Linux during the mid to late 90s (Windows 95 and 98 era)
Linux during the mid to late 90s (Windows 95 and 98 era)
For those veteran linux people, what was it like back in 90s? I did see and hear of Unix systems being available for use but I did not see much apart from old versions of Debian in use.
Were they prominent in education like universities? Was it mainly a hobbyist thing at the time compared to the business needs of 98, 95 and classic mac?
I ask this because I found out that some PC games I owned were apparently also on Linux even in CD format from a firm named Loki.
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In the early 90s all the "cool kids" (for a techie definition of "cool", i.e. hackers) at my University (a Technical one in Portugal with all the best STEM degrees in the country) used Linux - it was actually a common thing for people to install it in the PCs of our shared computer room.
Later in that decade it was already normal for it to be used in professional environments for anything serving web pages (static or dynamic) along with Apache: Windows + IIS already had a lower fraction of that Market than Linux + Apache.
If I remember it correctly in the late 90s RedHat started providing their Enterprise Version with things like Support Contracts - so beloved by the Corporates who wanted guarantees that if their systems broke the supplier would fix them - which did a lot to boost Linux use on the backend for non-Tech but IT heavy industries.
I would say this was the start of the trend that would ultimately result in Linux dominating on the server-side.
I have to say, as a Linux fan in the 90's it was very cool to see Linux eating the whole server space, replacing older Unix while Microsoft tried desperately to grow Windows on the server market.
I was already a dev in a small IT consultancy by the end of the decade, and having ended up as "one of the guys you go to for web-based interfaces", I did my bit pushing Linux as a solution, though I still had to use IIS on one or two projects (even had to use Oracle Web Application Server once), mainly because clients trusted Microsoft (basically any large software vendor, such as Microsoft, IBM or Oracle) but did not yet trust Linux.
That's why I noticed the difference that Red Hat with their Enterprise version and Support Plans did on the acceptability of Linux.