now we are here today when after booting from a usb you click through an installer and wait 20 minutes, then you are left with a fully functional linux installation

@thedave1771

25 күн бұрын

And grumble the entire time about how long it takes.

@Sithhy

23 күн бұрын

Some distros can complete the installation process in about 5 minutes

@medec10667

23 күн бұрын

@@Sithhy Thank goodness. I think it has less to do with the distro itself, and most of the time really just comes down to how fast the storage devices (or internet, in netinstalls) are. I've installed distros on PCs with USB 1.1, and let me tell you, it's... not quick. I have an old intel atom netbook with an SSD I installed LMDE to, and that only took about 4 minutes.

@damianfleszar8576

17 күн бұрын

.. until something breaks...

@thedave1771

17 күн бұрын

@@damianfleszar8576 I see you’re familiar with Arch. It’ll be up to date, the most recent version of everything. Whether it works or not, it’ll be the most recent.

Thanks for posting. I remember a college friend told me in 1992 that he had set up Linux on his PC at home with X11, and that he was connecting to the university's network using a modem and SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol). This gives me an idea of what he had to do to set it up.

@neilpatrickhairless

21 күн бұрын

Your friend was Das Haxxor

@anderson_maciel

9 сағат бұрын

You just gave us your age and I'm not far from you.

@mmille10

3 сағат бұрын

@@anderson_maciel - I did something in the same vein about a year later. I had an Atari Mega STe, and I was hearing about MiNT, an adjunct kernel that would run alongside TOS, and was like Unix. It wasn't easy to set up, since for whatever reason, there was no binary of the kernel available. I had to install from source. I cross-compiled it on Unix, I think because that would allow me to use Unix-style pathnames in MiNT. I downloaded and configured a version of gcc with a Motorola 68000 back end, on a Unix account I had, compiled the kernel with that, downloaded the binary, and booted it up. I then got a precompiled tar package of GNU utilities built for MiNT, and I was all set. It felt like an accomplishment to get that up and running, but MiNT had its limitations. It wasn't a full Unix implementation, but the tar package had so many of the same tools I used on Unix that it was difficult to notice the difference. I didn't get X11 going with it (though, that was available), nor did I get SLIP set up, but I was able to use man, gcc, flex, bison, and make on it, along with vi, and I think Emacs. It was capable of so much more that I didn't get into. I read years later that there was a PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) handler available for it. Though, there was no web browser that would run on it, except for lynx.

Wow. KZreads suggestion algorithm did something right. This was nice to watch! You did a good job on backstory and transition in to title content. Subscribed and liked, thank you very much!

@johnsimon8457

23 күн бұрын

I think the algorithm showed me this video because I was looking at Ncommander’s Yigdrasil live cd resurrection video kzread.info/dash/bejne/da2ixpKgpba7prA.htmlfeature=shared

As far as I remember, my first Linux install was some version of Slackware. I installed it from 60+ floppy disks and I remember that the kernel version was 0.97pl13. I'm pretty sure I installed in 1993 and in 1994 I started working in a small company using SCO Unix (the original SCO before the Caldera Group takeover) and we also installed a Linux machine because we didn't have enough SCO licenses. Good times :)

@JoePolvino

24 күн бұрын

Memory is foggy, but I recall a floppy install that took quite a few floppies. My employer at the time was manufacturing CD writers, and we needed test data, so those floppies and FTP downloads got burned to writable CD. The Walnut Creek series of CDROMs from 1995 and on made it easier to install Linux. It took much more effort to actually use Linux at the time, so it was considered more of a hobby OS than one you'd actually do work or play games on. That stigma still carries weight today; people think of Linux as an OS that takes ages to install and get working. I have friends use my "public" touch screen PC in my kitchen for a quick Google and very few of them actually realize they're using Linux Mint as opposed to Windows!

