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Linux Video Tutorials From 1995

Posted by Roblimo on from the mumbles-from-the-past dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Given that this year marks the 20th Anniversary of the Linux kernel, it is hardly surprising that anyone digging into their media collection might pull out something interesting, such as video tutorials on how to install early version of now popular distributions, like Slackware or Red Hat"

104 comments

  1. Hardcover and awesome video graphics by jhoegl · · Score: 2

    Ha! Those take me back. Back when we thought bezel smooth text with drop shadow was the best ever.
    Rock on you crazy hippies, rock on.
    My first HTML page had a whole bunch of line dividers. Different types, like one was a saw blade, another was a moving color animation.
    It was terrible, Im glad the internet wasnt archived as much back then.

    1. Re:Hardcover and awesome video graphics by pilkch · · Score: 1

      My first HTML page had a whole bunch of line dividers. Different types, like one was a saw blade, another was a moving color animation.

      I had a website with a javascript skateboard wheels following the mouse and a graffitied wall as a background. It was *sick!*

    2. Re:Hardcover and awesome video graphics by cyphercell · · Score: 1

      In a stroke of inordinate genius, I hid my first website behind a 10Mb flash file.

      --
      Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
    3. Re:Hardcover and awesome video graphics by JasterBobaMereel · · Score: 1

      12 minutes in and still at a DOS prompt .....ah the nostalgia ...

      --
      Puteulanus fenestra mortis
  2. tedious then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    tedious now. lol

  3. 1997 by BigBadBus · · Score: 4, Interesting
    A little bit later than the video, but I tried RedHat (5.1 or 5.2? I can't remember) in the summer of 1997. From my Uni days, I had the impression that Linux was hard to install, but although it was simple enough, getting XFree86 to install and run was a nightmare. I decided to try Redhat since we were promised xxx number of days of support. What they didn't tell you was that it would take a couple of weeks for them to get back in touch with you and then it was simply to go over what you'd done. I think I managed about 3 support tickets before my time was up. I abandoned Redhat and it was a couple of years before I tried Linux again. I was a SuSE distro and it was a doddle to install. SInce then I've moved onto Mandriva and then Ubuntu and have been using this ever since.

    I've never used Redhat since and don't feel the need to ever go back to it after the shoddy aftercare service I got.

    --
    My web domain.
    1. Re:1997 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because obviously your experiences with a small company 14 years ago, running a frankly embryonic OS, is relevant to the largest, most successful Linux vendor whose entire business is based on selling support and ensuring that that support is well-regarded.

      By all means don't touch Red Hat again -- why should you if Ubuntu works for you? (Which it obviously will carry on doing with the *amazing* and not in the slightest bit undercooked and shit Unity.) But not doing so because of one experience more than a decade back, when their business model and the entire Linux scene has changed entirely, is utterly retarded.

      You're retarded.

    2. Re:1997 by suso · · Score: 0

      Because obviously your experiences with a small company 14 years ago, running a frankly embryonic OS, is relevant to the largest, most successful Linux vendor whose entire business is based on selling support and ensuring that that support is well-regarded.

      By all means don't touch Red Hat again -- why should you if Ubuntu works for you? (Which it obviously will carry on doing with the *amazing* and not in the slightest bit undercooked and shit Unity.) But not doing so because of one experience more than a decade back, when their business model and the entire Linux scene has changed entirely, is utterly retarded.

      You're retarded.

      Actually, you're retarded. For a lot of people, its attitudes like this that keep them away from geek culture. Not just Linux, but geek culture in general.

    3. Re:1997 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're retarded.

      Remember what Stephen Colbert said.... "Kids, don't use the "R" word... it's totally gay."

    4. Re:1997 by nman64 · · Score: 1

      A little bit later than the video, but I tried RedHat (5.1 or 5.2? I can't remember) in the summer of 1997.

      No, you didn't. Either your timing or your version numbering is a bit off. Timeline

    5. Re:1997 by couchslug · · Score: 1

      Lurking and getting support online has always been "what to do".

      Fighting with video issues back in the day sucked. (I started experimenting in 1999.)

      Then as now, the most efficient way was "distro churning" and throwing as many at your PC as it takes for your hardware to work.
      Mandrake was the least hassle in 1999 IMO.

      --
      "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
    6. Re:1997 by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      That's about what I first used, I remember it being pretty easy to install, there was some mild PITA about having a Mitsumi CD drive, but it wasn't bad.

      The problem I kept having was with the sound, I'd screw it up somehow futzing about, and the only way to get to the easy soundcard set-up I could do was to re-install (well, later I learned it was sndconfig or something that ran during install).

