What do you remember about your first Linux install?
 

The LQ Poll series continues: What do you remember about your first Linux install?

--jeremy

I remember being ecstatic that I had discovered something besides Microsoft Windows.

I don't post here much (this is my first since 2003!!!) but I really cannot resist this!

My first install (around 1998 or so) was REDHAT 7.0 that was described in a book I bought titled "Learn Linux in a Weekend"
I think the paperback book was priced at somewhere around $15 and I was shocked to find 2 installation CDs stuck on the back cover.

It took me about 45 min to go from a bare hard drive to a completely working operating system + KDE , complete with a dialer, Mozilla browser and an email client!

No one I knew had cable, DSL or anything other than dialup!
This thing worked right out of the box and I could browse the internet with my first "pop-up" blocker! and NO BSOD (except in the form of a screen saver!!) !!! I was in "Heaven" And all FREE (like Free Beer!)

I went from REDHAT 7.0...... to 8, 9 and then switched to SuSE Linux and Opensuse
And although I am currently trying KDE NEON (Ubuntu 18.04LTS) on this laptop, My current "daily-use" desktop still runs SuSE (Leap 15.1)


I had my issues and growing pains etc...... but I'll never go back to Windows for "regular" computing!


Cheers,



Rick

I was so nervous, I could have blown chow.

I remember I never did get online. This was the 90's, and I had a winmodem on my pc, and never did manage to get that thing to work. I also remember thinking if I could get it online, it would be my new OS, as I vastly preferred it to Windows, which had already started irritating me (this is around the time 98 was released).

RedHat 5.0 floppy disks on a Compaq Presario with MediaGx taking care of the video (after a bit of a learning curve). I was a total newbie with guts. After install I had a black screen with a blinking cursor. For a few months I worked between the Windows boot and learning email, web, and usenet on console in Linux until, with the guidance of the developer of the video module for mediagx (reading his docs about 3 times), I wrote the correct modes for X configuration and got a GUI. I was one very proud person and have been grateful for what I learned in the process. That was 1998, so it's been 20 years now.

It was the Spring or Summer of 1992. I had just gotten pieces to put together a PC Clone with an Intel 386SX 25Mhz CPU, and 1 or 2 Megabytes of RAM. A friend loaned me his 3.5 inch disks, and I put it on the hard drive.

After that , I was not sure what to do with it as there was not a lot out there about it, and not a lot software to be had. One usually would go to the local Software store to get what they needed. Sometimes on local BBSs. Removed it a few days later.

Next was in 1998 when I got a Linux book which came with a Linux distro on a CD: Caldera Lite it was. 'Lite' because the desktop GUI was a trial, and it you wanted to continue to use it, pay $99 USD. It also had an open source version of the game 'Doom.'

I remember thinking that's alot of damn floppies! It was Slackware 2.0, I was a little late to the game. :)

This comes in handy when missing the sound of dialup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvr9AMWEU-c

SLS - 45 floppies downloaded over a 2400 BAUD modem
 

I had been playing with Minix and when I heard about Soft Landing Software, I downloaded the 45 floppy disks over a weekend in my office (amazed that the dial-up line stayed up). I think the cast-off PC had barely enough memory and a 10G hard disk, but monochrome X11 worked out of the box ! This was in the Windows for Workgroups era.

Slackware 10.0. The thing I remember most is being glad for cfdisk, because it is a lot like the old DOS fdisk, which I knew.

My first view of Linux was Knoppix (in 2004), and I couldn't believe all the software that came on a single CD, and the fact that it was FREE! My first installation was Xandros and I've used some form of Linux ever since (~2005, I think?)

As an AT&T employee I got Bell Labs UNIX training as part of my job. I was very happy to find I could run a UNIX-like system on my PC and avoid the problems that came with MS Windows. I live not far from Walnut Creek, CA, the home of Walnut Creek CD-ROM. I made many trips to their bricks and mortar store to get my start with Linux. Remember Ygdrasil?

Success

So I posted on how I did it.

