1994 and my friend had a harebrained scheme to start an ISP and we needed to learn Linux to run it. 75 floppies later I was hooked and Free Software and Linux have been my computing lifeblood ever since. Thanks Slackware!
I installed it in the same time frame running a pre-1.x kernel. I was in a dorm with no Ethernet and the school only had 1200 baud modems so I had to FTP onto floppies from a computer lab. That earned me my first and only DOS boot sector virus.
Wow! 75 floppies! That sounds like a lot! Was that Slackware 1.x? 2.x? And this sounds like a very interesting story: can you elaborate on any architecture details, equipment, getting other ISPs to peer?
It was Slackware 2.1 and the 3.5 floppy disks came in 3 collections (1 required and 2 optional). If I remember right they were the base OS, X-windows and development files. As for the ISP, that idea ended up flopping (heh) and never made it out of the "fun discussions" phase.
I guess not unlike the software sets [0] Slackware seems to still use these days. Hearing this definitely makes me understand how spoiled we are to have reliable and inexpensive flash media, optical disks and network connections! I imagine just getting the base OS set downloaded, imaged and installed was a chore! And that's too bad to hear about the ISP idea. I've heard of stories of how one could run a small and viable ISP out of a garage or small office with descent wiring and a bank of modems. I'm glad a few providers still exist like Sonic.net, Xmission Internet and Panix.com and hope with the way things are going with funding for wiring and Internet connectivity (at least in the USA) we might be in such an era again in the future (hopefully!)