      This eventually lead me to SUSE as they let you use the install program (yast, it was a pretty nice console app) even after the install, it made fixing much better, they also released drivers for X that they developed, but would not release to the public for six months, so it had better support for my graphics card too.

      I found that the theme of huge price jumps amongst commercial distros kept me on debian, and even off Linux for a while, but I settled on Ubuntu with 7.04, which I think was the most exciting Linux realese ever, it showed things moving so fast vs just a few months earlier, sometimes around 8.04 it started to slow down again (not saying it was all Ubuntu, or even that they were the best, it was the products they incorporated getting better quickly, things like hardware support, graphics improvements, compiz, and KDE4 if one didn't actually use it). Things didn't feel like the year of the Linux Desktop or whatever, but I thing in that time frame ('06-'08) Linux went from good enough desktop environment, with other perks, to as good a desktop environment as Windows or Mac, with other perks.

      I don't think things are getting worse, but as a desktop user, I don't think there will ever be a jump like that again, as now that it's as good as anything else, it's too hard to benchmark like that.

      The video amuses me, as it's 10 minutes in, and he's still futzing with DOS, bootable CDs have really changed things.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    7. Re:1997 by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      I also dispute the whole "Xfree86 nightmare" thing.

      X has done auto-detection when available and has fallen back to Win3x style config wizards otherwise.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    8. Re:1997 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No you are Retarded. Red Hat BOASTED they were the ones that would support you. I also had the same as he did, Except I PAID FOR a support contract for the company and got the same crap-level support.

      To this day I still will not use RedHat in business. Same as I wont buy a GM car ever again after the last two pieces of shit they sold me (2000 Grand AM with bad head gaskets and was told, "sucks to be you") and a Buick Rendezvous, that ate wheel bearings every 10,000 miles, was designed by a complete moron engineer (main wiring harness exits the vehicle under the drivers seat where all salt and water spray hits it. and the intake gaskets on ALL 3400 engines were known defective and was told once again... "Sorry you bought a GM, sucks to be you!"

      Normal people never go back to a company that screws them. Retards like you keep going back over and over... as seen by your utter love of all things sony.

    9. Re:1997 by Lumpy · · Score: 2

      No it is a nightmare....

      Why? because most people had 14" or 15" monitors and most X software was written for 1024X768 or larger screens, which only started at 17" monitors that cost an arm and 12 legs.

      Netrek on anything smaller than a 17" was impossible.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    10. Re:1997 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, you're retarded. For a lot of people, it's attitudes like his that keep them away from using perfectly decent companies because of a poor experience 14 years before which was most likely more than half the result of their incompetence in the first place. Talk about holding a pointless grudge.

      Hey, tell you what! Honest story. In about 2000 or so I had some truly shit customer service from Amazon. They sent totally the wrong books and, worse, those books were smashed to ruin and unreadable even had I wanted them. So I filled in their returns form and sent everything back and waited and.... nothing. Sweet fuck all. If I took an attitude like this prick's then I'd have refused to ever go near Amazon again. (Come to that, my experience was a lot worse because I lost quite a bit of money on that for no return whatsoever while prick-face Cuntbuddy at least got a Linux distro and the basic rudiments of insufficient technical support. I may as well have pissed my money into a gutter for all the good it did me.) Fortunately for me, I'm not an asshat and I shop from Amazon for pretty much all my books, CDs and DVDs despite this.

      I'm not sure where geek culture enters this?

    11. Re:1997 by marcosdumay · · Score: 2

      Just because autoconfiguration worked for you doesn't mean it was reliable. By that time, it wasn't. And the config wizards were lacking.

      --
      Rethinking email
    12. Re:1997 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fortunately for me, I'm not an asshat

      Challenge

    13. Re:1997 by suso · · Score: 2

      Nobody should doubt your own story since your Slashdot ID dates from 1997. Obviously you were there. But no doubt getting X working on the wide variety of video chipsets at the time (probably 10 times the selection we have now) and CRT monitors which really could be damaged with the wrong config was a royal pain in the butt. Count yourself one of the lucky ones that didn't spend weeks in the console wondering when you'd be able to use Netscrape and hear audio from x11amp.

    14. Re:1997 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But... but... I don't own anything from Sony. What kind of weird strawman is this?

      I also don't run anything by RedHat. SuSE and Ubuntu here, and if I did run RedHat I'd be running Fedora. Why the fuck would I pay for an enterprise Linux?

    15. Re:1997 by BigBadBus · · Score: 1
      It must have been the summer of 1998 then. I'm very surprised as I got my first PC in the summer of 1997 just after I got my first job and I can't believe I waited a year to try RedShat. It was definitely 5.1 or 5.2- more likely 5.1.

