Oh my, many memories flooding back from my early linux days. This linux discussion caused me to go look at Slackware's history so I could somewhat pinpoint a year when I began using linux. Slackware begin in 1993, so that's about when I began using it. A professor at the university, where I was studying EET, loaned me 110 3.5-inch HD floppies containing the Slackware distribution. At the time, CDROM drives were very expensive and I don't remember seeing any/many computers on campus with them, and I certainly did not have one in my home computer. I had a 80286-based system at home so I could not run linux at home, and therefore installed it initially on a 80386-based machine in the ham radio shack. I was immediately compiling streamlined kernels to get as much horsepower out of those systems. A short time later I ended up acquiring a 80386-based machine at home, and have been running at home ever since.

Of course, this discussion also brings back memories of my early days on the internet; before HTTP/world-wide-web. Gopher, WAIS, telnetting to MUDs, FTP sites, and so much more. In a way, the advent of HTTP caused the internet experience to be limited (man, that sounds like an incorrect statement!)