[rescue] Early LINUX distros.

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 11:58:22PM -0500, Justin Haynes wrote:
>The installers were, yes, and those are on the archives mentioned; however
>the binary packages to be installed like rpms or rpps are missing in some
>archives of the releases.  As i look closer at the ibiblio archive, most of
>the binary distribution files (rpms or rpps) do exist.

If you look at <http://linuxmafia.com/faq/RedHat/releases.html>

You get a good picture of the history of Red Hat.

What you don't see is competing distros, in 1995 when I first got into Linux,
I bought a CD ROM with 2 or 3 Linux distros (none of them Red Hat) and
a BSD release. You had to burn floppies to install any of them.

The hot distro in the late 1990's was Slackware and then behind it, the
"Y" one I could never spell.

Debian existed, but was not popular. 

In fact the goal at the time was to create a complete installation disk 
including X Windows on a single 1.4m floppy. 

Red Hat came into common useage when they started releasing CD ROM
images. By that time fast enough internet connections and CD-ROM burners
were available so that people would download them and burn them for
friends.

IDE CDROM drives had made them cheap enough that many people had them. 

I won't say what I traded for my first CDROM reader (1991), people here
would sh*t if they heard based on modern values. I'll tell anyone off
line if they really want to know.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.