      Why don't I try Redhat again? Remember the old proverb; fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Or you use George Dubya's garbed version. Whatever. I had a shit experience and all I had was a command line prompt.

      --
      My web domain.
    16. Re:1997 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      was designed by a complete moron engineer (main wiring harness exits the vehicle under the drivers seat where all salt and water spray hits i

      this my permanent grudge against gm, their wiring engineer is a complete moron

    17. Re:1997 by N0Man74 · · Score: 1

      Lurking and getting support online has always been "what to do".

      My vague memories of looking at Linux in the late 90's included going online, lurking in discussion groups and looking for others who had similar problems setting up as I did, more often than not met with the response of "RTFM".

    18. Re:1997 by isorox · · Score: 1

      I also dispute the whole "Xfree86 nightmare" thing.

      X has done auto-detection when available and has fallen back to Win3x style config wizards otherwise.

      I couldn't get X working with my machine in about '98 due to the graphics card. I believe it was a sis6326 (which, 12 years later, is still in my head!).

      When Redhat 6 came out (I still have a "Mastering Redhat 6" book on my shelf) was about the time I got a voodoo banshee, and everything came together.

      August 2000 I switched to debian potato, and then ubuntu in 2006. Managed to get it in under the radar at work (MS shop) and now have about 100 networked ubuntu servers from New York to Singapore, with one going into Kabul next month. Along with that we're undergoing a rollout of about 120 standalone SDI playout/record machines over the next few months.

    19. Re:1997 by couchslug · · Score: 1

      "The video amuses me, as it's 10 minutes in, and he's still futzing with DOS, bootable CDs have really changed things."

      Indeed. Even when motherboards (supposedly) supported booting from CD, it was useful to have a collection of boot floppies, including one with Smart Boot Manager:

      http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/about.html

      I still have my floppy image collection (Winimage was my friend!) on CD. I used that to crank out boot floppies aplenty for self and friends.

      --
      "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
    20. Re:1997 by timbo234 · · Score: 1

      Even in 2011 their service is fairly shoddy. We had major problems with Xen and despite lots of back and forth, and prompting them after they seemed to 'forget' our tickets a few times it turned out they couldn't help. And this is with a few dozen machines on commercial support contracts with them.

      Surprisingly, the Novell SLES support people were very responsive. And provided extremely detailed answers that covered all the possibilities of what we were trying to do. Consequently the Xen servers are now going to be SLES.

      --
      Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
    21. Re:1997 by djp928 · · Score: 2

      No, he's right, it was often a nightmare right up through the early 2000s. It all depended on how well the auto-detect worked--which, unfortunately, was often not well at all. I can recall banging my head against X config files trying to figure out the magic strings to put in that would make my display work.

      --
      Making fun of dumb people since 2009
    22. Re:1997 by polymeris · · Score: 1

      I started with linux around '98 - was a SuSE box that came with a lot of CDs and a nice printed manual (6-point-something, perhaps?). Really easy to setup. Tried a lot of different distros then, but kept going back to SuSE. I think they did a lot to ease the first steps in Linux.

      Must have been at least 5 to 6 years later I finally switched to debian.

    23. Re:1997 by antifoidulus · · Score: 1

      I've pretty much had the exact same experience with them, I think I opened up about 5 tickets with them, only got 1 response worth a damn. In fact, for the one ticket I had to teach the guy what I eventually found out because there was no way he was ever going to be able to solve it on his own.

      --
      Monstar L
    24. Re:1997 by LateArthurDent · · Score: 1

      Actually, you're retarded. For a lot of people, its attitudes like this that keep them away from geek culture. Not just Linux, but geek culture in general.

      Not that I'm defending rude behavior, but I don't get your argument. I'm not a recruiter for geek culture, and I'm not sure why anyone else would want to be. It is what it is, and people either feel like they belong or they don't. I have no interest in being a part of biker culture, and that's not a problem with the members, it's simply a lack of interest in the same things that bring them together.

      I only mention it because I constantly see comments like yours to justify other things that don't make sense. Like, "multiple window managers are the reason people don't switch to linux." Well, ok, then they can use something else. It's not supposed to be a competition to see who gets the most people belonging to the group, it's about finding what works best for me. If that's windows for most people, and linux with kde for me, so be it.

    25. Re:1997 by Bungie · · Score: 1

      Yeah but in the 90's XFree86 auto detection was about as reliable as Windows 95's Plug and Play. Video card and CRT manufacturers were plentiful and each of them would do all kinds of non-standard things with their devices. We also still had people transitioning from old hardware like 486's...with old school VGA adapters that fit into an ISA slot, and 14" CRT monitors that don't do resolutions over 800x600 comfortably.

