Lars Wirzenius tells the interesting and funny story of his time as a student with Linus Torvarlds…
Toward the end of that first year, we had gotten access to a Unix server, and I accidentally found Usenet, the discussion system, by mistyping rm as rn, the Usenet reader. I told Linus about it and we spent way too much time exploring this.
From lwn, via HN. Lots of interesting notes in the comments at both places.
For myself, I recall first installing Slackware from floppies, possibly downloaded at work, or possibly downloaded by my partner who worked at a University. (I bought my first PC only after hearing of Linux and being assured that installation was easy.) I also recall a trip to the USA, for work, where I found one could buy Linux CDs at retail. Looking at my shoebox of CDs today, I find “Linux Developer’s Resources” sets from Dec '96 and also from Jun '98. My most precious is a bootable May '96 cover disk from PCW magazine, which has Linux-FT on it as well as lots of the usual tat.
I was aware of SLS, of MCC, of Yggdrasil, but I never tried them.
From the comments:
