[hnbear]

My first Linux experience was very similar, except graphics card driven.

My neighbor told me to try Linux, and my computer at the time was a Mac (old PPC 603e cpu), which I’d put a PC Voodoo3 in and flashed it with a Max bios. Couldn’t afford a Mac card, PC ones second hand were much cheaper.

Anyway, the basic X frame buffer was so slow I needed accelerated 2D. The Voodoo3 driver was available as a patch to 2.2.18 and I was on 2.2.16. So, had to learn to patch and compile a kernel as one of my first acts of learning Linux.

But it got me accelerated 2D which made X bearable, so I could use KDE (2) or Gnome (1.4, still my fav).

After that it was enough to get me to build my next desktop as a Linux PC through college.