I remember finding an early ubuntu CD just lying in the street. Took it home, and I'll be damned if it didn't turn my ailing laptop right around. Got 5 more years out of that thing.
this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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Wow an Ubuntu CD just casually laying on the streets
Just laying there.
In the street?
It's more likely than you think
In the street. Like the gutter.
It had like a cardboard case covering it, though.
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Friend of mine once found a frozen-over cd of "Shaggy - Wasn't Me" in his backyard, and after cleaned and thawed, it worked no problem. I guess someone really hated that single?
Wasn't me
I remember getting a copy of linux from my friends at a local LAN party (though it was tokenring party for us) around β96. 2 floppy disks. Iβm 99% sure it was slackware.
I told you it's not a LAN party, it's a TokenRing party!
Hah, yeah I got a Debian floppy and then tried to install packages over DSL. Somehow it didn't immediately kill my interest in Linux, eventually ran OpenBSD as my server for a while.
I started with floppies too, when I bought my copy of Conectiva Linux 3.0. It came with a hefty manual that was instrumental for a newbie like me.
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Whats this meme called, I need to post some things
It forced me to learn. It took me weeks to get X configured and working correctly. I had an internet subscription and a modem but it also took weeks to get it to work on Linux. My distribution came on a CD from a magazine but some dependencies were not included, so I had to reboot under Windows to download a missing package, reboot on Linux and try again, then need to get the next dependency. We came a long long way from having to specify the vertical refresh rate of the monitor in xf86config.
Starting with a French version of Slackware was brutal but I had nothing else.
Be 12 in 1998
Literally just ecstatic that I could wiggle around a little X on a blank screen after giving up trying to load a window manager.
Pop in a BeOS live CD to feel like I did something cool
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Started on Slackware too. I remember building my own kernel and having to make sure it fit on a 1.44MB floppy.
make menuconfig
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Okay, I finished installing Debian. Why am I only seeing an X formed cursor flying around in nothing? What the hell is a Xorg?!
me after installing Ubuntu because it was the only other OS I'd ever heard of, because I accidentally nuked my Windows Vista install by trying to overclock the CPU in a Gateway laptop:
Similarly, my XP install just died and I didnβt have a copy of Windows to reinstall. Gnome 2 taught me computers donβt have to look or feel boring and the terminal taught me they werenβt scary.
Learned a lot that first year.
hehe, mine was Ubuntu too. I thought I'd fucked up the emachines tower my parents just bought me.
us emachines and gateway kids grew up to be lightweight distro enthusiasts
like now my laptop has 16 gigs RAM, quad core fuck even knows GHz processor, and a GPU but if a process starts using >2% of my resources i will
-killall -9
it from orbit
Dude I remember when live booting knoppix was impressive. Hell my intro to Linux was mandrake. We have so many great distros and documentation available now itβs crazy.
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Why does this capture that feeling so well lol
CD? Hah! Luxury!
We 'ad to install off floppy disk! And the disks had bad sectors and the drive kept grinding them down! Then we 'ad to build the kernel wi' two bare hands! And the only window manager we 'ad would spontaneously delete itself and we'd 'ave to start all over at 2am, half an hour before we finished the last install!
My first was SuSE 6 or something like that, back in the 90s. And my mom freaked out, because the PC didn't boot Windows95 anymore. And I had a huge book, telling me what to do. It came with the CDs.
Iirc Suse used to give away previous versions to highschools, so probably yours was running Yast with a lot of software included.
this is truly a formative memory
I remember first learning about linux OS and how to create a Linux USB installer using rufus to bypass the password my parents had put on the windows side. In those days there was no eifi boot loader lock you could access the files just by trying out the new OS you had in your USB. LOL.
My first system was hacked so fast. Thank you RedHat for defaulting all services on.
Never really thought about it, but that first time exploring after using XP/2000 really did kinda feel like a backrooms kind of experience. It's all so familiar, but nothing is in the right place.
Seems like the experience difference is less so these days, what with everything being mostly web apps or mobile.
This was knoppix for me!
Definitely describes my switch back in 2008 when canonical still sent out Ubuntu CDs for free in the mail. We had dial up so it was faster for them to mail me a CD than to try and download the image myself.
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I am in this picture and I don't like it.
This is me on my first PC that I built myself... and Windows XP lacked the S-ATA drivers. Suse worked fine, tho.
My first experience with Linux was trying to install TurboLinux 6 from a CD I got at a HAM Fest.
Short story shorter, I didn't successfully use Linux the first time until I tried a different distro (probably Debian?) a few years later.
I want to powerwash that hallway.
Hm. I started using Linux (Ubuntu) somewhat around 2007. And I was quite fascinated how flashy it was with all those desktop effects compared to the rather boring XP. Only problem I had back in the day was wifi, but I didn't play a lot of games at that time.
But yeah, once I solved that wifi problem I had internet, so there was a difference.
Damn that was my exact experience
Yes, with Mandriva. I had just switched from 98 to Xp and was like βNo, no, no, this sucks!β.
Mandriva looked so nice in comparison. But no internet, it just wouldnβt connect and I didnβt know how to troubleshoot it.
Honestly there are probably very few people who can troubleshoot dial up on Linux.