Linux is 34 years old today
tomshardware.com
tomshardware.com
I had my first Linux exposure in late 1992 or early 1993 with the SLS bootable floppy distribution. I started putting it to use almost immediately to do some of my CS coursework from my bedroom instead of always going to the terminal rooms on campus.
I think I started using Slackware later in 1993 when I was ready to go from floppy to HDD installation. I found a computer lab, accessible to undergraduates, where I could FTP the floppy images over the campus network and write them to floppy. It took multiple trips but was much faster than trying to do it via a dial-up SLIP connection.
It was really really great. Then everything went downhill with glibc/eglibc split and mandatory ELF binary format. [same stuff could no longer boot at 2MB of RAM].
Although, I run it around 1999/2000 :P [then Slackware 7.1, 8.1, and NetBSD 1.6.1].
Shitty times but great software and hardware. [it was fun to try boot/install system at 4MB of ram :) ]
I once installed 7.1 at a modern machine and I was able to compile the default kernel in like 14 seconds instead of 45 minutes with 486DX2.