@neilpatrickhairless

21 күн бұрын

60 something floppies doesn't even sound like hyperbole, I remember a similar Linux install I endured on an IBM that was from the early 90's... In the early 00's. I think it was Slackware 💀

@IvanToshkov

20 күн бұрын

@@neilpatrickhairless It wasn't a hyperbole, I just don't precisely remember the actual number. Many of them contained additional software and weren't required during the initial installation.

@OndrejPopp

15 күн бұрын

I also started with Slackware. Fortunately in those days nobody complained about X being outdated so go use Wayland while Wayland gives you screen flash! But the story is that these are Nvidia sync issues that are supposed to be fixed in the upcoming 555 driver release. So we will see! Fortunately for now the X-server is still around! Otherwise we need to get it back from the floppies! But wait... did I say floppies? kzread.infosNMavMAa8mU

@tonyfremont

3 күн бұрын

Very similar toy experience, except we were looking at buying SCO, but decided to give slackware a try. I have almost zero SCO experience now. I looked at how slow it was to boot and how much it cost and decided "how hard could it be" to save all that money. There was internet at the time, but nothing like it is now. How-to documents were how you got each piece working. I had a printed stack about a foot thick. Figured out DHCPD, sendmail, DNS, ftp, telnet, pppd to dial in from home, can't remember the webserver, but it wasn't apache, samba, etc. So much fun problem solving because you always knew it would work, you just didn't know something important yet. The first issue after a new install was getting the CDROM drive to work again. Always worked during install, but the installed kernel was configured differently so make config and recompile the kernel trying to get stuff right.

Very similar to what I actually did in late 1992 when I installed it. Though it took me several hours, because several bits of my hardware were not supported at the time. Fun to hear the boot drive loading with that distinctive ticking again after all these years. Also, a tip: On that 386, don't unplug your keyboard! The early kernel used the keyboard controller as the timed interrupt for task switching. If your motherboard has a controller chip on board, then you're fine, but most 386 boards didn't. They started putting them on board when PS2 became more common, which was more toward in the 486 line. If you unplug the keyboard on such systems the whole system will become unstable and likely panic.

Omg, if i had all the time back that i spent in x cfg with all of the different machines and cards and monitors. I would easily add years to my life.

@GuyRobotTV

25 күн бұрын

I still have a backup of my X config from back then for fear I'd have to rewrite it again

@masterofx32

24 күн бұрын

And today the recommendation is to just not have one. This shit just configures itself - finally!

@Jonix2000

22 күн бұрын

If you messed up v-sync and h-sync the man page said you could do real damage to your monitor. I fussed about that for hours per installation

@masterofx32

22 күн бұрын

@@Jonix2000 And at the same time DOS and Windows users didn‘t have to care for such topics.

@Jonix2000

19 күн бұрын

@@masterofx32 Life on the top of Nerd mountain can be quite unfair

Nostalgia! I didn't get on board until 94-95, but this takes me back! 🙂

If you are able to, get a better mic - other than that I enjoyed this! Good job, KZread.

1992. When I had the fortune of starting my first year with comp sci at University. We got email accounts and the first interaction with Unix was with VI on $10K Sun Workstations with giant monochrome CRT:s. We downloaded this thing called NCSA Mosaic to surf the newly minted world wide web and a year or two later a fellow student in the class above had the webpage with he most hits in the world for a short while. It was a Kraftwerk fanpage with their discography on it :) A year or so later Netscape 1.0 arrived and there was not longer any doubt the WWW would be huge.

@RJARRRPCGP

23 күн бұрын

I didn't hop on the internet until at least 1994! Because number one, the school I was at before July 5, 1994, was mostly Apple IIs, some Apple IIIs, some Macintoshes and we'll be lucky for there to be any X86 computer there! I don't about the internet, even on that one.

