My first OSes

I started getting interested in Linux at an early age. It all started with a small pocket book on Linux — unfortunately I can’t remember why I bought in the first place. At a time when DOS was “the measure of all things” in the mainstream, the Unix-like philosophy of things like a powerful command line, multi-user operations etc. seemed downright mystical and somehow seductive to me. But my first steps with Linux turned out to be arduous: The first Linux distribution I tried was Slackware, whicht I bought as a supplement to a special edition of the magazine “Chip” in a shop in the Shopping City Süd.

The attempts to install Slackware, however, were in vain: After backing up, creating the boot disks, repartitioning with fdisk and all the necessary accompanying measures, I was happy when the setup finally ran … and I was totally fascinated by the fact that I simply switch consoles during this and could play Tetris: But the joy only lasted for a short time, the installation got stuck every time, reproducible, with a certain package (“zoo”). When I deselected this, the same thing happened with another package. The Internet was still a long way off for me in 1994, so no help was to be expected from there. So it stayed with the status quo for some time (and several unsuccessful installation attempts), my primary operating system at that time remained MS DOS 6.22 with Windows 3.11.

In 1995 the computer retail chain Vobis tried to emancipate itself from Microsoft and offered OS/2™ Warp 3 as an alternative to the DOs-Windows team, an offer I took up for curiosity and installed OS / 2 in dual-boot mode, although it was more of a one Gimmick on the lon run.

It must have been around 1995 when I was able to successfully install a Linux distribution for the first time. It was S.u.S.E, at that time still available as a box with CD and a detailed manual in specialised shops.

At the end of 1995 Windows 95™ arrived on the market and I finally switched reluctantly.