      There was never a nice Win 3x style GUI ever.

      XFree86 couldn't detect if there was a problem and could never fall back onto a generic VGA compatible driver. What I remember using was a console program called xfree86config which sort of made it easier. It often attempted (usually unsucessfully) to figure out what I had. Most often, you were left with a text mode list of choices that could roll over multiple pages (not a GUI). Most of the time you would have try to determine the correct settings yourself, save them and pray while you ran startx from the prompt. Usually, X would crash, or you would have to backspace out of it, and then run the configuration tool again. Once you finally found the proper settings you would always backup the config file to a floppy and tell all your Linux buddies how you got XFree86 working. It was a true Linux badge of honor right below compiling your own kernel.

      --
      The clash of honour calls, to stand when others fall.
    26. Re:1997 by KingAlanI · · Score: 1

      I can definitely see Sony fanboys as an example of people who put up with too much from a company they do business with, even though the example was badly phrased.

      By the way, the one time I had to return something to Amazon (a CD that was the right album but a scratched copy thereof), it went by without incident - they even shipped the replacement copy right away [they'd simply charge someone again if they didn't ship the defective back.]

      --
      I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
    27. Re:1997 by sharkey · · Score: 1

      You didn't tell it to use "Redneck" as the language did you?

      --

      --
      "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
    28. Re:1997 by cyphercell · · Score: 1

      My Sony PlayStation is ~1000% more reliable, honest, and earnest than any cellphone out there, guess what? Same price. Hell, if it weren't for an act of congress or two those cell phone companies everyone LOVES, would be straight up - cutting out the middle man and selling your information in a marketing list. Nice sig, btw. Fanboy - no, but I believe sony is overall a pretty good company, that deserves their console market a great deal more than Microsoft.

      --
      Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
    29. Re:1997 by xclr8r · · Score: 1

      I did retail for Sears early in my life. During their training they mentioned a study that after one negative customer experience it took 7 good experiences to overcome the negative feelings. The trainer elaborated that there is no guarantee that the customer will come back 7 times so each customer interaction was vital to be good or at the very least neutral.

      --
      Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
    30. Re:1997 by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      I'm still waiting on their LS-120 support before I give it a whirl.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    31. Re:1997 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uhm I seem to remember using xf86Configurator or what it xf86config? The shit was not cool not cool at all.

    32. Re:1997 by KingAlanI · · Score: 1

      I was working off of the given example more than making a comment about Sony myself. :)
      Yeah, my sig also reflects giving the merits of the product/service itself a fair chance. (including good stuff on Sony Music Entertainment labels, while we're using Sony-related examples here. :P)

      --
      I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
  4. 20th anniversary of... by cheeks5965 · · Score: 2, Funny

    The Year of the Linux Desktop!

    --
    -- Flame me and I will happily flame you back. Bring it!
    1. Re:20th anniversary of... by taiwanjohn · · Score: 1

      LOL! Yeah, almost... I remember a lot of hair-pulling back in the mid 90's just trying to get X to run. Graphics cards were less reliable and seldom had good technical docs; most drivers had to be reverse engineered, with unpredictable results. Then KDE and Gnome came along in the late 90's and "Linux Desktop Dominance" has been "just around the corner" ever since.

      Personally, after all these years, I don't much give a shit anymore about how many other people are using Linux (desktop or otherwise), I'm just glad I don't have to buy two or three VGA cards before I find one that works these days. That's what I call progress.

      Baby steps...

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
    2. Re:20th anniversary of... by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      Back in the mid 90s, you were likely fighting with technology that was not designed with Plug-n-Play in mind at all.

      It's a lot easier to deal with something when you can reliably determine what it is.

      Latter day PC users really don't have any appreciation of this.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    3. Re:20th anniversary of... by taiwanjohn · · Score: 1

      Heh... or "Plug-n-Pray" as we called it back then... as you no doubt remember, given your 4-digit id. ;-)

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
    4. Re:20th anniversary of... by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      To be fair, Windows users were still messing with config.sys and autoexec.bat during all* the 90's, and later also Windows auto-discovery, that hanged the system and didn't work most of the time. Video cards didn't use to be reliable at Windows either.

      * Ok, officialy 2000 was at the 90's, so I'm off by a year.

      --
      Rethinking email
    5. Re:20th anniversary of... by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Of course, had the competition stood still the YotLD would have come and gone. Around 2000 and Windows ME I thought it was close. Around 2007 and Vista I thought it was close again. Then Windows XP (playskool variant of win2k, but a consumer OS) and Windows 7 made some big leaps ahead again. So it never caught up, but it's still chasing...

