Linux before the Internet revolution.

[TeoBigusGeekus]

I was just wondering comrades.
How were things in the linux world before the internet times?
I mean, nowadays, we have full internet support (i.e. updates), fora to find answers in, Google (yeah!!!), etc. and still find it difficult sometimes to keep our systems stable and running.
What was it like to be a linux user say 10 or 15 years ago?
(Linux historians needed)

[Grant A.]

Linux was started in 1992.

The Internet spans before that.

[TeoBigusGeekus]

Linux was started in 1992.

The Internet spans before that.

Yeah, but its use wasn't widespread.

[Sand & Mercury]

I've always wondered about that. I'd say it was very different but with the same basic principles and methods as we have today, people hanging around and communicating through email and BBSes and that kind of thing. I speculate that could be why you still see Linux/OSS developers still keeping tabs on projects and each other through the age-old mailing list system, when so many other methods of communication over the internet have popped up since.

[CharmyBee]

There was an internet before the 'world wide web'. BBSes were dialed, emails were sent, etc. It was the peak of maturity, too, and anonymous opportunities were rare (unlike today). Linux started existing well after the "BBS revolution".

[TeoBigusGeekus]

It must have been hard...
Trying to use Linux today is not a big deal, but imagine having to set up your system say in 1995. No broadband internet, sometimes no internet at all, very few magazines even mentioning Linux - if any, primitive linux kernels, etc.

[Mike'sHardLinux]

I agree with Grant. The Internet has been around a long time. Before I got on the Internet, between 1989 and 1992, I was on Compuserve and later, AOL. I also spent a lot of time on BBSes during those years, and even ran one myself for a while.

I discovered Linux at the same time I was first getting on the Internet. It seems like it was around 1993, maybe 1994. I think it was Slackware. At that time, the file system layout did not make mush sense to me, so I didn't do much with it. The version I had was run from 2 floppies, IIRC. I don't remember too much else about Linux at that time.

[Marlonsm]

I don't think you got his question...

I think he was asking about how was Linux before forums like this one and without everybody having access to online guides.

[TeoBigusGeekus]

I don't think you got his question...

I think he was asking about how was Linux before forums like this one and without everybody having access to online guides.

Yes!

[Sand & Mercury]

I don't think you got his question...

I think he was asking about how was Linux before forums like this one and without everybody having access to online guides.
Yeah, the internet was around in the early 90s and even the late 80s but it wasn't until later on that it was really embraced by the mainstream. I believe that's what our OP was on about.

[CharmyBee]

Big manuals were your only way out if you were offline.

[ddrichardson]

Actually, it wasn't that bad. There wasn't as wide a range of equipment to support and everything was done via usenet and email which was fine though not so instantaneous.

Generally buy the time I got involved in '94 people's biggest headache was writing their xf86config file (the precursor to xorg.conf) and working around services like Compuserve and their resistance to Linux.

[Dimitriid]

Maybe it wasn't "that bad" but I just couldn't figure it out.

I remember I installed Redhat 6.0 after being tired of abyssal system stability back then ( windows 98 ). Of course back then I was one of the first customers to ever get something better than a dial up connection which was an ISDN connection.

Even with that connection and the blasting fast 13kbps transfer speeds it took me a good while to download Redhat. I installed it, process was straight forward enough. But when I had my dual boot installed I had to go to windows, find help on how to configure my ISDN modem, write it all down by hand on paper ( since I didn't know I could mount windows file system ) then give em a go on redhat. I tried for the longest time to no avail to make the stupid ISDN modem work and in the process it burnt twice ( the modem the ISP provided was the worst piece of hardware I ever had to use, they had to change it for me like 4 or 5 times since it would just burn down every so often ).

So I decided to remove redhat since I never managed to get an internet connection to work on it. I knew that my mbr records would have to be restored and had the command prompt ready on my windows start up floppy drive to give it a go....only to find out my floppy drive had physical damage.

A week later I finally gave up and called a friend to bring me a working floppy drive which I finally used to restore MBR and boot to windows 98...which gave me a blue screen like 40 minutes after I was finally back up again.

Those were not pleasant memories, but it was really not an issue with Linux and more of an issue with the lowest of the low quality of no name hardware I used to own, which had driver support that makes ATI look fantasti. Stupid winmodems and greek-made ISDN modems.

