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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

My first Linux distribution was Slackware 2.0, bundled with Linux Unleashed book in 1995's Summer.

I had to copy all the floppy images from the CD-ROM into the hard disk and then boot the installation from floppy, as my IDE CD-ROM still wasn't supported by the Linux kernel 1.0.9, and my Trident card was downgraded to 800x600, as X couldn't do 1024x768 with it.

Happy birthday Slackware.

EDIT: kernel version.

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I had the same book and Slackware 2.0 was also my first distro. I think the book is still in some box at my parent's house.

I remember trying to figure out how to compile the kernel for everything in my desktop.

That must have been painfully slow but rewarding if and when everything finally worked! I definitely was spoiled trying Fedora Core 6 on a Pentium III with 512MB of RAM, a SoundBlaster Live!, an ATI Rage 128 graphics card, a WD Caviar 40GB IDE HDD, 2x IDE optical drives (a SONY DVD-ROM drive and a SAMSUNG CD-RW drive) and a 3Com Ethernet PCI card without any major (if any) hiccups! (The machine had a 3Com 56k PCI modem but we had just switched to SBCGlobal ADSL (either 128, 256 or 512kbps down) in 2006 which I used to download the live CD ISO(s). I remember being very confused that our 10/100 Linksys Ethernet hub was now being used to distribute the always-on internet between our family desktop and my laptop in addition to sharing files over SMB / Windows File Sharing / Network Neighborhood.)

Spoiled indeed.

The computer I used Slackware 2.0 on, was a Pentium 90 with 32MB RAM, 512MB HDD, Trident with a 1024x768 max, IDE CD-CDROM and Sound Blaster. Alongside a 14" monitor.

Getting Linux and BSD stuff had to be via Walnut Creek CD-ROMs, as going to the university computer lab and splitting across multiple floppies didn't scale.

I also think I had that book, or another one that was 4 inches or so thick..

X11 MODELINES, ipfwadm, BNC network cards, and PPP, tcl/tk shell scripting..

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