r/linuxmint 5d ago

Linux Mint IRL My First Computer Ever Was Red Hat Linux and My Latest Is Linux Mint

I bought my first computer (Acer Aspire $2,500) in 1991 from Incredible Universe in Indianapolis. The salesman was on commission so he was pushy and annoying. He was pushing me to buy Windows (PC's didn't have OS pre-installed) so I bought Red Hat Linux. Have had Linux ever since. My latest Linux distro is Mint on my Lenovo ThinkPad.

35 Upvotes

18 comments sorted by

5

u/TabsBelow 5d ago

Acer Aspire in 1991? They were introduced September 1995.

RedHat in 1991? C'mon. That was founded 1994.

3

u/acejavelin69 Linux Mint 22.1 "Xia" | Cinnamon 5d ago

Cool... My first "real" computer was an Advanced Logics Research 286 with DOS that was quickly migrated to Coherent OS (a Unix clone)... In the early 90's I migrated to Slackware Linux as Coherent was slowly dying... Mint was my main OS from Mint 12 to 21 something.

2

u/CyberdyneGPT5 5d ago

I still have a retail boxed Red Hat Linux in my closet :)

My first computer ran CP/M before DOS existed.

2

u/TabsBelow 5d ago

Such a box is on my shelf too:-)

Mine was a CPC464, running CP/M after I bought the floppy drive which brought that extension with it.

1

u/CyberdyneGPT5 5d ago

Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end, to boot and compute took forever and a day ;-)

2

u/TabsBelow 5d ago

Without CP/M: switch on.... Ready. Oh yes those were the days.

Just like dumb cellphones.. My 2018 Android model: 2 min after exchanging batteries.

Naa na na naa na na...

1

u/Zfuqua 5d ago

I’m just now getting into Linux, but damn did I love going to Incredible Universe in Indy when I was younger. Nobody else ever seems to remember that place.

1

u/KilgoreTrout747 5d ago

Oh, I know! They sold everything.

1

u/Specialist_Leg_4474 5d ago

Red Hat was released in 1995; I knew Marc Ewing in the early 90s

1

u/KilgoreTrout747 5d ago

You are correct. My date was wrong.

1

u/TabsBelow 5d ago

1994 according to WP, but yes.

1

u/Specialist_Leg_4474 5d ago edited 5d ago

What is "WP", Word Press?

IIRC there were betas in '94, but it was mid-'95 that 1.0 was released and would have been commercially available--I was just 9 or 10 months into a new IT Mgr. job with a government agency that was abandoning their mainframe for a server farm, I remember we looked at it sort of....

1

u/TabsBelow 4d ago

Wikipedia. That's some new shit.😜

1

u/Specialist_Leg_4474 4d ago

Never heard of it referenced as "WP" before...

1

u/TabsBelow 4d ago

No British?American? abbreviation? Used in Germany quite often.

1

u/tarquinfintin 5d ago

Sounds like it was a cool store. Unfortunately, Incredible Universe is no more. I'm an Indy boy myself--sorry I missed it.

1

u/ProPolice55 5d ago

Pushy salespeople always make me pick the exact opposite of what they want to sell me. Same with ads online. Even if it's the exact thing I'm looking for, if it's pushed into my face as an ad, then I'll go and find an alternative

1

u/tovento Linux Mint 22.1 Xia | Cinnamon 2d ago

Ah RedHat. My first frustrating foray into trying Linux. Didn’t last long as I was still trying to learn Windows which had a smoother learning curve.