What was the first Linux Distrobution ever?

[galacticaboy]

What was the first distribution ever? Please do not ask things like, "Well, what do you mean, commercial or something?" Just, what was the first one created? What was the very first distro that took Linus Torvalds Kernel, and created it into the first available Distro?

[Hur Dur]

Yggdrasil(?)

[Morbius1]

According to this chart: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Gldt.svg

It looks like it was MCC Interim

EDIT: Just noticed on that chart that there was once something called "Tinfoil Hat Linux". Wonder whatever became of it.

[galacticaboy]

According to this chart: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Gldt.svg

It looks like it was MCC Interim

I tried to load that picture a minute ago and it would not load it is so big. I thought it was Yggdrasil as well, but heck IDK. lol

[galacticaboy]

According to this chart: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Gldt.svg

It looks like it was MCC Interim

EDIT: Just noticed on that chart that there was once something called "Tinfoil Hat Linux". Wonder whatever became of it.

BTW, I searched Tinfoil Hat Linux, and I got this site... http://tinfoilhat.shmoo.com/

[3Miro]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softlanding_Linux_System

This is Slackware's daddy.

It kind of depends on what you call distribution, the first release of the kernel can be called that, but SLS was the first to provide software beyond that (i.e. you can do something useful with it).

[Random_Dude]

According to this chart: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Gldt.svg

It looks like it was MCC Interim

EDIT: Just noticed on that chart that there was once something called "Tinfoil Hat Linux". Wonder whatever became of it.

Wow Debian is pretty old, almost as old as Slackware.

[Aquix]

Linux distro timeline..

http://i.imgur.com/lYHC9l.png (http://imgur.com/lYHC9)

[NormanFLinux]

The oldest distro was text based with a text installer.

It was inconsistent and confusing to use.

When the first GUI for Linux came along with KDE, Linux found an audience.

But it didn't become popular until Ubuntu debuted in 2004 and as they say, the rest is history.

[manzdagratiano]

I tried to load that picture a minute ago and it would not load it is so big. I thought it was Yggdrasil as well, but heck IDK. lol

Are you using chrome/chromium perchance? :)

[Spice Weasel]

The oldest distro was text based with a text installer.

It was inconsistent and confusing to use.

When the first GUI for Linux came along with KDE, Linux found an audience.

But it didn't become popular until Ubuntu debuted in 2004 and as they say, the rest is history.

Red Hat Linux (pre-Enterprise) was probably the first popular mainstream distribution, you used to be able to find it in quite a lot of stores. That's more than 10 years ago.

The first GUI was definitely not KDE. Even if you don't count window managers, CDE predates KDE by quite a while.

KDE could be considered a breakthrough in user friendly GUIs at the time, but Yggdrasil GNU/Linux/X came with a fairly easy to use GUI a year before KDE.

Going back even further, UNIX GUIs from the 80s worked perfectly on GNU/Linux when it was first released.

[Simian Man]

But it didn't become popular until Ubuntu debuted in 2004 and as they say, the rest is history.

Umm, no, unfortunately Linux isn't much more popular than it used to be back when Red Hat and Mandrake were the big players.

[1clue]

Wow, you guys make me feel old.

X first came out in 1984, and XFree86 came out in 1992. Everything before that was pure text-driven.

The first X-based window manager I know of is the Ultrix Window Manager from 1985, but I think TWM was the first default released with XFree86.

The first people who ran Linux ran a kernel made by Linus Torvalds and a few other utilities written by others who collaborated from all over the world. There was no distro for that. Everyone downloaded source files acquired from either the author or somebody else, as requested.

Don't know the actual distribution that was first.

Linux first entered the mainstream awareness when RedHat went public with their stocks. Before that it was something a bunch of nerds did, or something used by IT shops, or criminals, or researchers, or industry. That IPO was the first time you could actually go to any software store and see multiple distributions of Linux on the shelves, before that it was a magazine or maybe only one shop in the city that had Linux, and probably then only one distro.

