[nspattak]

I still have my first linux cd somewhere.

They came together with the `SAMS RedHat Linux 7.0 Unleased` book I bought as I did not want to go through the same pain I went with my 33600 pstn downloading slackware 7's cd#1 in 14 days.

Cheers RedHat :)

[iso1631]

My first was from a Redhat 5.2 book, some time in the first half of 1999. Alas at the time my SIS6326 wasn't supported in X, at least by default so there was little I could do. In those days internet access wasn't ubiquitous like today -- you could get online, you'd have to use minicom to dial your modem, then background it, then run pppd to get IP up and working, then use lynx to access the internet.

Or dual-boot back to windows, use a browser, find something else to try, then back to linux to try that.

Wasn't really until 6.0 that I started using linux properly, and wasn't until Debian Potato in August 2000 that it became my primary OS.

[eddieroger]

Ugh now I feel old, because my first Linux was a Red Hat on floppies that came tied to a RH 4.X book or something. It was so cool to install on an old Gateway 2000 I had come across, and have my own computer. Hard to believe that for as lost as I was in that shell on day one, I now spend so much time in one, sometimes from a computer that fits in my pocket.

[zhte415]

I remember coming down an escalator around 23 years ago in an Amazon or Amazon-like bookstore seeing someone pick up a Redhat box in its distinctive colouring from behind the cashier desk and thinking "They're onto something."