I tired Linux a few times in the past, but didn’t really start using seriously until 2019. I love poking around old OSs and distros, and I want to spin a few up in some VMs my next free evening.

Any suggestions? Open to any distro (or let’s be honest, DE). Any versions that holds a special place in your heart or that’s exceptionally novel? Really interested to see what’s out there!

  • Bilb!@lem.monsterEnglish
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    6 months ago

    Anyone else get free Ubuntu CDs shipped to their house? I think I had 7.10 (Gusty Gibbon) shipped to my house back in 2007.

    Otherwise, Mandrake Linux was my first “good” distro. I first tried one called Lycoris which claimed to be an beginner’s distro with it’s own DE, and it was impressive how well it handled setting up a dual boot installation and at the time it was a revelation that I could use a computer without Windows. I didn’t begin preferring linux until I tried Mandrake with KDE 3, though.

    • ace_garp@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yeah, Knoppix was kind of a ‘Tucows vibe’ distro. Pretty approachable.

      Zen Linux was another short-lived 2005 liveDistro, which had a nice feel and Art.

      Also, installing all https://trisquel.info/ versions side-by-side and doing a 17 year fast-forward would be cool.

  • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
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    6 months ago

    Red Hat used to be a really solid choice for desktop back in the 90s and early 2000s. Some milestone releases:

    • 6.2 was the first version to put up ISO images for install. This is the one to get if you really want a blast from the past (early version of anaconda installer, ext2, LILO bootloader, Linux 2.2, Gnome 1 etc.)
    • 7.3 was the last version to come with the Netscape browser.
    • 9.0 was the last version before they split into Fedora and RHEL. It’s the last and most mature desktop release of that era, included the “Bluecurve” unified look and feel introduced in 8.0 but had bugfixed versions of KDE and Gnome.
    • LeFantome@programming.dev
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      6 months ago

      What do you mean 6.2 was the first version to put up ISO images for install? I installed 5.2 from ISO not long ago. I have installed 4.2 in the past.

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        Before 6.2 you had to get them on actual CDs which wasn’t an option in many places. Starting with 6.2 they put them online on FTP.

  • Sinirlan@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Gentus Linux comes to mind, obscure distro based on Red Hat (not RHEL mind You) released by now forgotten ABIT, a motherboard manufacturer. I was daily driving it as teenager back in 2001 for couple of weeks until I learned by trial and error how to get windows 98 installed back. Another one would be Mandrake Linux which I was dual booting couple years later.

    • 0x0@programming.dev
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      6 months ago

      I read gentoo instead of gentus, found it awkward that someone would call gentoo obscure, did a websearch, came back to the post with gentus as a reply, re-read the post.

  • shiroininja@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I’m nostalgic for Ubuntu when it still had Unity as default, and Linux mint around 2014. That’s when I began coding, and that’s the time I liked the look of them more than the current modern offerings. Plus there was more ease of customization it felt like

  • lnxtx@feddit.nlEnglish
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    6 months ago

    Early versions of Ubuntu,
    Red Hat before RHEL,
    Mandrake/Mandriva.

  • dallen@programming.dev
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    6 months ago

    Crungbang linux breathed live into some very wimpy hardware I’ve had in the past.

    Loved the minimalism.

  • dmnknf@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    I’ll probably be alone on this one, but there was this Brazilian distro, fully translated to portuguese named Kurumin, an indigenous word for “boy,” that was my first distro. The distro where I learned how to program in Python ages ago.

    As a trivia, this distro main maintainer gave up on tech and was living as a monk or something far from any internet connection.

    • LeFantome@programming.dev
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      6 months ago

      Uninstalled this recently as well. It is surprisingly slick for the time and way more modern feeling than you would expect.

      Linux was just not corporate enough for it at the time.

      In a different timeline….

  • Notorious@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    6 months ago

    I booted a VM with BeOS for nostalgia a couple months ago. Remember booting that as a kid and drooling over how fast it was.