I used to use redhat, then ubuntu back in their first releases. They were very usable imo, but application management was not existent, you had to download binaries manually or build projects from scratch. This was a time too when most messaging programs were native, and didn’t have linux clients.
I can remember I was able to use Skype via a Pidgin plugin, and it worked smoothly until, you know, Skype was acquired by Microsoft.
…most messaging programs were native, and didn’t have linux clients.
How does that even work?
Mandrake, Slackware and then Gentoo. KDE was the best! Also compiling my own kernels :D Running 2 CRT and one LCD screen with 3 VGA cards was fun. IMs were actually in better shape as you had plugins for every network and could use one native client (Kopete or Pidgin were a thing) to communicate with everyone. Konqueror was totally usable as a browser as sites did not relay on JS, and well integrated in KDE. Plenty of media content shared between friends on disk caddies.
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Very few games :) Otherwise… well Windows95/98 were also not very good, so you had low expectations…
Oh yeah, 90s wasn’t a very good time for Linux gamers. All though it seems a bit better than people give it credit for. I do not know Win95 appears to be quite unstable but it wasn’t that bad.
I used to run Microsoft Office in what was called Win4Lin, as it was the only way to run a proper Windows app when OpenOffice was not enough.
I started off using Slackware 2.0 back in 1996 or so. I can’t believe that younger me not only managed to get Linux installed (all text based, had to partition the hard drive yourself, no automated recommendations, etc) but got it to connect to the internet over dialup modem. I used X11 with really old school window managers such as Fluxbox and Enlightenment. IRC over the terminal, mplayer for watching realmedia videos downloaded off the internet, adding your own user to the cdrom group and having to mount and unmount the cdrom system manually each time. I remember the videocard I was using didn’t get proper Linux drivers until a year and a half after I bought it and by then I’d moved on to the next card because PCs were making major leaps every year back then.
When I discovered Debian and apt-get and how awesome that was at the time, it was pretty miraculous.
Looking back it was pretty neat but modern distributions are 1000% better.
I ran Linux because I had a college roommate who helped me setup on an old computer. Because of the age of the computer, I mostly just operated out of terminal. We were able to get into Gmail and almost any other site with elinks. I used VI to write and save papers. I’d go to the library to print. It was great. When I needed to run anything graphical, I ran IceWM. It really slowed the system down, so I tried not to do that often. My only problem was that the internet had a lot less help threads on it back then and when my roommate moved out, I no longer had him there to help when I had questions or issues, so I gave-up Linux until a bad Windows update about two years ago. I am back and very glad to be back.