How long it took to download all the CDs on dial-up; early Slack

I remember being interested in Linux. Microsoft Windows was a joke from the time it came out, and I was always looking for a viable alternative. I bought a book on Slackware, and another (both containing installation floppies) on Red Hat, but both of those required more technical knowledge of my computer than I had and I was just a tad timid about taking my computer apart to learn what was needed. Then Mandrake 8.1 became available, I don't remember how I got the disks but I tried it. As that was back oin the Dawn of Time, I don't remember much about the process, but I finished it and it was successful. It was not up to doing everything I wanted to do, as a desktop user (not too big on the command line since they took my DOS away). But I kept it up and updated it until 10.0 would not load on my machine, so I went and tried SuSE (a couple versions before they made OpenSuSE).

I was really excited to install linux to see what this new operating system was all about and found it very interesting and still using on 2 computers.

I remember inserting stacks of 1.4M (or were they 720K) floppies repeatedly and waiting overnight to see if I had a good compile.

i remember the insane number of floppies i needed to borrow for installing Slackware 1.0 - see an earlier post here at LQ ...

2002, some vague memory of the installation menus. It was going to be a game server box with no gui, I even took the video card out once I had it up and running with SSH access. I was hosting Half-Life mod servers: Day of Defeat, Firearms, and others. The first thing I remember was how much better hlds ran on a Linux box. It was my old personal pc, stripped down, and ran both the game servers, and hosted our website (not at the same time, the full website was taken down and replaced by a minimal placeholder site while the game server was running, the game server ran on Friday and Saturday nights).

It ran, rock solid stable, for literally months at a time, with no reboots. It ran smoothly, with low latency. It ran like a champ. After a few years it was retired, and I finally switched my own personal system to Linux at the end of last year. Barring the unforeseen, I will never return to Windows. I'm a gamer, and I have yet to find a game I was unable to get running at least as well on my Linux system as it did on Windows. The only issues I have run into that I haven't been able to work around are with third party apps for online games, and it is to the place where if I can't get it running on Linux, I won't run it.

One additional note. I knew nothing about Linux when I started. My only...

Wait! Stop the presses!

My actual first experience with Linux, the experience that got me into Linux was with BrazilFW. I converted an old desktop into a router by adding a second nic and using a four port hub. It was not efficient, in terms of power usage, and I didn't use it for that long, but that led me to buy a proper router and install DD-WRT on it. But the common thread through all these early experiences with Linux was how well everything worked on Linux, how low latency the networking was, and how stable it all was.

Unfortunately that has not been the case since I switched my pc to Linux recently, but that's a story for another time. In spite of that, if I ever do go back to Windows, it will not be voluntary, and it will be kicking and screaming...

My first Linux install
 

My first successful Caldera OpenLinux install gave me a real sense of achievement. Also the fine granularity of configurations and settings. No other previous OS I had used offered so much intricacy.

1996, Slackware on a Micron Millennia laptop (133mHz Pentium, 32M memory). Kernel 2.0.0 worked fine, but 2.0.27 (which was then the current kernel) would panic.

I remember in 2001 I went to the convenience store and I saw a magazine with Mandrake Linux cd, I read so much about Linux prior purchasing that magazine that I couldn't believe the had that in my country El Salvador!!!
I bought it and to my surprise the installation was SO EASY!!!!
graphics were OFF THE HOOK!!
since then I've been a loyal KDE user.

My favorite Cli command will be Htop.

1st Linux Installation
 

I was using Windoze98 with a 14.4Kbps dial up Internet connection on an entry level spec machine. It was barely functional. My sister gave me a CDROM with Mandrake Linux on it. I booted off it, and began the install. It pushed Windows aside and used the spare space to install itself, giving me a dual boot option. Back then there were still fancy pic editing tools for Windows that weren't available on Linux. Basically it worked, straight out of the box! And it kept working. Finally after three days I had to disconnect the internet - because I needed to use the phone. A few days later my Mandrake Linux hung and I had to reboot. "Just like Windows!" I muttered angrily to myself - but then I had to remind myself that Windows 98 needed to reboot every 40 minutes (which meant paying for another phone call) and be totally re-installed every few months (something I have never had to do with Linux). I have never looked back. I no longer need dual boot as everything I want is available from Linux repositories (currently using Mint 18.1). LinuxQuestions.org helped me out a lot when I first got started. I feel a bit guilty that I haven't been logging on lately - but everything just works.

Red Hat 6.1. "Cartman." October, 1999.

Does Unix count?
 

I'm old, some say older than dirt. I booted my first Unix system in December of 1979. It was an a 5Mb Hawk removable platter about 16 inches in diameter. All that came out on the printing console was a single sharp sign.so I booted it again. After 4 times even that stopped happening. I called the guy who sent me the disk and he told me I was supposed to type a ctrl-D for it to go into multi user. I has to wait over the Christmas break for him to re-image the disk and send it back. This was a 6th Edition Unix system and the file system was fragile with no fsck. You had to know what you were doing using fsdb, icheck, and dcheck to check and repair issues. Then there was the Massey shell with /bin/goto and /bin/chdir 6th Edition Unix was very different than even the earliest Linux but a strange and wonderful beast compared to Honeywell GCOS Mod 400 running on the Honeywell Level 6 hardware I was using.

Breaking my first system before I even got to type a command is my first memory of a Unix system. Now very close to 40 years ago.

I vaguely remember my first Linux system but I had been playing with other Unix clones like Venix and Minix so they all run together.

I was flying blind on the install
 

I got hold of the disks for Alzza Linux. A Korean language distro, based on Red Hat 4.0 IIRC. My slow times with a Korean dictionary and a lot of curse words later and I was running a 2.x kernel with Windowmaker a HUGE 15 inch crt, and a 800x600 display. That and Netscape 3.x, I said goodbye to win95 for good. Trying to remember, but I believe it had Correl Office.

I worked at a place called Video Lottery in 1995. Maybe 96. A guy named Marcus lent me a stack of 5-1/4" inch floppy drives must have been a foot high. It took all day. Was that Slackware? A year or so later I remember a Linux with different processes on different machines writing to the same file without any tcpip locking, so the file ended up as semi-coherent gibberish.

Started with Slackware, I think, about version 3 around 1992. The CD came in a book and install went well, until I discovered linux had no problem with my drive size and scrambled my DOS/WIN3.1 partition that was using some MBR magic to get my 486 to work with the 320MB drive. A few years later took another shot with SuSE 5.1 and never looked back. Switched back to Slackware about version 10.

My first Linux install was Corel Linux back in 2000. It had two problems, sound wouldn't work and the Dial Up Networking didn't work. Since support consisted of a gross over abundance lame excuses and no useful information. I removed it.

lack of self inflicted pain
 

I remember several things. Basically that it was relatively painless in spite of being a dual boot with Windows. The latter went a soon as I no longer needed Windows to do my tax. Then the relief of not having to contend with rebooting every time you wanted to install something and the lack of the blue screen of death in Linux land. This does appear to have improved in Windows but the mysteries of editing the register with the ever present likelihood of completely stuffing Windows remain. I can open the hood in Linux without too much trepidation and in 10 years I haven't stuffed anything which was ultimately beyond my ability to fix - the web browser had to do a lot of work on a few occasions. Networking with Linux (unless it is to a Windows system) is not some arcane mystical magical experience leaving you with religious euphoria if it works.

I don't recall my first (unsuccessful) install, but I was ecstatic when I got Yggdrasil Linux up and running. Later I settled on Slackware and I'm still using it.

Mine was Slackware, 2.0 if remember well.
The second one, Caldera distribution when acquired by SCO.
Some attempts with Ubuntu and Debian, still used for dedicated application.
Then RedHat and CentOS.

Ah yes I remember, 1997/8 Windows 95 crashed on me for the last time. I installed Mandrake Linux. Don't even remember the version. Life was good once more.

Floppy disks, late night at work using old excess computer. Set up a web site, tried to hammer to test security until USAF complained so switched to USA network to do testing. Computer had two NIC's on separate networks but hammered from the same server as the web.

Thought I was god since I didn't have to use WINDOWS NT 3.5!

I remember booting from a diskette! (Caldera OpenLinux)

My first introduction to Linux was Mandrake 8 and what a great salvation! No longer totally bonded to M$oft and its Windows. The start of a what has now resulted in a complete break free!! I am currently a Happy and Free user of Linux Mint 19.2. Love Linux and what it stands for!

