Interesting thread! I started with SuSe Linux, release 6.x, I believe.
At the time, there was not much that I could do with it, though.
Except learning about all the nastyness of *nix first time:
* Huge RAM requiremends (Win98SE did fly on 24MiB, SuSe 6.x not so much. It wanted 64MiB or more for the basic stuff)
* Case-Sensitivity on extra tiny text-modes
* Missing I-Nodes and damaged EXT filesystems during boot (Linux doesn't believe in power outages)
* Insanely long version numbers
* Utilities with ugly boring names no sane person can come up with
* Dependency of programs on oudated libraries nolonger included or/and supported
* Its aversion against non-English speakers (esp. for the shell commands)
* Broken audio subsystem (OSS! 😵)
* Crashy X servers (Xfree86 ?)
* Non-funtional full-duplex support for SB16
* Ugly, user-unfriendly installers (like FreeDOS has)
So yeah, the experience was quite healthy. 😉
I never expected such *fun* when I did read my father's Unix books from the mid-1980s.
By comparison, old Minix and Xenix seemed like tame creatures.
Anyway, I still try very hard liking Linux, even though I fail every time.
Maybe next year I'll do the move. 😉
To be fair, though, there also was a positive about that old Linux.
It had an awesome selection of screen savers. The simulation of burning flames was quite realistic.
Caluser2000 wrote:Warp 3 would be a good fit, It's a tad easier on resources than 4.
I also remember OS/2 Warp 3 fondly, since it was my first OS/2 if memory serves. Plus, it was around on OS/2 heydays.
OS/2 Warp 4, however, fixed some things. It had bult-in networking (likee that Warp Connect edition), APIs like DiVE etc. and an error in the GUI could nolonger freeze the whole system.
That being said, OS/2 Warp 3 got several fixp acks after its original release, so perhaps some issues where fixed here later on, too. 😀
Resource wise, unlike Windows, Warp developed for the better. Every new release had better overall performance, despite requiring more disk space.
I remember I once saw a video where Team OS/2 said that Warp 3 required less memory than the previous OS/2.x.
Anyway, 8 MiB was the minimum (16MiB recommended), while it *could* boot (crawl) on 4MiB already.
Edit: I forgot to mention: Speaking of Linux, the above was written from the point of view of a beginner (me) in these days. I didn't meant to badmouth Linux or *nix in general.
Since then, I'm giving Linux a chance once in a while. And yes, I'm still owning a copy of SuSe; I'm keeping old distros like this as a memento (souvenir).
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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