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    6. Re:20th anniversary of... by taiwanjohn · · Score: 1

      True enough. But at least Win users had the advantage of hardware vendors actually trying to provide drivers that worked. (Maybe the difference was that Linux geeks had to "Pay-n-Pray" instead...;-) But I think a lot of that was simply due to changes in the industry. Heck, they were still selling 80286's into the early 90's, and the ISA bus was already groaning under the strain of all the new hardware hitting the market.

      Can't remember the last time I had to manually set an IRQ vector... damn glad about that too.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
    7. Re:20th anniversary of... by gnarfel · · Score: 1

      Did you really just tell us what Windows XP was? Thanks.

      --
      Local music(to upstate NY). http://gnarfel.com/ radio.
    8. Re:20th anniversary of... by dave420 · · Score: 1

      You forgot Windows NT, which didn't have either, and was released in 1993.

  5. Slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Like the machines in 1995 the videos too are slow - several minutes of soul crushing dir /w on dos prompt to navigate various directories!

  6. 1'st tutorials... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... and 1'st known recorded use of... RTFM!!!

  7. Still crazy after all these years. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (Now for the obligatory Slack-slam.)

    Wow, after twenty years Slackware is still using the exact same text based installation.

    And without a package manager Slack can't manage libraries.

    Go Pat!

    1. Re:Still crazy after all these years. by conares · · Score: 1

      And oddy enough it works better than most distros...imagine that!

      --
      That, that really grinds my gears!
  8. Fond Memories by Dude_here · · Score: 2

    Brings back memories of building the 2.2 Linux kernel on a 486 in 2000. I was a poor freshman CS major and this was my introduction to Unix. Took 8 hours to build it I remember right. After someone told me I'd have to repeat this process after each update, I quickly looked for another Unix based OS. I think OS X was released within a year. I'm very happy Linux and my hardware have made this process less painful.

    --
    "Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty, for security, will get, and deserve nether." - Benjamin Franklin
    1. Re:Fond Memories by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      > After someone told me I'd have to repeat this process after each update

      Don't be so gullible. There was no good reason really to subject yourself to this unless there was some particular bleeding edge (or broken) feature you were interested in. This was true even with Linux 2.2 in 2000.

      2.0.0 might have been the last time I actually needed to build a kernel. Although defecting to another distribution solved the problem.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    2. Re:Fond Memories by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      um yea we had distros like mandrivia (mandrake) by 98 which even by early 2000's was a drop cd in thingie and reboot distro into graphical installer

      heck I just installed debian running the 2.0 kernel on my 386 laptop and outside of farting around getting the install disk to boot in 4 megs, it was a painless install, it came out of the box with dpkg and nearly 600 megs of *.debs, and I dont even have a compiler installed yet, even after a week.

      That was discontinued in 1998, you read the wrong books, but have fun in your garden

  9. Walnut Creek Slackware! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Very nice and nostolgic. Back in high school in 1995, a buddy of mine ordered the Walnut Creek Slackware CD set, which I borrowed and installed on our home computer, in a 200mb partition -- and that was a big slice of the hard drive. I've been playing around with Linux -- even using it as my primary OS in multi-year stints -- ever since. Although I enjoy using *buntus most these days, I will always be a Slackware man at heart.

  10. Nothing unusual by Casandro · · Score: 1

    Back then many universities ditched MS-DOS for Linux, essentially getting the power of an older Sun-Workstation for the price of a high end DOS-PC... at a fraction of the price. And you didn't need to port your software, everything was already there, sed, awk, bash, grep, even larger packets like emacs were already there at a time when Windows 95 didn't even have IPv4 enabled by default or a usable telnet client.

    1. Re:Nothing unusual by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      I'll grant you the usable telnet client (hasn't changed much in that regard), but ipv4 has always been enabled by default on Win95. That was one of its biggest selling points over Win 3.1(1).

    2. Re:Nothing unusual by Casandro · · Score: 1

      I'm sorry, but at least in the German version you had to manually install it. Maybe you are thinking about one of the many later Windows 95 releases. (or maybe the German version was based on an older codebase)

    3. Re:Nothing unusual by gnarfel · · Score: 1

      Not until OSR2.

      --
      Local music(to upstate NY). http://gnarfel.com/ radio.
  11. 46 MINUTES AND 31 MINUTES?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Could someone watch these for me and give me the edited highlights? I've got better things to do with 77 minutes of my life.

    1. Re:46 MINUTES AND 31 MINUTES?? by Mongo · · Score: 1

      Could someone watch these for me and give me the edited highlights? I've got better things to do with 77 minutes of my life.

      Obviously you never had to add a driver to a pre-module support kernel with make zImage before going to bed.

    2. Re:46 MINUTES AND 31 MINUTES?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you're right about that one. I have installed Gentoo though.

  12. A nice blast from the past. by Oasiz · · Score: 1

    This takes me back to my first linux distro that I tried (A redhat variant). Never got the bootloader to work properly then, but it was still exciting to try some windows alternatives for a change.

    ...Just makes me think what a realtime gentoo installation video for ~2000 hardware might look like :p

  13. Actual Media by mu51c10rd · · Score: 1

    Video tutorials? I still have Red Hat 7, Caldera eDesktop 2.4, Caldera eServer 2.3, and Mandrake (don't recall the version but it was from 98) disk sets sitting in my desk near the computer. I actually installed eDesktop 2.4 (kernel version was 2.2.16 out of the box I believe) a year ago on an old HP Omnibook laptop that was designed for Win98. Found a mirror for updates for Caldera and updated it as much as I could...including Netscape. The experience did not feel all that slow on a P2 processor and 128MB of RAM...and I do appreciate those who keep mirrors of very old distributions on hand.

  14. Ahh Early Linux days by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I remember spending tons of time downloading distros from the FTP server based @ UNC

    I remember having access to a full T1 and performing a redhat install using 2 or 3 floppies and the T1 over FTP.

    I cannot remember the name, I think it was called MiniLinux that ran on 2 floppies

    and there was Slackware and it's 100 Floppies .. the Memories!!

  15. Re:At this time by marcosdumay · · Score: 2

    Wrong, by that time I was already looking ahead into buying a computer with 2 astonishing MB of RAM!

    --
    Rethinking email
  16. I Remeber by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I remember installfests and how much fun they were.

  17. Slackware 1.2 multi-CD physical media here still by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject-line, & talk about "ANCIENT" (you had to do floppy disks installations for bootup using the rawrite tool) - I picked this multi-CD pack install for Slackware 1.2 back circa 1994 iirc, & it was @ a "Peter Trapp Computer Fair" (travelling show in the Northeast USA for computer people to shop at & find good deals on hardware, software, & books etc.).

    APK

    P.S.=> I have RedHat 5.2 CD distro here too someplace, but that's not NEARLY as old as the one I note above... apk

  18. Digital Tipping Point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    an archive on linux and OS http://www.archive.org/details/digitaltippingpoint

  19. Slack has always been cake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I cut my teeth with something before 7.0 and despite the warnings it was easy. It's still the best Linux, but I use a BSD for a long time now. Mostly because it's dead...

  20. Wow, who knew... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that Ben Stein was once a Red Hat guru back in the day? LOL, hilarious!

  21. Ignore them by sourcerror · · Score: 2

    They used a non-free codec.
    RMS

    1. Re:Ignore them by bedouin · · Score: 1

      Well, I could load them so I'm assuming it's Flash.

    2. Re:Ignore them by bedouin · · Score: 1

      Couldn't

    3. Re:Ignore them by sourcerror · · Score: 1

      It was intended to be a kind of joke, as RMS often refused to give video interviews if the resulting video was put in proprietary formats (even if you could download the player for free).

  22. .. And that's why I never installed Linux by Wowsers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I watched the videos, and say without hesitation, that they show the exact reason I never started with Linux back then. At least with Windows it was setup.exe and away you go.

    Don't get me wrong, when I actually stated in Linux, you still had to mess around with configuring x and the graphics resolution on first install, but by that stage you did not have a reliance on DOS, and you had a sort of graphical representation of what is on your hard drive, so you don't install into the wrong partition.

    Today Linux is MILES better than it was and is easy to install, the only problem is convincing people that it is usable instead of Windows.

    --
    Take Nobody's Word For It.
    1. Re:.. And that's why I never installed Linux by ajo_arctus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And it's exactly the reason I did try Linux!

      My first exposure to Linux was Slackware on a PC Pro cover disk in 1995. The magazine just bundled all of these disk images and packages on the CD, and in the magazine contents had a tiny entry for it that simply said "Slackware Linux version x.y." Then, in capital letters: "We recommend you do not install this. You will probably break your PC!". Well, of course, what could I do? With a warning like that I had to install it!

      I re-partitioned the drive (600MB Windows, 200MB Linux) and spent a huge amount of time trying to figure out how to not permanently kill my monitor with the settings in xf86config (another dire warning message) and getting my modem to dial out by editing the networking config files.

      The annoying thing is, once I did get it all working, I had nothing to do with it. All the packaged software was academic -- no word processors or any of the stuff I liked doing on computers back then (drawing, music, etc). I played reversi I think, used pine or elm of whatever, compiled a really simple c programme, and went back to Windows. I could see it was awesome, but as a 16 year old with no Linux using friends I couldn'y really make use of it back then. Looking back, I wish I'd learned C at that time. Learning C on Windows was impossible for me because compilers were too expensive. Ah well.

      It has been really interesting to watch Linux grow and evolve over the years. I use it today mostly for serving Rails and Python apps.

    2. Re:.. And that's why I never installed Linux by Sierra+Charlie · · Score: 1

      Not to go into grumpy-old-man mode, but by 1995 the distributions were pretty damn easy to use. At least, for the types of people who would have been interested in using Linux.

      My roommate and I, both comp-sci students, built our first box in early 1992. This was before the advent of "distros". Just getting the sources was hard... we started out trying to them off a local BBS using our trusty 14.4k. Eventually we gave up and used sneaker-net by burning floppies at our Uni's lab and carrying them home. It was around a mile away, which made it pretty annoying when a disk would end up being corrupt.

      The actual install had to be bootstrapped from DOS, using a mish-mash of tools. And once you finally got the thing booted into "Linux", it was a sad little bare-bones system. More sneaker-net downloads ensued as we pieced together gcc, a decent set of libs, SLIP support, and eventually X-Windows. We had to fix several user-space bugs as we went (thank goodness we had all the code)... the most annoying one being in the utilities we were using to automated the slip handshake. Keep in mind that all of the instructions were buried in READMEs and a few FAQs we had printed off of Usenet.

      And you know what... it was completely worth it. At the time, it was amazing to think that you could have your OWN PERSONAL UNIX WORKSTATION, with all the GNU tools. It saved us so much time because we were able to work on projects and assignments locally, without hiking to the lab or being constrained by an 80x24 terminal over a 14.4k modem. And the resulting code had a decent chance of compiling with no tweaks on the SunOS and HPUX boxes we used for class.

      When SLS came out (the first distro I'd heard of), it was a godsend and we never looked back. By 1995, the distros were getting mature, though they still expected that you knew some of the underlying details.

  23. Minor correction by Baloo+Uriza · · Score: 1

    Slackware was never popular, just well known.

    --
    Furries make the internet go.
    1. Re:Minor correction by Mongo · · Score: 1

      Slackware was never popular, just well known.

      I would argue that in 1993 it was very popular.

      Compared to SLS is it was a dream.

      I did actually buy a CD-ROM drive to install RedHat's Mother's day release in late 1994.

      Mostly because I got sick making floppies with dd

  24. I hated trying to get dialup modem working by Cito · · Score: 1

    I remember my first distro was Slackware, I had talked and talked about getting into linux in the mid 90's but never took the leap. A buddy of mine came over and we'd hang out go play pool etc. He knew the thought of formatting my pc and starting from scratch stopped me since I was bit lazy. Anyhow when I went to get a drink refill he formatted my hard drive, therefore forcing me haha. Anyhow long story short, I installed slackware, but never could get my modem to work. I bought 3 different modems and took them back for refunds, none would work. They all advertised as "plug and play" modems. But no matter what I tried they just wouldn't work, even spent afternoon at the library on their internet looking up solutions. I finally figured out these cheap (well I say cheap but 40 - 70 dollar) plug and play modems were "software" modems. And that is when I said screw it, I waited till next payday, took the plunge and I remember dropping $130 on a brand new external US robotics 56k, the old white with like 6 or 7 lights used serial port. So expensive for me at least at the time but dammit Slackware saw that modem and I was finally online using a simple dialup program called 'wvdial', just toss in dialup number, username and pass in /etc/wvdial.conf then type wvdial at command line and eureka! dialup internet ftw! hehe ah the good ol' days... I've been a slackware nut ever since. my 2 favorite distros of all time #1 is Slackware #2 is Debian, I never use the others.

  25. There was a video all this time?!? by arisvega · · Score: 1

    There was a video on how to install Slackware??? NOW you 're telling me?!?!?

    --
    The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
    1. Re:There was a video all this time?!? by pilkch · · Score: 1

      It's ok, you had 11k dial up at the time anyway.

  26. Re:At this time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    1995? Already had 12M on my Amiga. 2M chip, 10M "fast".

  27. Norton Antivirus hates linux... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I remember the first time I successfully installed linux to a seperate partition. I think it was Slackware, maybe 1998. After installation and booting back to DOS, Norton Antivirus detected a change to the MBR and decided to fix it, corrupting the filesystem in the process. Ahhhh, the good old days.

  28. Yggdrasil by ak_hepcat · · Score: 1

    I've still got the beta ISO from Ygg, and an image from it loaded here on the workstation.

    Boots up just fine in a VM.

