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5mo ago

Installing Linux Like It's 1999

makertube.net Installing Linux Like It's 1999

https://www.pcbway.com - PCB fabrication, assembly, 3D printing, CNC machining & more! Red Hat Linux 6.1 was released in October 1999, 25 years ago this month! So let's install it out on period...

What has your experience with Linux been like so far? How long has been your Linux journey? Mine began while I was studying computer science, and I've been in love with Linux since.

Linux @programming.dev

Blaze @lemmy.zip

4mo ago

Installing Linux Like It's 1999

makertube.net /w/5P3xwrFnkZRwexkN3akLrM

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40 comments

I just picked these up today
2005 here I come
- 😂😂😂

I bought a copy of Corel Linux in 2001 at a USAF base exchange because I was a broke airman and was building my first homebuilt PC and didn't want to shell out money for Windows, and I didn't have Internet to pirate it in the dorms (this was the days of no wifi and pay as you go Internet cafes). I thought it'd be JUST like Windows, and I could get shit done, and the differences were just like those between Mac/PC. Just a different interface.
Boy was I wrong. It sucked balls. I didn't pick up Linux again until Ubuntu in 2006. Now I daily drive Debian. Oh well, at least it came with an inflatable penguin.
- I think in 2001 I was making a Linux from scratch system having not gotten enough from red hat and Debian with home configured and compiled kernels
  Fun times and no, nothing like the commercial home operating systems back then

Wow. I had this on my removable hard drive for our operating systems class in college back in 2000.
- Seeing all the issues in the video, I feel like my experience with Ubuntu Lucid Lynx as my first self-installed Linux OS was much smoother :D
  
  Oh yeah. Ubuntu really simplified everything.
  My first distro on my own PC was Mandrake. I don't know how many times I had to reinstall it because of my fuckups.
  Two years later I was compiling my own kernel with the source code of special modules that I had downloaded for my NVidia card that had composite video input.
  I've never had to compile a kernel since Ubuntu. I completely forgot to be honest.
- me too. it had some unspecified issue with xorg that prevented bootup and i was never able to fix.
  
  Internet access was more complicated back then. If you didn't have a second computer or couldn't dual boot into a working OS it was a big problem. And there wasn't a lot of Linux users back then either.

is there a website with all the redhat box art of that time.
I remember having this box or another similar.
The .1 is very memorable.

What COM Port is your mouse on?
That question got me. SO glad we got past setting IRQs and setting up modems and dip switches and all that.
- Anybody got a spare master/slave jumper for a hard drive?
  
  I have a pack of about 40. I needed 2 to set some old drives and talked to Geek Squad staff and other local computer places. The young staff had no clue what I was describing, so I had to order in bulk on AliExpress

Heh, that box and version of Redhat was the first I tried Linux, as well as the same year - 1999 Cost me $110 brand new from a local stationary shop. Which was a lot for a poor student! Sadly didn't last long as I just couldn't get everything done in Linux as I could in Windows. And this was despite studying computing at the time.
Oh well 15 years later I tried again (Mint then Arch) and haven't gone back to Windows since. 🎉
- In the 90s during the first "mild hype", I had Suse for quite a while, twice. Same problem with unavailable software though, I remember PGP Disc not being available back then. I remember the cool kids talking about Red Hat and Debian, you must have been one of them.
  Probably going back now, since my 2011 hardware won't work with Windows 11.

I once accidentally enabled a firewall on a vm and bricked a server.

Way back in the day (say 1990) I used the Commodore Amiga platform, loved it, made me want to become a developer. It also already back then instilled a hatred for Microsoft in me.
Then windows 95 happened, the Amiga platform pretty much died, and I reluctantly switched to using Microsoft windows. For years I gave it a chance, I really did! I hated pretty much everything about it, except total Commander and Irfan view
Somewhere in 99 i bought a mini home server, and a friend of mine installed Slackware. I managed to break it within days and thought Linux was just too hard.
Then in 2001 or so I started working with a Redhat server, I believe first over telnet, then SSH and I started learning about the command line and loved it. I leaned compiling which was a bit of a drag to have to always do, but then I learned about packages and very shortly after that, package managers (yum was the first, I believe) and fell in love.
Then in 2002, I believe, I saw either fedora or Redhat desktops and learned about dual installations. I installed fedoara next to my windows install so that o could try it and work with the familiar windows, but I loved it so much that I quite literally never looked back. 3 months later I deleted my windows partition.
2004, I think, I switched to Ubuntu with KDE which later became Kubuntu.
I worked on a Linux desktop machine that allowed on 1 gigabyte Celeron CPU computer with one internal graphics and 4 graphics cards, usb splitters and usb Audio, keyboards, and mice, 5 users to work with KDE on that single computer. Novus, it was called. The project was a technical success and a huge commercial failure and since it was with an external investor, we weren't allowed to make it open source, unfortunately.
I started working in a large data center in Latin America in around 2007, I believe, as a senior Linux administrator for 4 years, had a lot of laughs at the expense of the windows team, seeing how clunky and work intense their windows servers were in comparison with my Linux servers.
Some four-five years later I started my own software development company, all Linux only. Everyone, including the devs, secretaries, sales, all worked on Linux machines. I transferred ownership someone else, and the company still persists.
But I've been on Linux desktop only for well over 20 years now, still using Kubuntu or sometimes KDE neon or mint, but I'm "old" and much less interested in experimenting, I need a stable dependable desktop but I love the bling like KDE 3D desktop to show off to windows users to get them over to the dark side, we got cookies.

RH 6.1 is EOL thus should not be used. I would recommend Debian 12
/s
- This is RedHat Linux 6.1, it was EOL way before RedHat Enterprise Linux 6 came around
- There is truth to it. You can make any modern Linux work like the older versions

Huh. Good peertube instance. I will federate it with mine

I started with a book about Red Hat 5.x that included a cd with the OS. I generally went back to Windows after a while (except i did run a server on an old pc for quite a while), but tried I again every few years.
I always liked the idea of Linux, but gaming kept making me go back to Windows. Early last year I tried installing EndeavourOS alongside windows and have stuck with it since. My new PC that I got later that same year has never seen windows.
I'm loving it, and don't foresee a return to Windows.
- Oh man same!
  2000s, with permission from the HS computer teacher, I was installing Red Hat on a few computers. It was ROUGH. Like, yeah we got it to show a desktop, but it was a nightmare to use anything but the basic applications. Windows just worked and after a few months, went back to that.
  Only during the pandemic did I finally go Linux. Started with ElementaryOS (highly recommend for old people) and went through a dozen other flavors. What really pushed me to expert level was setting up Linux servers.
  I no longer code on a Windows machine (unless I have to), and absolutely would recommend Linux to any end user. And now with Steam Deck/SteamOS, it's only getting better. My gaming computer is still Windows, but I'm going to let it sunset. I barely use it except to play high-spec games that aren't on Steam Deck. But that's getting rarer and rarer.

This was also my first Linux distro after having used Sun's Solaris while at uni. I think I tried out Slack and Suse at around the same time, but stuck with RedHat and related distros for about 6 years.

Love me some makertube.

From that time I only remember (I don't remember which Linux distribution it was) having to manually set the CD port to be able to install it. Years later, I switched to Linux due to a problem with Windows on my old laptop. I didn't regret it.

I got a Redhat book with boot CD from my cousin (RMS's lost twin, a total geek) in 1999, later studied Linux and CLI at university and in 2002 built myself a server running SuSe, but it took me 7 more years to fully transition to Linux on all my machines as I still had a box with XP for gaming until then. Every new windows iteration solidifies my aversion to MS products even further and every new version of the kernel, KDE, Wayland, Proton, etc. makes me love the GNU/Linux ecosystem so much more.

The best logo

I remember seeing that on the shelf next to a copy of SuSe during my regular visits to CompUSA. I had just barely developed an interest in computer gaming at the time, still a few years prior to my first experience with LiGNUx. I always wondered when it turned into Fedora and Red Hat went exclusively enterprise.

It's been fun. I've had it for a few months and I love it. Currently trying to figure out why my PDFs get corrupted and how to fix it - I'm pretty sure it has to do with signatures but not completely sure. The other thing is that I was having trouble figuring out how to hibernate my computer, so it was sleeping all the time (except when off or in use), but then one day it just started hibernating. Not sure how that happened.
I chose Fedora with the KDE desktop and it's great. I'm not entirely sure I understand the differences in the desktop choices but it works for me for now.
I'm trying to get my partner to switch but they're worried about it not being compatible with/not being able to find suitable replacements for certain Windows software used for work. So basically I just need to get better with Linux before they switch lol

I got a copy of Turbolinux 6 from a Hamfest and never managed to get it installed correctly. A few years later, I did succeed in running Debian and Gentoo in college.

- I tried to get this up and running back on my K6-2, unfortunately I couldn't work out how to get the X server running with my 3Dlabs FireGL Pro card at the time.
- I had a Pentium I 120 MHz Packard Hell machine. It came with Win95 OSR 1 and I loved that beast. I upgraded the disk (1.1 GB to 3.1GB!) and the RAM up to 40MB. The screen was a 13" fishbowl so I get a Sony Trinitron 15" screen eventually.
  The combo modem/fax/sound ISA card wasn't worth keeping, but I got a PCI Sound blaster as well as a 3Com 3c905 fast 10/100 Ethernet card. I had one of the best machines in the dorm for a while. Warcraft II played so very good.
  The Linux support in RedHat 5.2, then through 6.2, and sometimes Mandrake, OpenBSD, and some other distros was great. As long as you set the IRQs in the bios right it worked like a dream.

I've started several decades ago, with some ancient Slackware (?) version, downloaded using 56k line modem as 1.44 floppy images. Meanwhile I had a period of a difficult relationship with Windows (2000 was the least bad) and a longish affair with MacOS. Now Linux-only everywhere, for the last ~5 years.

3/4 years. Experience has been good.

40 comments