[fjf]

No internet....loooong manuals, impossible to understand if you are not a tech person...I couldnt install it and make it run reasonably well (I think it was red hat 5). Now, ubuntu and internet are a whole different story.

[TheNosh]

Linux was started in 1992.

The Internet spans before that.

not exactly an important difference, but the first version of the kernel was uploaded in late 1991, sept 17 to be exact (i only remember the date because it's also my birthday)

[TeoBigusGeekus]

So linux back then wasn't for the average user - non technical geek, right?

P.S. Greek modems are the best:popcorn:

[CharmyBee]

So linux back then wasn't for the average user - non technical geek, right?

P.S. Greek modems are the best:popcorn:
Nope. Linux was primarily dominant for servers in the 90s. Gaming on linux then was limited to pretty much some old x games, the roguelikes, and Doom, Quake and Abuse.

[SunnyRabbiera]

So linux back then wasn't for the average user - non technical geek, right?

P.S. Greek modems are the best:popcorn:

Yeh back in the early years the desktop was not A priority for linux, it wasnt until Mandriva came out that linux started to become desktop oriented in 1998.
You know its amazing how far linux has come in that time, the nightmare stories of linux taking days to just install it are practically gone.
Between 98 and the time I started linux in 2004 linux had already made many leaps and between then and now I have seen linux become a powerful force to be dealt with.
Its the main reason why I say that Linux has made more progress in 4 years that Apple and Winodws have done in 10, sure add it all together adds up to over 10 years but look how much progress has been made in a span of just 4 of those years...
The first six years of linux not much happened for it, but from 98 to 2004 linux had started to come out of the days of compiling and command line, more GUI's and less hassle for the newcomer.
Then during the last 5 years now that I have been using linux more progress has been made, most of it from distros like Ubuntu who have taken the linux desktop to the next level.

[TBOL3]

Ehem...

Usenet.

That's all I have to say. (That, and home-brew clubs).

[ddrichardson]

Nope. Linux was primarily dominant for servers in the 90s. Gaming on linux then was limited to pretty much some old x games, the roguelikes, and Doom, Quake and Abuse.

As I remember it and YMMV the only game anyone was playing was Doom and that ran fine under Linux.

PC gaming was still not particularly popular, in Scotland anyway. The golden era of the SNES and the dawn of the PlayStation were where we were gaming.

[rookcifer]

Yeah, the internet was around in the early 90s and even the late 80s but it wasn't until later on that it was really embraced by the mainstream. I believe that's what our OP was on about.

I first got on the net in 1988. And it was around before that. The first remote connection over a packet switching network was between two universities in 1969. Google ARPAnet.

Lot's of people confuse the WWW for the Internet. They're not the same.

As for the OP's question. The answer is simple: the only people using Linux in the early 90's were mainly coders and people who didn't need support forums. In other words, mainly just those developing it used it.

[perce]

I started using Linux in 1996 at the University. There was Internet and the web, but it was mostly a university thing, like Linux was too. As far as I remember Debian was installed in 1997 and that already had packages, but the installer was dselect which had a terrible interface. Luckily I wasn't an administrator, but I saw my friends spending hours choosing packages one by one. As far as I understood the hardest part was configuring X: in 2001 Debian was still asking the vertical refresh rate of the screen.

As a user I'd say it was not that nightmer one could imagine: yes you had to move around files by command line, but learning the few commands you needed was fast, there was already a graphical environment, and multitasking worked fine. And especially, do you remember what Windows people had at that time? Win 95 had just come out, and we were already playing on-line multiplayer games! The only real problem was people sending word attachment. The real hard times came a few years later with the browsers war. When Netscape started loosing the war it lagged behind in features, and web designers were supporting only IE.

[ddrichardson]

I first got on the net in 1988. And it was around before that. The first remote connection over a packet switching network was between two universities in 1969. Google ARPAnet.

Lot's of people confuse the WWW for the Internet. They're not the same.

As for the OP's question. The answer is simple: the only people using Linux in the early 90's were mainly coders and people who didn't need support forums. In other words, mainly just those developing it used it.
Indeed some were still using JANET (in the UK anyway) up until 1994 - certainly we were at Napier University in Edinburgh - I remember the confusion as we moved from uk.ac.napier.dcs to dcs.napier.ac.uk.