    --
    Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
  29. ITT by equex · · Score: 1

    ITT: Linux hardliners coming clean about how awful Linux is. /ducks

    --
    Can I light a sig ?
  30. Takes me back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh boy. I'm going to get out my Infomagic CD set. 1996 is the year of the Linux desktop!

  31. Re:At this time by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

    Yeah, ok, I'm from a third world country...

    --
    Rethinking email
  32. @Randy Hootman by RL78 · · Score: 2

    Who needs ambien when you got this video.

    1. Re:@Randy Hootman by RL78 · · Score: 1

      and the laughs are all in good fun Randy. That video is nostalgia, plus there was no Red Bull in '95 ;)

  33. Video? Video? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What about the Slackware disks with the awesome 6 page booklet? I (still) have it right here: Slackware Linux 3.0 October 1995. It has ELF Binaries! Ready-to-Run Includes kernel 1.2.13 & 1.3.18. The booklet mostly tells about how to make boot floppies. It doesn't mention boot command line directives (which I needed to know in order to have the CD readable from the interrupt my CD was looking for (I had to find that out on my own), nor did it mention how to recompile the kernel in order to get Hannu Savulainens soundblaster 16 sound drivers into it (I had to find that out on my own too). It seemed like a bit of work getting everything running (but I was game, and everything got working). Videos? I don't ever remember seeing any videos.

  34. Ah... memories.... by rueger · · Score: 1

    Digging into the CD rack beside me I came up with a 2 CD set for Caldera Open Linux 2.2. I know for sure that I didn't get it working. Don't recall what machine I had in 1999.

    I know that I made at least a couple of other attempts before that at getting Linux to work from bootable floppies, and I think one other boxed retail version, so I can count at least twelve or thirteen years of trying various distros at about ten or twelve month intervals. Mandrake. SUSE. A couple that I've forgotten.

    Few words strike fear in the heart of people like me like "MAN PAGES."

    Last year I tried Ubuntu Lucid, with the utterly painless WUBI installer, and *BANG* -- damned is if it didn't just work, wireless and all, first try. And it turned out to be much faster than the Vista install that came on my Dell.

    Finally this month I upgraded to Natty, and have fallen in love with Libre Office, Scribus, and am even quite happy with GIMP - the latter two I never could have seen replacing Photoshop and InDesign, but they are up to handling what I need, and are one hell of lot cheaper.

    Plus, on Natty, the out of the box WINE install runs MS Office Word and Excel flawlessly, and fast.

    I am one VERY happy user!

    --
    Three Squirrels
  35. Alpha and mklinux on public access by nester · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I first saw Linux on a public access show. John Maddog Hall was on, demo'ing linux/alpha, on I believe an 21164 @ 600mhz, (64bit, but little-endian - seemed weird and exciting to me). There was also an Mklinux demo, Irix on an O2, and a Sun box (my memory of back then is hazy tho).

    Having finally gotten a handed-down 7100/80, I installed mklinux. I quickly discovered a bad simm causing fs corruption (explained the random mac os 8 lockups too). Pretty white-on-blue console, just like QNX. Once it was working, it was onto dial-up. The amic serial driver was making a function call for every byte copied into the ring buf. I in-lined it and got about 2x less cpu load. That also helped when irc kiddies smurf attacked. For syn floods, I modded a firewall patch to rate limit syn's and icmp.

    Later on, I was finally was able afford my dream machine: a dual 21264 @ 833mhz, on a UP2000 mobo. (Before that, I had a 600au miata tower.)

    I made a minor fix to the palcode call in the reboot/shutdown switch statement, in linux (accepted by Alan Cox). Tho he rejected my patch to check for MD partitions for raid auto-detech (wanted proof that 0xfd or whatever it was, wasn't used by osf/1 already). That issue still pops up on the linux-alpha list.

    I still have my old 7100/80, with a working 5v source jumped to the adb line that went bad. Maybe someday I'll reinstall DR2.1 just for fun. I still have the CD.

  36. Still have an official distro package from 1993! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I still have a distro package from 1993, it's the Yggddrisil, comes with a 40 page booklet, a CD and two boot floppy's, one 5 1/4" and one 3 1/2".

    Still one of my favourite geek possessions!

  37. Whoever moderated this down... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is the biggest fag.

  38. i remember my first step from windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I found beos on a CD from PC pro then the next month I think they had lindows. I miss those days!

  39. I wish I did by IoanaF · · Score: 1

    Video tutorials were hard to come by back then. I have no idea how I got my hands on...Red Hat I think. I don't know. Never got around to using it. When trying to install I just messed up my entire computer,had to format everything and reinstall, and hoped no one would notice. My aunt, who lost all her work documents in the process, did. It was quite painful.