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A Trip Down Distro Memory Lane

Posted by timothy on from the early-nostalgia-is-the-best-kind dept.

M-Saunders writes "What did the Linux world look like back in 2000? TuxRadar has republished a distro roundup from Linux Format issue 1, May 2000. Many distros such as SUSE, Mandrake and Red Hat are still around in various incarnations, but a few such as Corel and Definite have fallen by the wayside."

12 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. SuSE Ruled... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...until Novell bought them out. When it became apparent that Novell wasn't going to uphold the SuSE quality, I switched over to Ubuntu. Haven't looked back since.

    1. Re:SuSE Ruled... by Shuntros · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'd be interested if you could give a full breakdown of what SuSE's shortcomings are since Novell took them over. I've used SuSE since the late 90s. It was never foolproof, no distro is, but despite trying a number of other distros I still find it preferable to all of them, including Ubuntu.

    2. Re:SuSE Ruled... by IANAAC · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Except that Novell has done some good things too. Yast is still pretty amazing. Oh and Novell opened it up and set it free.

      It's OK to not like a company, but give them credit where they actually deserve it.

    3. Re:SuSE Ruled... by Xoron101 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've always thought that Debian was a great Distro. Stable, lots of packages that can be installed, and lots of resources on the web.

      Ubuntu (based on Debian) ties it all together with a nice, easy to use installer and GUI. Great choice for desktops, but I'd stick to Debian for servers.

    4. Re:SuSE Ruled... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Funny

      The first SuSE version released from Novell broke on my system, wasn't worth the time to fix, and I went back to the previous version. If that was the best Novell could do with SuSE, then I would try another distro. When it came time to rebuild my file server, I went with Ubuntu since it just work when I installed it. These days I prize working out the box over calling forth my grandmother's spirit to recompile the kernel to run on ordinary PC hardware.

  2. Slackware rules! by spaceyhackerlady · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In 2000 I was a seasoned Slackware user, and had been so for several years. I did my Master's thesis in LaTeX on a Pentium 233MMX box (which I still have), complete with diagrams done in xfig.

    I did a lot of course work on that box: Viterbi decoding, polyspectral analysis, lots more.

    ...laura

    1. Re:Slackware rules! by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Slack was and still is a nice distro for folks that know what they're doing, want a solid, stable system and don't care much about fit and polish or having the latest goodies. I was Slack user and proponent myself for a couple of years.

      The main thing I don't like about Slack is that lack of real package management. I like the power and convenience that tools like Synaptic and apt-get provide -- a lot. And the fit and polish that desktop-oriented distros like Ubuntu offer is a guilty pleasure for me and an absolute necessity for my techno-angst-ridden wife.

      --
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    2. Re:Slackware rules! by Peter+Simpson · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I built a Slackware system and had it dual-booting on my 486-33 at my new job. I was using it (with X11 and Motif) as an Xterminal off our UNIX system to do schematic capture, after I got fed up with Win3.1 and QEMM (which was what I was supposed to be using).

      That the same hardware could perform so much better running Linux (versus Win3.1) was a real eye-opener .

      Have not thought a Microsoft OS was worth paying for since.

  3. Mandrake Mandriva by fyoder · · Score: 5, Funny

    Many distros such as SUSE, Mandrake and Red Hat are still around in various incarnations

    Mandrake started out well, but then suffered some sort of identity crisis, had a sex change, and become the totally flakey bitch named Mandriva. Some say she's been to rehab and is much nicer now, but she is ancient history as far as I'm concerned.

    --
    Loose lips lose spit.
  4. Re:I've got your 2000 right here... ;) by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    None of the silly pissing matches about which distro was the best.

    Now I know you're lying!

    --
    My blog
  5. Re:It was a nightmare for regular users in 2000... by Vlobulle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, in 2009 the audio system is still a complete mess and the screen configuration (setting the resolution and multiscreen settings) not far behind.

  6. Anyone Remember the Four Yorkshiremen Distro? by Dogtanian · · Score: 5, Funny

    I started out with Slackware in late 1994 on a 486DX33 with 8MB of RAM. It was amazing. 40 floppies to install it since I had no CDROM drive.

    That's nothing. I ran Linux 0.03 on my Sinclair ZX81 in early 1982. It were stored on 300 C90 cassettes, took 18 days to load and I had to hold the RAM pack to stop it wobbling.

    And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

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