Subj : Slackware 14.2 Sale [Was: CD Distribution Sale]
To : Jagossel
From : Nightfox
Date : Wed Aug 16 2017 09:44 pm
Re: Slackware 14.2 Sale [Was: CD Distribution Sale]
By: Jagossel to Nightfox on Wed Aug 16 2017 08:19 pm
Ja> Ah yea, I remember (and still have the box somewhere) the Red Hat Limux 7
Ja> (before it split into two: enterprise [RHEL] and desktop [Fedora]) box, in
Ja> all its glory: the black box with the Red Hat logo, and the screenshots
Ja> and low-end system requirements. I think my dad got me that copy of Red
Ja> Hat Linux 7 for Xmas that year. It had the manual, license agreement, card
Ja> to sign up for the Red Hat Network @ US$60/year, the CD case with three
Ja> CDs placed in plastic sleeves, and a floppy boot disk in the pocket.
Ja> Ah, the good ol' days; where it was, rare, but possible, to got to
Ja> Wal-Mart and pick up a Linux distribution for around ~US$60.
Yeah, I remember when it was fairly common to see Linux distros sold in stores.
Even if a store these days still sells PC software, I don't see Linux distros
in stores anymore.. I remember going to my local Egghead Software (when they
were still around) and buying a boxed copy of RedHat Linux. I think it was
around $30 or $40, and I think it was before they were known for being an
enterprise Linux distro. It wasn't even the latest version of RedHat; I just
wanted to get more familiar with Linux. I think it was RedHat 4.2 or somewhere
around there. A few years later (1999, I think) I bought a boxed copy of SuSE
Linux at CompUSA (I think it was around $50). SuSE was my favorite Linux
distro for a while (I still like it overall in its current incarnation,
OpenSuSE).. SuSE seemed to make it easier to get XFree86 going - It seemed to
detect my video card & settings more successfully than other distros would. I
think SuSE had their own special utility for configuring XFree, which worked
fairly well. Now most distros seem to get the GUI running better out of the
box without much fiddling.
I thought it was pretty cool to be able to go into a store and buy a
copy of Linux off the shelf - I thought that meant Linux had finally 'made it'
(or was close to it) as a consumer operating system. These days, I still don't
think Linux is a major player for desktop computers, although I occasionally
hear about some PC companies installing Linux on their PCs at the factory.
Nightfox
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