[Coco] VCC1.41

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

----- "Aaron Wolfe" <aawolfe at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you just want to use your computer, Mint, Ubuntu, SUSE, Fedora are
> all fine choices.
> If you really want to learn Linux, I'd strongly suggest you do not
> use
> a GUI for at least a year or two.
> Debian and Slackware are good learning distros, especially if you
> leave out the GUI.

Ooh.  My first year or so with Linux was without GUI.  Initial installation was on a 386/25 with 4Mb of RAM -- not quite adequate for X.  That was SLS in early 1993.  (Predecessor to Slak).  X was not installed, needed more memory.  A set of 5.25" floppies about 5.25" high.  Next two installs (on the next machine) were first releases of Yggdrasil and Red Hat (and I mean the very first release of Red Hat, the one Marc Ewing got kicked out of his apartment for producing).  Bootable CDs were Da Bomb.

Of course, with 10 years experience with other Unix variants (starting with Tandy Xenix in 1983), the GUI wasn't required.  I am comfortable with the shell (prefer Bourne or any of its descendants, though I can deal with csh when I have to).

And by early '93 I was desperate for anything even close to Unix, as Amtrak baggage guys destroyed my 3B1 when I came east in early '92.

I like both of the common (and a couple of the uncommon) GUIs under Linux.  Yeah, it's mostly so I can have Firefox on one virtual screen and four or five xterms (running shells or editors) on another.  An email reader on the third and maybe watching an episode of Firefly from DVD on a fourth (might not be watching it, just hearing it while I'm doing something else, but I've got every episode memorized anyway).  Lately usually Ubuntu, Kubuntu or one of the Puppy variants (my grub list is pretty ugly, with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of everything [as well as Vista it's what this computer came with]).

Hadn't run across the Mint distro yet.  I'll go look it it up.  My grub list might get uglier.
-- 
Ward Griffiths        wdg3rd at comcast.net

<home.comcast.net/~wdg3rd>

Aim high and you won't shoot your foot off.  --   Phyllis Diller