[miquong]

Lindows was my first Linux distro c. 1999. It was my first year at college, majoring in Business Administration, living on campus with internet speeds above 56kbps for the first time. Trawling through the internet at that time, I stumbled on a (likely bootleg) Lindows installer somewhere and fell down the rabbit hole.

Looking back, I realize now I’d been a self-denying computer geek before then but for whatever reason Lindows, it’s wacky installer, dual boot support, and fortunate hardware compatibility gave me the right nudge at the right time to send me on a lifetime of hacking.

Almost 25 years later, most as a professional software engineer, I have a completely biased affection for this strange OS.

Thanks for sharing!

[guestbest]

Even though it became Lindpire, the spiritual successor to lightweight and windows like was LXDE and Lubuntu.

It was Slackware that pioneered the loadlin boot loader installed on a dos partition that I think li does/linspire picked-up. This was all gradually killed off by ntfs and windows 2k

It was a magical time for Linux with konqueror as a viable desktop browser and galeon as the best browser available until IBM started sponsoring the project to make it like epiphany. Eventually konqueror was absorbed into WebKit for safari, proprietary flash made browsing on Linux unnecessary difficult (gnash came later), and Microsoft lawsuits were customary towards all friendly UX not on a Mac.

[agumonkey]

linspire who was using ocaml and then haskell, a rare thing at the time http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1506

[anthk]

Magical expect for compiling MPlayer by hand and doing voodoo to get the TV Tuner working. But XawTV and AleVT were cool.

[heavyset_go]

Like 20 years ago I was obsessed with getting MythTV running with a TV tuner, but kept running into driver issues and low spec'd hardware. It was still magical to me, though.

[anthk]

TVtime worked faster but if didn't have LIRC support, I can't remember. If it did, it was to setup, much more lightweight but without recording support.

Nowadays Kodi/XBMC it's the spiritual sucessor.

[WillAdams]

Very fond of lubuntu, which I managed to get installed on NTFS in a directory on my C:drive allowing switching back-and-forth between it and my Windows install, and really wish that that was still a thing.

[guestbest]

The focus turned to virtualization

[WillAdams]

Yeah, that doesn't work for me, since my machines aren't that fast, and I really, really want stylus support which wants hardware access.

[guestbest]

What are some good applications which require stylus support on Linux?

[WillAdams]

Annotating and marking up PDFs.

Drawing in apps such as Inkscape and Arita.

Working up 3D models using OpenSCAD Graph Editor.

Taking notes w/ a pen in class using Write by Stylus Labs or Journal.

[girvo]

Mine was DamnSmallLinux and Slax. I wasn't allowed to install Linux on my family's computer of course, so live CD's were my go-to. Though once I scrounged up enough spare parts from family friends to build a PC, I then got to learn how to force Slax to "install" to a hard drive, which was quite a challenge for me, as it really didn't want to be run off non-live-install media haha

[tommica]

Oh shit, DSL - that was my jam too, felt so special, even though had no clue what I was doing :D

Edit: The site is still alive! http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

[_fat_santa]

My first distro was Ubuntu 8.04 Server. Kind of funny because I was in high school back then and decided to install Ubuntu on my machine, coming from the Windows world, I thought that it would be cool to run the server version, thinking it would be like Windows Server 2008 (with a desktop). After installing I was shocked to find out that I had no desktop to work with, spent the next 3 days figuring out how to connect my machine to the internet and then eventually downloaded Gnome. Now almost 15 years later I still use Ubuntu as my daily driver, typing this on 22.04

[heavyset_go]

I bought those business card shaped CD-R disks just so I could keep a copy of DSL with me before flash drives were popular.

[dopeboy]

Many here share that journey. For me, it was printing out the Gentoo "hard mode" installation guide where you compiled _everything_ from scratch, including the kernel.

Didn't make it but it taught me the terminal and some foundational concepts in an OS. Set me down the path of linux (ubuntu - bit easier to install) and hacking.

[jve]

With my limited exposure to linux when I was a kid, I didn't understand why I needed to or what those `configure; make; make install` commands did. It was until very later when I knew what compiling was or that make is actually a tool to run arbitrary commands.

[senectus1]

oh gods, the many many hours I "wasted" recompiling my gentoo installation trying to squeeze more performance out of my gaming machine and prove to all my gaming naysaying friends that linux is no good for gaming. This was back in the VoodooFX days...

fond memories prior to having a wife.

[nurettin]

I never got there. My poor amdv4 couldn't even finish compiling the kernel without overheating. But I learned a lot about reducing kernel size.

[belthesar]

My first mentor in Linux was a sysadmin at the hometown ISP, and my initiation was compiling Gentoo from Stage 1 (the "hard mode" install) on a dual socket P3 700mHz system. I've never done it ever again, but that foundational experience helped me immensely.

[miquong]

Oh that was the holy grail. I also never got there… had to settle for the lower levels of Gentoo purity.

[shaky-carrousel]

I did it. Worst part was compiling KDE in an Athlon XP. Took days.

[int_19h]

For me at least, the longest part was compiling OpenOffice.

[oblio]

Went on a weekend trip. Started the OOO compilation, allowed it to also install some dependencies like Blackdown (?) Java.

Decided, hey, might was well time it, for fun.

I came back 2 days later, it had just finished. The compilation took almost 2 full days :-)

[Tommstein]

I did it with a 300 MHz Celeron. You heard me.

[TylerE]

I did multiple times on a 900-something mhz Athlon. Back when compile everything was the only option.

[Tommstein]

> For me, it was printing out the Gentoo "hard mode" installation guide where you compiled _everything_ from scratch, including the kernel.

There was another way to install Gentoo?

[oblio]

Yes, there were 3 stages, I think. Stage 3 was with some binaries throw in there. Stage 1 required recompiling the compiler at some point.

[Tommstein]

Oh shit, I remember the stages now, not much about them though. Did you really install Gentoo if you didn't compile the compiler you used to compile the rest of the system from the ground up though?

[belthesar]

I'm not sure if this is possible anymore, but for a while, there was a way to copy over the compiled base system from the disk instead of compiling it all from scratch. Running your first emerge -vaDu world might end up recompiling everything anyway, depending on the age of the ISO, but you didn't have to do any compiling to get a base system deployed.

[genewitch]

i was going to comment. I think even genkernel is compiled, not that i touch the stuff.

[xattt]

Also quirky was their Lindows Rock: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QSdRTOh2jeA

[mseri]

Do you remember the one they released when they changed name to linspire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIYtKHnU4mQ memorable

[miquong]

Never knew so many levels of parody and irony could be encapsulated in one flash animation!

[miquong]

Oops… it was WinLinux 2000[1] that came first for me and Lindows shortly after. Apparently the naming permutations worked for at least one person

[1] https://archive.org/details/win-linux-2000

[n3storm]

Lindows was released on august 2001 (in case you like to have your memories properly ordered)

[miquong]

Yeah it must have been later than I remember. Even if it was a bootleg beta I found, it would have been 2000 at the earliest.