@neilpatrickhairless

21 күн бұрын

Shoutout to all the kids who grew up on green screen MECC Apples. Our schools in South Carolina still had them around until the early 00's easily, especially in the elementary schools

I look forward to watching this channel grow

i tried linux 1994 i think. This video was such a fun nostalgic ride and also fun getting some more info about the development of linux back then :)

@RJARRRPCGP

19 күн бұрын

Sadly, Linux was a bummer for me in 2002, long after 1992! I don't think I ever went back to Windows any faster than I did in 2002!

I just realized you only have like 50 subscribers! :3 this is an awesome video and i subscribed :3

@Markadown

25 күн бұрын

Over 300 now!

@akaballechoes

25 күн бұрын

*10 in 24 hours, not bad at all !

great video, very informative! i learned quite a bit from the timeline section. i also really appreciate that you provided subtitles!

I started with Slackware in 1994 (remotely) and 1995 (locally). This makes me feel like a newb! Nice research on the 1991-1992 period.

@stolenlaptop

22 күн бұрын

Making me feel like a late comer jumping on board around 99

@neilpatrickhairless

21 күн бұрын

98 or 99 was around the time I first used Linux as well, now I feel like grandpa Internet around kids hahaha

@anderson_maciel

9 сағат бұрын

I started with Slackware in 2000.

Earliest I remember using was 0.96, which according to your video puts my first use at May 1992. Thanks for that. I wasn't aware of the date, but remembered the version.

This is the first evidence I’ve seen that someone got SLS to work. I spent more than a few days in 1993 or 1994 trying to figure it out without success. Switched to Slackware and it worked so much better. Been using Linux since 0.7 when I was compiling my own kernels.

Awesome. Thanks for the nostalgia journey.

Great video. I didn't try Linux until around mid 90s myself. so much happened in such a short time back then.

awesome video, thanks for making it so descriptive

Ooh. Finally some good content from the YT algo Hella subscribing for more of this

There is something indescribably satisfying about watching an archaic version of an OS booting up on period hardware 🙃

this was a super cool and kinda inspiring video for me, may youtube be nice to you and show this to more people ^^

It's great to see this again. I remember downloading the contents of all the SLS floppies painstakingly over a 64kbit/s university internet connection and then installing them. Even affording enough floppy discs was a challenge. But the excitement of seeing X11 running on my own PC was unforgettable.

This was special, thank you so much for your efforts. I was only 11 years old in 1992 and this is way beyond what id be (or still are) capable of.

Delightful and informative look into the past!

Nice video! I just subbed. Keep up the good work!

Wow! This brings back many fond memories. I installed linux on to a 386 sx 25 with 4MB ram in 1992 also. A kernel compile was an overnight process with some large coats thrown over the PC to stop the sound of my 40Mb ESDI disk, thrashing away, keeping me and my wife awake! Only to discover in the morning it had failed the compile and I still had no parallel printer support in the monolithic kernel!

16:00 Though I cut my teeth on MS-DOS and Win 3.11, the sounds of that thing booting up hits me right in the childhood nostalgia. My mom got me and my brother a Compaq Presario All-in-One computer back in the early 90s, '93 I think. I can't remember the exact model number, but I do remember that it was three digits, so it was either the 425, 433, or the 460. We played so much Simon the Sorcerer and Gobliiins! on that thing.

fwiw there's a copy of SLS .98 with the elusive disk A4 on the "Shareware Supreme - Vol 6. No. 1" CD in the Programming UNIX section, which you can find on the Internet Archive

That took me back! I downloaded my first distro off of a BBS. I think it took 20 floppies LOL... I can't remember, but man I lost my mind after seeing everything you could do.

Most excellent, I knew a fare bit about this history but your timeline really connected the bits for me.

this was amazing to watch and learn the history of Linux! As a hobbyist OS Dev this inspires me further!

Really good and informative video.

