> Playing around with Slackware Linux in the early 90s definitely gave the feeling of being part of something big.
Slackware in the late 90s is what got me hooked on Linux and computing in general, along with building my own AMD Sempron (i.e. inexpensive) machine from a bunch of mostly random parts I'd buy off Craigslist.
At one point in time, I knew what every single file in 'etc' was for, what every single process was, and every single listening port.
I feel bad for the younger kids learning Linux in 2019 with Centos or Ubuntu. The systems are so much more complicated, it's difficult to understand how everything is put together. Might as well be a black box like Windows or Mac.
If you want to cut your teeth on “comprehensible unix” it’s a high water mark. Reading the man pages is probably worth a few years of sysadmin experience.
I too was a Slackware user of the 90s, but I was also a BSD user. OpenBSD is simply great, and has only gotten better—not more magical.
Slackware in the late 90s is what got me hooked on Linux and computing in general, along with building my own AMD Sempron (i.e. inexpensive) machine from a bunch of mostly random parts I'd buy off Craigslist.
At one point in time, I knew what every single file in 'etc' was for, what every single process was, and every single listening port.
I feel bad for the younger kids learning Linux in 2019 with Centos or Ubuntu. The systems are so much more complicated, it's difficult to understand how everything is put together. Might as well be a black box like Windows or Mac.