It was 1992 or 1993. The distro was Slackware on 3.5" floppies. I remember being astonished that I could get such a good performance on an Intel 486 PC. Remember running GRASS (GIS from the US Army Corps of Engineers at that time)and a hydrologic modeling program from the USDA called SWAT on it. Never stopped using it. All my PCs since then had double boot Windows (work requirements) and Linux. After Slackware, I moved to Redhat, used Centos and now am using Debian, since I also develop applications for the Rapsberry Pi

Slackware in 1995
 

My first Linux install was a Slackware on a 486 with 16 MB of ram in the fall of 1995 after moving on from OS/2, while in graduate school in Purdue. I did my thesis on it with all the exhibits, and the text with Latex, produced by vi. I compiled and ran the same Fortran code without much modification as was running on the school's server, using g77. It was exiting to know that my PC was 100% Microsoft-free. I wish I could be 100% Google-free today....

I had so much trouble with Windows that I asked my expert about Linux and he installed it for me. I can't remember the date but he also installed Open Office, I think 1.5. I have used it ever since and wouldn't go near Microsoft again. I am now on Debian 10. My first version was Mandriva and I only left that because it couldn't handle my printer and Debian could.

I'll start with my panic-history era of hosting:
When I used to pretend-admin netmode.com as a novice;
back in 1996, my partner was the real admin.
All Unix commands via Verio's (Iservers) Apache at the prompt.
180 servers at the helm.

Then... my brain partner rewrote the (Michael Sonn) Apache servers, and we migrated to our own dedicated's, (debian & at least 1 penguin linux install), moved most of the accounts, ran them for a while as dedicated, and then our rack provider; Digital Nation kept moving around Florida, until we lost most of our accounts from excess downtime.

After godaddy completely ran us out of business;
our domain money maker: thebigwhois.com wimped away.

and yes countermania.com was my idea, in 1995. Yet, as the $5 checks rolled in,
I panicked, as we couldn't expand from anchorage alaska.
---------------------

Current: What was the ?

Window exodus 2009-2010:
I couldn't stand the constant anti-virus updates, from norton etc,
so, I deleted windows with ubuntu install of 10.04 Lucid Lynx. almost 10 yrs ago.
via a writable cd.

Instead, that global unresponsive script keeps getting me, so sometimes I remove recent cookies
or, wait it out, or reinstall.

The gulping "accessing your hard-drive" sound is different,
and annoying, but not as horrible as the global script.

I'm on bodhi*, which is kind of like ubuntu.
(*& a few Ubuntu 18's,
and for the robbers, some 18's on externals,
because I'm a computer freak by now,
and can never be without at least 2 distros per machine)

Those above obnoxious hard-drive access problems; persist no matter the distro.

I had a friend of a friend that had been running Linux for some time, this was 1995, and me and my friend wanted to try this.

I borrowed a cd with Yggdrasil from the school I was taking a programming course at.
My friend had an AST 486 DX2 computer. It was a live cd so we booted it up and it took some time on the 2x cd rom.
When X Windows appeared for the first time we just shouted out in the room in excitment.

From that day I was in love with Linux and have never stop using it since.

Later on I installed Slackware on my Olivetti Pentium 75 with no support for the Cirrus Logic graphics card so I spent two years hacking around in clii/bash.

After that I used RedHat for a few years, Suse Linux, Ubuntu and Centos.

At the company that I’ve been working for 22 years I’ve always been able to work with linux systems, I’m a system consultant.
It was not as much linux systems then as it’s now and it’s so great!

Cheers,
Håkan

Not a lot...

From what I can remember, I think the first distro I was given a copy of by the network admin at the school I was attending, was Ubuntu, and I think Kubuntu as well. I do remember that there was nearly always problems when Ubuntu loaded GNOME, so from memory, I think I ditched Ubuntu and tried Kubuntu at that point. I do remember liking KDE, which didn't constantly give me problems, and I haven't looked back since (well ok, KDE 4.x just wasn't ready when it was first released, but it's much better now). I still had Windows XP Home installed as a dual-boot system before I got the components to build my current desktop system, then I got rid of Windows along with the previous desktop I had. And now I only have Linux installed on "bare-metal", particularly since unlike when I first started using Linux, we have better multimedia codec support, and more application software available for Linux.