LOL, I remember when all the CS navel-gazers made religions out of RISC and microkernels, swearing that was the future until it obviously wasn't. About the time that RISC stagnated, unable to deliver the MIPS advantage needed to compete, the Pentium II broke core and bus speed records. And Linux quietly incorporated kernel modules, making kernel code modular without the context switching penalty that was part and parcel of microkernel. Despite AST's salty rebuke, Linux was ported far and wide, including Apple's ISA _du jour_ and even IBM's big iron. It's gotta hurt, being a self-proclaimed expert and being so wrong. My own early experience with Linux was aided by the friendly curses graphics of Slackware. But of course it still involved boot-root diskettes. And real men used LOADLIN to boot Linux from a DOS prompt.

Very well made, liked and subbed. I liked the part where you explained linux development :)

Brings back memories in around 1994 with a friend we installed a Linux distro , it took about 4 hours. A rainy Saturday arvo but got it working on an old machine but was incredibly slow.

I now see why windows got the big marketshare. But thanks for showing this to someone born after Y2k. Great video

Nice work digging through history

I think it's appropriate (and accurate) that we spent half the duration of this video having the history lesson before actually starting the installation process.

I started using Linux in 1993. I remember this time well. Slackware! SUSE! RedHat!

Xeyes ! Thanks for the memories 😊

Good video and well done getting the OS actually up and running. My first Linux I believe was Monkey Linux as it would install into a single file in a DOS FAT filesystem. Weird and clunky but I didn't want to potentially brick my daughter's Windows system. Soon after I got into Red Hat 5.1; a much better system and I actually committed to putting it in it's own partition and dual booting. This would have been a little bit after 1992 though.

This really makes me appreciate just how easy it was for me to install Linux a few days ago.

This really brings back some (mostly good) memories. Even when we had to tinker around with something to get it working, we still had fun.

Great research and content. Brings back memories from those early times. Followed the mail list back mid 1992. But didn't see one running until around 1994, I think. But great video About emacs, it is the same shortcuts as in Bash. Except C-x C-s to save and C-x C-c to quit. But you usually used C-z for that, and then fg.

Subbed and liked! This stuff is my jam (and it's like much of my channel!) - I remember using early systems using kernel 1.x and twm as well as pwm, good times!

Oh the flashbacks! It was torture getting it up and running in the early days.

Been there, done that. It was "fun". Playing with monitor timings was so nice...

@keigezellig

25 күн бұрын

You could actually damage your monitor with the wrong settings. Fun times :)

As someone born post year 2k, this just looks like... Like it would have been a hell of a journey to go through. Seeing a system that raw gives it all a fae-like feel that is just crazy.

i expected you to be doing linux stuff right from the start, but that history lesson at the beginning was cool anyway never knew linux existed This early

Startx as root now that's bold. Great video!

I was both entertained and schooled watching this.

This brings sooo many memories.... I installed that same Yggdrasil release you mentioned. Very similar procedure. To have Lilo was a special adulthood passage :). My first six months in linux I booted it like you do in the video. Was also very practical to dual boot to windows. There were very fun things to do. Like netbooting from somewhere in Canada using dialup and a special boot disk, to try the latest kernels. Or, mounting a pre-made nfs root partition form somwhere in Berlin, with X11 and all installed. (Atrociusly slow).

back in these early days in some ways the difficulty of getting it working made it feel much more magic.

Most impressive, very cool.

Really cool to watch. I switched to Linux in 1998 and have not used Windows since. In fact, I get lost now in Windows :)

This makes me soooo grateful for the simplicity of ubuntu and linux mint....

@neilpatrickhairless

21 күн бұрын

Oh for SURE. Linux users nowadays have it so much easier. Computer users in general do but particularly regarding installation processes, Linux has come a hell of a long way even since the mid 2000's

Couple ot thumb's ups for this insanely geek video 😆Damned, it's like windows 1.0 all over again with the very achaic X-terminal 😅

Thanks for this video! SLS Linux 0.98 was my first experience with Linux in 1992, I feel like I got in at the right time. Even an idiot like me could use it.

You installed linux a lot faster than the first time I did in 2014...

The way it fades in when you boot it up is slicker than any sleep/wake or boot experience on modern computers lol

Ah, fond memories!

