Brett_Cameron
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
I started with linux in 92 when Torvalds posted the 0.10a kernel on compuserve. It was a little rough back then, it just booted to blinking cursor. You had to edit the kernel with a hex editor and change some bits to tell where the boot device was located. To get a system, each piece had to be downloaded individually and most was in source code and had to be compiled before use. The kernel, C compiler and a few other basic tools were maintained by individuals and distributed as binaries, then a system could be built from those. There was an earlier system called minix that sort of was the inspiration for linux.
Slackware was one of the first all in one "distros" ( it was a branch/cleanup of SLS linux ), Redhat came along, Toms Root Boot (tomsrtbt) was a tiny distro that fit on two floppies. Lot's of other came and went. I built my own system for many years ( roll your own ), there was users group for DIY linux projects. The XFree86 project ported the windowing system over around 95 or so. One of the nice things with linux is the GUI is not integrated into kernel and you can use whatever GUI you choose ( there are many )
So I have been with linux since it's inception. I guess the one drawback is lack of software products people are used to like Quicken, but there are many opensource projects to replace most apps.
I remember you talking about it at work. A couple of lifetimes ago.