Re: [Hampshire] How long have you been using Linux?

john lewis wrote:
> Whilst looking for something else I found an invoice dated 1 Nov 1994
> for a copy of 'DR Linux' and another invoice dated 27 Nov 1994 for a
> subscription to 'Linux Journal'
>
> So my use of Linux certainly dates from 1994 even if I can't prove I
> used it earlier but I did buy a copy of 'Linux FT' in Aug 1995
> (all the above from Lasermoon in Fareham) which suggests I was
> using another distro before then which I am fairly certain was
> installed from floppy disks.
>
> I swapped to RedHat 5.0 in Apr 1998 with the purchase of a box set
> from The Linux Emporium for £40. I also got a copy of StarOffice
> 4.0 the same month and this cost me £10. Wordperfect 8 arrived in
> Jun 1999.
>
> Then followed Mandrake 7.2 in Jan 2001updated to ver 8.0 in Dec
> 2001.
>
> I then got Debian Woody, 7 CD-ROM set, in Feb 2002 thus ending
> forever my need to buy Linux software :-)
>

1992 I downloaded the beta, and was astonished how well it ran on the
old 286 machine I had spare at the time with a 20Mb HDD and 640K ram.
I'd just taken delivery of a beta source release of AT&T SVR4 at the
time by way of my employer, and was struggling to build it on something,
but there was no way it would have built or even run on that 286
platform then. At time time I remember thinking 300Mb disks were big ;^)=

1995, I proposed using Slackware Linux on a bunch of old 386 PC's
destined for the skip as DHCP/DNS servers for a client who had a total
nightmare with their static IP addresses at the time. I remember the
senior IT manager asking incredulously "How can that box serve all these
DHCP/DNS requests? What if one breaks?" my reply was "The performance
will be fine. Break? You have 100's of them. Keep at least one on a
shelf in each location, preinstalled. If it dies, just plug the
replacement in and let the broken one hit the skip as planned
originally." Took a while for the penny to drop, but they did it and it
worked. Saved them a bundle.

Cheers,

jfk