A machine like this used to compile a full ST and Amiga build of my games in six seconds !

Great ... my first installation was Yggdrasil Fall 92 Edition installed on my 386DX40 4MB RAM 170MB Harddisk Dual Boot with Dos/Windows. I really have to check my basement if i can manage to find that CD-ROM anywhere ... but i sadly doubt it. Back i was a Teenager and still going to school. Today a lot of my work is still tied to Linux and Linux based Systems and Environments.

Thank you for posting this, I enjoyed every second. My first Linux install was May 1995, on a brand new 486DX100, Slackware I think. I've been wanting to try building any simple Autotools project on the earliest linux I possibly can, but installing linux in a VM seems daunting. I think it would be a good litmus test to run modern autotools build scripts (eg, configure) on really old linux (if it runs on really old, as well as bleeding edge, it should run on anything in between, right). Do you have any interest in creating a VM/appliance/docker of a really vintage distro? My research tells me a that old libc binaries are not expected to run on recent kernels, so a docker image would be a challenge (possibly the old libc would need to be fixed-up and rebuilt from source, to fix whatever the incompatibility is) Subscribed!

@old-computers-sucked

26 күн бұрын

A big break in compatibility happened around 1995 in the Linux world during the transition from a.out executables to ELF. Modern kernels don't support it at all, and in practice a.out binaries have been broken for over a decade before being pased out. If you want the really vintage stuff, a VM is the way to go. Really old kernels (before 1.2 I think?) will struggle with disks > 512 MB and geometries provided by compact flash cards and such, so for that you'd really want a VM targeting retro computing. I used pcem to dry-run most of the software in that video before running it on real hardware, and aside from the imperfect VGA emulation (which caused X11 to behave worse than on real hardware), it was quite straight forward. As for automated images that could be incorporated in a CI workflow or such, I sadly don't have any experience with that.

@rh4009

26 күн бұрын

@@old-computers-sucked would your pcem VM (I'm not familiar with pcem) be able to build the automake Hello World project (amhello-1.0.tar.gz; I think it only needs untar, /bin/sh, any C compiler, and make) ? If so, would you please consider publishing the VM image ? Incorporating it into some CI workflow might take some additional work, but the heavy lifting is creating the VM image, which I think you've already done. Many thanks

Thank you for including the subtitles, without them the video is unwatchable.

Memoiries. Clikcing Next Next Next (not speaking any english) and using whole disk and eliminating all my memories, notes, photos from all my life from the laptop. and i spent almost all week downloading the image through aDSL in 1996-98. All the Compiling of Kernel. What the loss and what a time well spent.

I had a system that was sort of like this! But it was bought second hand in 1998 for 100 or near 100, IIRC, even if that seemed like much! It was a 486 SX 25 MHz, 8 MB of RAM and a Conner 240 MB hard drive. In 2000, I found a 486 DX and popped it in! That's also when I found more RAM and got it up to 20 MB! By that time, I had what was considered by far, a monster hard drive at the time, a 13 GB (12 GiB) Maxtor 66U4 series 7K hard drive, which I got brand new in 1999, IIRC. Looked like the PC was from 1993. 8 MB was a healthy amount of RAM in 1993!

good job

I remember first time I saw the wonderful "X" after I spent hours working on the installation.

If you had a SoundBlaster with two little speakers on the sides in 1992, then you had a sweet, high-end machine. Nice.

My god I spent two decades lookıng at a CRT and hearing slowdisks. I miss the experience so much.

Yggdrasil was my first "distro", the hardware was a Noname 486/66, ET4000, 4 x RS232, 2 x 200MB harddisk, 3C501 Ethernet, 4 MB RAM. Linux Counter #3406 since 23-Oct-93.

I was there with MCC Interim 0.96c in July 1992. And the then current SLS version in October 1992, very close to what you installed. On a 25MHz 386DX machine with 4MB of RAM.