With RedHat, mainstream IT and mainstream business realized there was this other thing out there and that it was not only stable but probably already played a major part in their day to day business operations.

AFAIK, KDE was the first concept of a "desktop" on XFree86. Before there were windows but generally the icons on the root window (desktop) were applications which were running, and no drag and drop or any of that.

While nobody will say that text-based installers are bullet proof, there was a long period of time when they were far more consistent than GUI installers, and FWIW the ubuntu server installer is still the last one I used. The GUI ones take way too much for granted and you lose significant control over the installation process.

[koenn]

Umm, no, unfortunately Linux isn't much more popular than it used to be back when Red Hat and Mandrake were the big players.
citation needed



otoh:
Red Hat's Official March 1998 Estimate of Linux Users : ~ 7.5 million
Linux Counter March 2005 Estimate of Linux Users : ~ 29 million

This suggests an increase in Linux uptake, unless the total number of computers quadrupled between 1998 and 2005.




http://counter.li.org/estimates.php
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20010418141533/http://www2.linuxjournal.com/enterprise/linuxmarket.html

[1clue]

Red Hat's Official March 1998 Estimate of Linux Users : ~ 7.5 million
Linux Counter March 2005 Estimate of Linux Users : ~ 29 million

This suggests an increase in Linux uptake, unless the total number of computers quadrupled between 1998 and 2005.


Yes.

One of the first things that happened after RedHat went public is that people started using it.

What happened next is people complained about how hard it was to set up.

What happened after that is a race to "mainstream" Linux, by almost every distribution, and what's really odd about that is RedHat going public caused a huge jump in almost every distro.

Debian in particular was already one of the "most compatible" distributions, meaning they made a large effort to support more hardware out of the box, have more drivers and have an installer that recognized and correctly configured that hardware. From there evuntually came Ubuntu, although in this case I don't know the exact sequence of events because I wasn't a Debian fan at the time.

Edit:

Oh yeah, I'm not done.

Since the influx of new users saw and cared about the user interface much more than the old timers (who were concerned with making a rock-stable operating system and didn't care about what it looked like) the look and feel of Linux has steadily become more mainstream and more polished.

IMO the sad part about this is that the majority went in the direction of making something which looked almost exactly like Windows, and the next largest group went toward making something that resembled a Mac.

Personally one of the things I liked about Linux was fvwm, which is completely unlike anything on either Mac or Windows but is still extremely configurable and personalizable.

Edit:

Oh yeah, I'm STILL not done! :)

FWIW I think neither Microsoft nor Apple had anything really stable at this time. Each operating system had something strong and something weak.

Linux had an extremely strong core operating system support even if it didn't consistently support all hardware, crappy default UI and a highly idiosyncratic installation and maintenance process.

Apple had and still has the world's best fonts and outstanding rendering, and what I feel is a wonderful user interface and work experience, but the underpinnings sucked, it crashed a lot.

Windows had the vast majority of business software support, and market share, crappy fonts (not as crappy as Linux at the time) and a more complicated UI.

Now, Linux has caught up hugely with the UI crowd, and I think Ubuntu is the best of the best that way, at least if you're talking about standard Intel-based hardware.

[NightwishFan]

SLS or yggdrasil I know were very early. Sorry if they were mentioned.

[Simian Man]

Red Hat's Official March 1998 Estimate of Linux Users : ~ 7.5 million
Linux Counter March 2005 Estimate of Linux Users : ~ 29 million

This suggests an increase in Linux uptake, unless the total number of computers quadrupled between 1998 and 2005.

Well exact numbers are extremely hard to come by, especially for so long ago, but your numbers sure aren't to be believed either. Linux Counter is a non-decreasing number since nobody would uncount themselves even if they quit Linux, so obvioulsy it shows an increase. The number of Linux desktop users now is less than 2% so no matter what it was then, it's still hard to argue that Ubuntu "made Linux popular".

Linux has of course gotten much easier to use over the years, but it's largely to do with upstream development and not whatever distro is popular at the time.