[Faolan84]

What do you consider the "Internet revolution"? For me that was around 2001 when broadband started getting popular. Yeah, the Internet was awesome in 1999, but for most people it wasn't any faster than it was in 1992 and the same stuff that was done on Compuserve continued to at large scale until Broadband became affordable. Heck, Up until 2005, I was still buying box sets of SuSE Professional, which at the time was the best you could get and the manuals were incredible quality.

The fact is that in 1999, most people couldn't obtain even if the wanted it because most electronic stores didn't carry it and because the downloads were so large and so slow it would take over a month to download the installation disc.

[cariboo]

I started with Redhat back in 1998, dial up was the only way you could connect to the internet where I live, broadband hadn't come to my ctiy yet. If we wanted to use a Linux distribution, we bought one in a box. I still have the original Redhat 5.2, Mandrake 6 & 7 and Xandros boxes and manuals. I actually didn't buy Xandros, I got it for free because I was one of the beta testers.

[koenn]

The fact is that in 1999, most people couldn't obtain even if the wanted it because most electronic stores didn't carry it and because the downloads were so large and so slow it would take over a month to download the installation disc.
Computer magazines in those days often came with a linux CD, so people who were interested enough to look at magazines in stores could decide to buy the mag and get the CD with it.
I still have RedHat, Suse and Caldera CD's from back then.
And the Suse manuals were indeed spectacular.

[albinootje]

How were things in the linux world before the internet times?

Well, I don't know about that, but when I started with Linux around 1995 I ordered an InfoMagic Linux cdrom-pack (3 or 4 cdroms).
And after that I used to chat on the FidoNet international Linux group. So I was very restricted in downloading software at that time :)

I think that the internet was and is very important for the development of Linux.

Luckily the AOL network and MicroSoftNetwork didn't become more popular than the Internet itself ;-)

[Faolan84]

Computer magazines in those days often came with a linux CD, so people who were interested enough to look at magazines in stores could decide to buy the mag and get the CD with it.
I still have RedHat, Suse and Caldera CD's from back then.
And the Suse manuals were indeed spectacular.

Which computer magazines were those? I remember PC Mag (or should I say rag) and ComputerWorld, but those have always been sub par. And I don't recall ever seeing any Linux magazines in bookstores in the 90s either :(

[Sinkingships7]

Ehem...

Usenet.

That's all I have to say. (That, and home-brew clubs).

*Sighs nostalgically*

[koenn]

Which computer magazines were those? I remember PC Mag (or should I say rag) and ComputerWorld, but those have always been sub par. And I don't recall ever seeing any Linux magazines in bookstores in the 90s either :(
Don't remember. I wasn't a regular reader of one particular magazine, but I would occasionally look at the magazine stands and buy one if it looked interesting enough - and I still have at least 3 CD's that came with a magazine. They weren't necessarily Linux magazines, just the mags for computer hobbyists.

CT - http://www.heise.de/ct/ - only recently stopped having a CD or DVD with every issue. Often just freeware collections or programs to accompany their articles, but they regurly had Knoppix CD's, once a complete Suse dvd, and so on


EDIT:
found one : PC Magazine (in dutch), july 2000, + free Suse 6.4 CD

[albinootje]

Nope. Linux was primarily dominant for servers in the 90s. Gaming on linux then was limited to pretty much some old x games, the roguelikes, and Doom, Quake and Abuse.

Slackware was very install to install if your hardware supported it, and it offered the very-nice-but-kind-of-tricky option for the UMSDOS (*) based installations, which basically meant having a directory LINUX in your DOS partition, and starting Linux with loadlin.exe

... and Slackware came with the bsdgames text based game set, like ... hangman. :)

Also available in Ubuntu, try : apt-cache search bsdgames

(*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umsdos

[dragos240]

Linux was started in 1992.

The Internet spans before that.

I thought it was 91

[JordyD]

I have no idea what it was like back then (I was not alive in 1992) but my dad says that he hosted a WWIV BBS (which he made patches for) on a DOS machine around when he was 15. And by my math that means it was around 1984 or so.

[cariboo]

The first isp here in Williams Lake started up in 1993, I was customer #12. :)

[JordyD]

The first isp here in Williams Lake started up in 1993, I was customer #12. :)

What is the name of the ISP? Are they still around?