[lug] Happy 30th, Linux

[Steve Litt]

Tommaso Curto said on Mon, 30 Aug 2021 10:50:08 -0600

>I started using Linux in 2001 with Debian 2.2 (Potato) and the amazing
>Mandrake Linux. Good times!

Mandrake! How fondly I remember that distro.

In 1998 I busted into Linux with Red Hat 5.1, but it quickly became
clear I wasn't going to base a Daily Driver Desktop (DDD) on Red Hat
5.1 or the superior 5.2. Next I tried Caldera Linux. Not much better
than RH. Then I tried Corel. Good enough, but they went to the dark
side. Then I tried Mandrake (with KDE of all things), which suited my
specifications for my DDD. When I switched from Windows to Linux in
March 2001, I used Mandrake.

Back then, Mandrake was a little shaky and prone to mishaps, but
of course much less so than Windows, and IMHO back then it was the best
distro for recent converts to Linux/Unix.

Somewhere in the early 00's I replaced KDE with a smaller wm/de (Window
Manager/Desktop Environment) to make it more stable and less likely to
swap and thrash on large tasks. By about 2007, other distros had caught
up and I switched to Ubuntu, which I also liked a lot.

In early 2014 I found Ubuntu's training wheels too restrictive so I
switched to Debian, unfortunately just as the systemd thing happened.
so in 2015, by this time no longer a recent convert, I switched to the
sans-systemd Void Linux, which I've been extremely pleased with ever
since.

If it hadn't been for Mandrake, there's a real possibility I'd have
never used Linux as my DDD.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques