in my way. but there's no
>compelling reason to switch.

That's one I've not tried, it's based on slackware?

Grant.
--
http://bugsplatter.mine.nu/

Grant <g_r_a_n_t_@dodo.com.au> wrote:
> When did you start using linux?

1994 (Slackware 1.1.2 or something like it) on a 486dx2/66
(8 MB RAM, 540 MB disk and ATI Mach32 display adaptor).
I still got that PC, by the way, but now it's got a whopping
16 MB of RAM and is running Slackware 4.0 <grin>

> How did you get hold of your first distro?

Downloaded from the Internet en put onto a set of floppies.

> Were you a refugee from another distro?

Yes and no.
NOT from a Linux distribution, but we were working at the time on
HP workstations (9000/700), using HP-UX (a System-V Unix).
And we wanted to use the PC's too in a comparable environment.
As PC's got faster they gradually took over from the (much more
expensive) HP's.
--
************************************************** *****************
** Eef Hartman, Delft University of Technology, dept. SSC/ICT **
** e-mail: E.J.M.Hartman@tudelft.nl, fax: +31-15-278 7295 **
** snail-mail: P.O. Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands **
************************************************** *****************

Grant <g_r_a_n_t_@dodo.com.au> writes:

> When did you start using linux?

1997 I think.



> How did you get hold of your first distro?

Redhat 5.2 cd with the book I was learning from.


> Were you a refugee from another distro?

Abandoned RH, tried Mandrake and then Debian for a couple of years, hit
Slackware at 8 - I think. Currently have a mixture of Slackware 12.1 and
FreeBSD machines.

atb


Glyn
--
RTFM http://www.tldp.org/index.html
GAFC http://slackbook.org/ The Official Source :-)
STFW http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...inux.slackware
JFGI http://jfgi.us/

Grant <g_r_a_n_t_@dodo.com.au> wrote:

> When did you start using linux?

1995/1996

I think it was late 1995, and by mid 1996 I was using Linux exclusively
at home. By mid 1997 I started a (then new) job working with Unix
systems exclusively, and my workstation was running NetBSD.

> How did you get hold of your first distro?

I purchased a boxed set that included the InfoMagic CD set with Matt
Welsh's Running Linux book.

> Were you a refugee from another distro?

I started with Slackware because I had friends who were already using it
and I knew I could turn to them for help if I blew anything up, (which I
did, of course).

I was on a 33MHz 486DX system with (probably) 8MB RAM, maybe 4MB, (but
that ultimately got increased to 32MB at some point during the system's
lifetime), with 2 120MB hard drives. That was when I learned I needed
to choose between being able to compile a customized kernel or have
Emacs on my system. I have to admit I don't miss Emacs.

That system still exists in some mutation (with a replacement hard disk)
as my Internet gateway system at home. I've long been meaning to replace
it with a newer system I setup for that task, but haven't actually taken
the time to complete the swap.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sylvain Robitaille syl@alcor.concordia.ca

Network and Systems analyst Concordia University
Instructional & Information Technology Montreal, Quebec, Canada
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sylvain Robitaille wrote:
> I have to admit I don't miss Emacs.

trust me, you do. you just don't know it.

joost (emacs evangelist)


--
Joost Kremers joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

Grant wrote:
> I'm sorry, what I meant to ask was did you come to slackware as a refugee
> from another distro,

yeah, i suspected as much. ;-)

[zenwalk]
> That's one I've not tried, it's based on slackware?

yeah, and it essentially just adds a few config utilities such as a panel
to configure things like network, keyboard, and such, and a graphical
package manager, which does dependency checking, but otherwise works with
the normal slackware package format. IIUC it also follows slackware
releases, so it's not developing further and further away from slack.

OTOH it has a strict philosophy of providing one tool for each job, at
least by default. so the standard graphical environment is Xfce, there's no
emacs, no mutt, that sort of thing. (though other apps can often be
installed through netpkg, and you won't destroy your install if you compile
from source.)


--
Joost Kremers joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)