Back in 1993 I was tasked with setting up a DNS server for my department at UF. No WAY was I gonna do that on a DOS machine, and we didn't have the cash for a Sun workstation. I'd bumped into minix in class, and from there found linux. I built that nameserver on a spare Dell 486 machine and SLS (which I think *really* stood for "Stacks-of-floppies Loading Slowly") with a 0.99.8 kernel. That DNS box ran pretty much unmolested except for periodic kernel updates for over a DECADE.
I started using linux as my desktop OS in the fall of 96. I'd gotten a new job and one of the "come work for us!" perqs was a shiny new PPro200 box with NT 4.0 on it. I also had a cobbled together 486 running linux (Redhat 4.something). I was rebooting the NT box at least once a week, sometimes much more frequently depending on what I was doing, but the linux box hardly ever got a reboot. Finally I up and swapped things around - the NT build went on the crummy 486 in case I needed it, and linux moved to the big PPro. Ever since I've run linux at work and at home. I went from RH to Mandrake to Slackware to Ubuntu to now Xubuntu (for work) and Ubuntu Studio (for home). My only uses for Windows (always in a VM on a linux box, never on bare hardware) are TurboTax at home, and the AD Users and Groups admin tools and Cisco VPN client testing for troubleshooting end user issues. The Penguin reigns supreme for everything else.
> I worked out how to install it on a 16Mhz 386 machine that I set to self test and forgot about for over 6 months until one day I found it still running in the depths of my attic, On turning the monitor I was amazed to discover there were no faults!
That's terrific! The stability and the ability to render ancient hardware usable were big draws for me.
Authored Comments
Back in 1993 I was tasked with setting up a DNS server for my department at UF. No WAY was I gonna do that on a DOS machine, and we didn't have the cash for a Sun workstation. I'd bumped into minix in class, and from there found linux. I built that nameserver on a spare Dell 486 machine and SLS (which I think *really* stood for "Stacks-of-floppies Loading Slowly") with a 0.99.8 kernel. That DNS box ran pretty much unmolested except for periodic kernel updates for over a DECADE.
I started using linux as my desktop OS in the fall of 96. I'd gotten a new job and one of the "come work for us!" perqs was a shiny new PPro200 box with NT 4.0 on it. I also had a cobbled together 486 running linux (Redhat 4.something). I was rebooting the NT box at least once a week, sometimes much more frequently depending on what I was doing, but the linux box hardly ever got a reboot. Finally I up and swapped things around - the NT build went on the crummy 486 in case I needed it, and linux moved to the big PPro. Ever since I've run linux at work and at home. I went from RH to Mandrake to Slackware to Ubuntu to now Xubuntu (for work) and Ubuntu Studio (for home). My only uses for Windows (always in a VM on a linux box, never on bare hardware) are TurboTax at home, and the AD Users and Groups admin tools and Cisco VPN client testing for troubleshooting end user issues. The Penguin reigns supreme for everything else.
> I worked out how to install it on a 16Mhz 386 machine that I set to self test and forgot about for over 6 months until one day I found it still running in the depths of my attic, On turning the monitor I was amazed to discover there were no faults!
That's terrific! The stability and the ability to render ancient hardware usable were big draws for me.