I had a Zenith Data Systems 386 33Mhz PC for University. Sooooo many floppies 💾 DOS 6, Windows 3.1, Derive, Quattro Pro. School software Darklands and Pirates Gold! were my fav games.

I'm pretty sure it was Redhat that I got running first, in 1995. It was a Gateway tower PC, I think 486DX2/66, with SCSI on a card. Couldn't believe it when I got it to boot.

No way I would go through that again 😂. I remember having to create a ton of slackware linux distro disks and going through the whole process back in the days. So many boxes, X windows set, compiler set etc..

startx gives me nostalgia, and ... nightmares too

One thing that struck me is despite knowing how little X has changed, it still looks the same now. it's funny how X11 has been standard for this long. X386 to Xfee86 to XOrg and It's still the same old mess that is X11.

"you're using a 286, don't make me laugh. Your Windows boots up in what? A day and a half?"

better than windows 11

I first installed Linux on a 486DX/33mhz with 4M RAM sometime in late 1993 or early 1994. The first kernel I remember building is 1.0.9, but it probably sticks out in my mind because it was a particularly stable release that a lot of people stuck with. Even still, it was common back then to always upgrade your kernel because changes were coming fast; distributions could not keep up obviously, and it was usually advantageous to do so (especially if some hardware you had suddenly got support!) It took around 8 hours to build the kernel on that 486... Good times.

@mercster

24 күн бұрын

Hah... I remember those high resolution virtual console text modes, they were awesome. I think they had something to do with SVGAlib?

@mercster

24 күн бұрын

Ugh, writing Xconfig by hand... hoping you don't damage your monitor with too high a dot clock...

@mercster

24 күн бұрын

God bless FVWM!

i really interested in Plan 9, i wonder why it failed in later stages.

This has dosemu as well, it would be interesting to see such an old version of it.

Good content, but I would definitely try to get a better mic if you can. It will really improve the quality of your videos.

My first distro was slackware back in '93 or '94. I think it came on over twenty 3.5" floppy disks. Set up dual boot with Windows and Linux. I've had a Linux box around ever since, even though I'm primarily a Windows software developer.

First Linux distro I installed was RedHat Linux 9 (1995). I was afraid to insert a CD of fear it will break lol.

Subscriber 414 reporting in! I wrote a multitasking "kernel" for the C64 once. It didn't do much else, unfortunately.

@DasIllu

24 күн бұрын

I remember something called "Lunix" for the C=64 in the late 90's. It was supposed to be a Unix clone but single user, cli only. I booted it up once, never found out what it was good for and left 😀

Those keyboard sounds triggered a lot of flashbacks.

@z00h

2 күн бұрын

man's got dem keyboard ptsd's, ugeddme

Nice video, I'll check out your other videos too. I feel lucky so much has been made so much simpler since 1992 when I started using Linux in 2010.

I'd wish I could understand all of this stuff.

👍!

I installed NetBSD 3.1.1 on 386DX40 (32mb) with 26Gb IDE - i wonder if that will work with Linux ?

@meggrobi

25 күн бұрын

Wow, the 386 I first use had 512KB ram and 20 MB HDD, that was about 1988.

@villesyrjala3354

24 күн бұрын

That sounds plenty. I once installed Linux (probably Slackware 3.0) on a luggable 386 with 2MB of RAM. Not enough RAM for the ramdisk so had to copy the root disk to hard drive beforehand. After that it was just a matter of swapping floppies as usual. Afterwards I decided to compile a new kernel; Left gcc churning for a week or so before I got fed up with the noise and turned the damn thing off for good.

It seems way easier than these modern distributions with scripts for everything and no standards

I am now watching this video on Linux Mint 🤗

I discovered Linux via coming across SLS floppies in the file section of a BBS I frequented.. and the rest was history... Kernel at the time was .99pl11.

Ah the joys of installing linux in the 90s!

very good video! seriously, i didn't even realize you've got only 8 subscribers.. 9 now :)

refresh rate mismatch at the end gave me a headache