I do remember trying Ubuntu again some years later, but it's "bug reporting" program kept popping up telling me there was a problem (even though nothing I could see wasn't working), even after I closed the window it would still bring up another one straight after I'd closed the previous one. And I hated it's Unity DE, so I done the distro hop again and haven't looked back.

What I remember most.....?
 

Well,
It was around 20 or 21 years ago, if I remember correctly it was 1998. I installed Red Hat Linux and what I remember the most had to be the stack of floppy disks that was required. I am not sure how many but Debian back then had around 20 disks.

17 floppies for Slackware
 

My first install was back in 95 or 96. I ordered a Slackware by mail an received a stack of 17 floppies. Install went through slowly but smoothly.

No graphical interface.

I then move to Redhat (4.1 or 4.2) and had to buy a separate Xwindow implementation. I am still on Fedora.

In 97, I wrote on the Intranet of the company that Linux would become important, I was overwhelmed by answers saying tht the game was over and the winner was Windows NT, that would go on any system...

I had just purchased a refurbished T430 in great shape except for an old 5400rpm HDD with a corporate copy of windows installed. I was not going to spend money on a new copy of windows. I had some years of experience with Ubuntu on the job doing tech work for a kidney dialysis company and so I started looking at what was available. I was used to imaging new dialysis machines using USB sticks so it was nothing new for me to do the install. PCs are different than dialysis machine PLCs so it took some time to customize my computer but it was an enjoyable experience to be able to get a smooth OS and not pay a lot of money for it. Like many folks, I used Windows because I had to. Now I am retired and free to use Linux on all my PCs.

So, back in 1992, an IBM RS-6000 (not sure of the model, but it was a desktop machine running AIX, the all-out winner of the "worst unix" award.) was dumped in my office, for me to figure out how to use to teach calculus. I knew I needed to learn unix, so I found a student who could set me up with a linux box. This was a 486, running mcc-interim of some version, with a 0.96c kernal. I couldn't boot directly into linux, but had to boot first into Windows 3.1, then warm-boot into linux using the minix boot manager. Then it would load. After a while I managed to program the monitor settings to boot directly into linux, but I had to set the parameters by hand. I fiddled with the numbers, but eventually let the genie out. I could see him leave by the curl of smoke coming from the monitor.

Back then I was only 13 and my dad were heavily influenced by the money maketh value idea, so GNU/Linux was pretty much considered useless/insecure and it was forbidden. However, I still managed to get a blank CD from my English mentor (sorry for being weirdly specific) and burnt Debian Wheezy netinst that just came out that summer. The laptop I was installing uses a Wi-Fi card that requires proprietary firmware so it was very difficult to make Wi-Fi working only using CLI with which I by the time was not familiar (we don't have ethernet). I can also recall I managed to get GRUB to be chained loaded by Windows XP boot loader (NTLDR I believe) to hide my precious Debian from my family LOL.

I'm still using Debian at the moment and TBH it's never disappointed me.

Debian 2.1? CD install
 

It's foggy, but because I had an Apple Quadra 68040 in 98, I had to trash pick for a while, found and cleaned a 8088 (had a 10MG hard drive!) and 286 PCs before finding a 386. I didn't want to install 3.5 floppy after floppy like my wife's co-worker, who installed Yggdrasil. I finally found and bought a bootable Debian CD at the Boston Geek Pride show in '99. Funny, after all that scrounging... And I remember then getting a Red Hat book with a "lifetime subscription" lol. Many of you might get sentimental, but I'm kinda feeling bitter. Never led to paid work, much less a career, not even a fun web site. :rolleyes::banghead:

That the distro I used (came on 3 cd's or dvd's) didn't show Linux in its best light. I'm glad I stumbled accross and tried Slackware. Slackware was the breath of fresh air I was looking for, and while I don't use it anymore, probably the reason Linux stuck.

1993 Slackware Watching the compile was fascinating, yet frightening. Constantly fiddled with everything Linux (Debian be next IIRC) and finally going full Linux with Red Hat around 98-99. Haven't gone back to Windows in our home since.