Of the ones I knew, none of them were linux users at that time. They may have migrated to it years later, after deciding that Windows wasn't to their liking.

The timeline is off, I remember in 1994 working with Linux -- at work,

My timeline is probably off from yours because you were encountering it professionally while my encounters were all not at work, so everyone I knew
who knew of linux was a hobbiest. The places I was working 1994-98 were either still running something on top of DOS and Netware (like Wordperfect Office, a Baby-36 emulator, or a Kermit terminal to access a "bigger machine"), were running OS/2 (one client), and a few were either running Windows 3.1 or
WfWG 3.11 (the latter for networking).

Somewhere during 1998-2000, the place I was at upgraded from WfWG to NT 4.0.

My first run in with linux professionally didn't happen until 2006-09 or thereabouts, when I was working with someone to try to get the z/OS side
and the linux side of our mainframe to work together. Something to do with z/OS not supporting a certain flavor of encryption at the time (for ftp transfers) while linux could... or so we thought. While we were working
on it, "the networking people" came up with the policy that all file
transfers had to go through a middle man server based platform because that
was "more secure."

That platform later made the news for getting hacked and leaking all sorts
of information but, luckily, we hosted our own server and didn't use theirs.

I had a tech working for me who'd gotten a copy of SLS linux and we
installed it on a leftover 486. Hardware support was extremely limited,
it took a call to some people at Intel to get support for our
EtherExpress 16 cards (To this day, we're not sure if we were allowed
to have the code and my friend insists that he was responsible for
Intel NIC support in Linux) and it all ended up being a wonderful
project for a team of tech support people - but nothing that Joe User
could manage.

Cool story. Of the top of my head, I cannot remember what type of network
card it was that I figured out worked with little/no pain (IIRC, they maybe were 3COM products?) but, once I figured that out I stocked up on them. ;)

IIRC, whatever it was also worked pretty well with OS/2.

A couple of years later, setting up SLIP on a Linux box was a pain,
and running FVWM and a primitive browser was challenging.

I remember that always being at least somewhat of a pain until I switched over to a cable modem. Can't remember when that was now, maybe 2009? I cannot remember for sure when linux flavored browers seemed to catch up, maybe when Chrome became a thing?


* SLMR 2.1a * Love is a grave mental disease. -Plato
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Re: Linux, networking, etc.
By: Dumas Walker to POINDEXTER FORTRAN on Sun Jul 20 2025 10:27:28

My timeline is probably off from yours because you were encountering it professionally while my encounters were all not at work, so everyone I knew who knew of linux was a hobbiest. The places I was working 1994-98 were either still running something on top of DOS and Netware (like Wordperfect Office, a Baby-36 emulator, or a Kermit terminal to access a "bigger machine"), were running OS/2 (one client), and a few were either running Windows 3.1 or
WfWG 3.11 (the latter for networking).

This takes me back. I first started using Unix in about 1989 when I stared out with SCO Unix. At my first couple of jobs I encountered other *nix such as Xenix, Dynix, AIX, and a few others. I first discovered Linux when I picked up a .net magazine (It was a British mag for internet stuff) and it included a copy of Slackware 1.2.13. I accidentally blew away my WfW3.11 setup since I had no idea about duel bootings and the like at the time and Remember I was stuch with a "LI" something or other at the top. Another ago and LILO eventually ran and booted up, slowly, on my 486dx66 with 4mb ram. I eventually updated the system to a 486DX4-120 which I sent to the US before my immigration to be used for an IRC server in Toledo.

Anyway, I friend got me to try NetBSD and I used that for a while but I always had problems updating and getting library problems. I picked up a copy of Mandrake (to be Mandriva) at a local Half Price Books. I used that for a long time, but got tired of packages being out of date. I swithed to CentOS and got along well until they decided to go continuous release. I fiddled around with various releases until setting on Ubuntu which I was already using for my BBS machine by now anyway, eventually converting everything else over.

I did play with Yellowdog on a Mac G4 at work for a while, and also had the misfortune to come across zOS. I was sent on a 4 day course because the company might want to use it. They didn't. They were Nortel and went belly up.

Interesting thing about Linux was that it had SCO Compatability. It would run MicroFocus Cobol and would run our product. I have no idea if it can still do that.

A nice walk down memory lane. I think this is pretty much documented elsewhere, maybe I should just create a webpage and point to it eveytime this sort of thing comes up.

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