Installing Linux like it's 1998

19 thoughts on “Installing Linux like it's 1998”

• Thanks again to Harry’s! Click here https://Harrys.com/ActionRetro to redeem your Trial Set for just $5!

• I used RedHat 7-9 for years… loved it… it ran many of my Windows games in WINE better than Windows did… not the latest and greatest, of course… but the ones I played anyway…

  I REALLY miss massive user manuals and having ALL the instructions, and help stuff, and references. I HATE this trend to "just google it"… There is NO substitution for a good manual from the source for the core necessary info.

• Slackware 1.1.2 from February 2004 would be cool….

• The fact you didn't get LI on boot is a miracle! Every time I've tried old Linux on peroid hardware, LILO always fails.

• My first Linux distro. I installed on my Thinkpad 600 and was happy as a clam when I got X working in 256 colors.

• you have 44 thousand views in just one day, this is huge !

• you made it so simple, why were so many people afraid of Linux in 1998

• Wow. Takes me back! The Sony was the GOAT then.

• Worst OS experience ever…RH 3 or 4 I forgot but it put me off Linux for many many years… the mouse didn't work, the sound didn't work.. glitches and no games… yea I uninstalled quickly and went back to DOS & Windows for the games.

• There's two things I would like retro Linux for (as they can't be reasonably run on modern Linux). And if that sounds crazy to other Linux users…

  1) The Lighting screen saver from xscreensaver
  2) GTK+/GTK2 skins!! (SO much more variety)

• Oh man, I have a REDHAT 5.2 cd-rom on my wall right now. I spent so much time installing Redhat on my IBM Thinkpad, with neomagix video card. and getting X to even work on that. Then /dev/sda4 for my Zip100 parallel drive. I ran redhat for years, on most the factory servers when I was in IT. way better than the NT servers I replaced. Then RAID when those 500gb SATA drives first came out. and gigabit networking. DLT tape array, I ran everything on linux, and win2000 for the slower shop computers, bar code scanners, oh man. the labels were fun. just beep for job travelers. and all those crystal reports. ahh memories.

• I remember buying and installing Mandrake Linux in the late 90s, which was based on Red Hat and used K desktop. Would love to see that running again.

• Some early Linux Distros to Try include Slackware, Mandrake, Suse, Yggdrasil Plug and Play Linux (Early live CD Linux), Corel Linux, and Caldera Linux.

• Back in 90’s, you could buy all sorts of different Linux distros on bookstores in the computer books section. Typically you got a completed guide to using that distro in the box along with one or more an install CD-ROM’s and a Linux boot floppy. These Linux manuals where about more then just installing the Linux distro and covered all sorts of aspects to the Linux and include software. They might have been written by the developer of that distro or it might be written by a computer book publishers like SAM’s or O’Riley Books or whatever and they simply include a copy of the distro on CD-ROM (as it’s open source). Thus it was sometimes they case that several different publishers might offer a guidebook and install CD-ROM for a certain Linux Distro, such as Ubuntu or Slackware or whatever. These box Linux distro guidebook and CD-ROM packages were not really intended for novice computer users, especially since 90’s Linux wasn’t always easy to install.

  Speaking from experience, I tried installing Red Hat, Mandrake, and Suse, back in the 90’s and had issue with drivers for certain devices like 56k Win modems, Laptop sound chips, etc. and I too ate least once wiped a hard drive unintentionally trying to install a Linux. All of my early Linux distros came from Linux guidebooks (with Linux CD-ROM) bought from a discount bookstores. Linux installation back then wasn’t always smooth, especially on laptops. Driver support is just so much better these days in Linux.

• Back when Red Hat was cool…

• Great times,Still got my old CaseLogic 200+ somewhere with a bunch of old Windows, Mac OS & Linux install discs and a couple I made and burned with multiple OS installers and a bunch of utilities like antivirus scanners and partition tools etc.

• I liked Mandrake Linux back in the day… and when did FreeBSD/OpenBSD come out? Are they that old?

  it would be cool to see D-mn Small Linux running on that hardware.
  What about Yggdrasil?

• I am running X since KDE 1.0 beta. It came on a cd disk with a German PC Magazine. The distro was a SuSe. You had to know the RAMDAC for installation. I had a friend who knew where to find this. And in those days I thought a zombie is a movie character 🙂but I learned quickly.

• I first installed RH 5.2 on an old P-166 Packard Bell with 64 mb. RAM and a 4 gb.. hard drive (mainly out of desperation with Win 95 crashing twice a week). The learning curve was crazy, but eventually I got pretty proficient with command line stuff, and later on, actually got a working GUI desktop. It was actually pretty impressive how well Redhat ran on that old box, and I would use it mainly for downloading large files and .iso's from AOL, and some local BBS's, since it wouldn't run out of memory and crash after 12 hours of continuous downloading on a 56k modem connection.😄 Ah, the good old days…

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