My first was Slackware. I don’t remember much other than following instructions really well and coming away with a working, albeit slow, OS. There was a joke video making the rounds back then of someone opening their laptop in a library or something and the Windows startup chime playing so slooooooooow. That was unfortunately my embarrassing experience, in a community college class, with the KDE startup chime. I didn’t know anything about TWMs, the terminal, or anything else really and foolishly thought my secondhand, 90s Compaq Presario (?) laptop would run a full DE in the mid 00s.
Anyway I got Ubuntu running a while later, when the Beryl (Compiz) cube desktop videos were showing up everywhere, and it was much easier. Same time Live CDs got popular and you could test run the OS. Then did Debían for a while because I hated Unity and the end of Gnome 2. Riced out Arch with Xmonad after that, learning Emacs, Vim, TeX, Bash and so on along with the various coreutils. Arch(wiki) and some solid YouTubers got me finally learning to be a proper power user.
Now, servers aside, I’ve just got a Steam Deck and WSL. My next build, when/if prices get less stupid, will probably be Arch again unless I do the lazy thing and run with Bazzite or similar. I love Arch but I hate the occasional troubleshooting after I don’t update for a while, even if I have gotten better at it.
Just the battery for the thing probably weighed more than my next two laptops combined, and one was a 17" “Media” edition HP with the DVD ROM and the full keyboard with numpad. I actually loved that machine, and it ran Arch for a good while, before HP’s garbage thermal management (and, likely, aging solder) killed it.
I still have it because of sentimental stupidity and it being the only one I’ve ever stickerbombed the hell out of. I might need to craigslist a toaster oven just for hobby projects and see if I can bake it back to life. Would make a fine addition to “in case of LAN party” stack of old laptops I keep around for when friends are over and want to run some CS:S, Quake 3, Brood War or whatever.
Thanks! I’m lucky and at home I have a pair of computers from work. And happily, had so few issues with the initially install that I didn’t really need to use them!
Which distro?
Asking for everyone.
Arch btw, fedora worked too well and was boring, gentoo was too entertaining, arch is the perfect balance of works and allows tinkering for me.
I am currently afflicted w fedora boredom but i have to deal with it until my current project is over
I run Pop!_OS, btw
My first was Slackware. I don’t remember much other than following instructions really well and coming away with a working, albeit slow, OS. There was a joke video making the rounds back then of someone opening their laptop in a library or something and the Windows startup chime playing so slooooooooow. That was unfortunately my embarrassing experience, in a community college class, with the KDE startup chime. I didn’t know anything about TWMs, the terminal, or anything else really and foolishly thought my secondhand, 90s Compaq Presario (?) laptop would run a full DE in the mid 00s.
Anyway I got Ubuntu running a while later, when the Beryl (Compiz) cube desktop videos were showing up everywhere, and it was much easier. Same time Live CDs got popular and you could test run the OS. Then did Debían for a while because I hated Unity and the end of Gnome 2. Riced out Arch with Xmonad after that, learning Emacs, Vim, TeX, Bash and so on along with the various coreutils. Arch(wiki) and some solid YouTubers got me finally learning to be a proper power user.
Now, servers aside, I’ve just got a Steam Deck and WSL. My next build, when/if prices get less stupid, will probably be Arch again unless I do the lazy thing and run with Bazzite or similar. I love Arch but I hate the occasional troubleshooting after I don’t update for a while, even if I have gotten better at it.
Damn. I read Compaq Presario and suddenly tasted bile. I’d almost forgotten about them.
Just the battery for the thing probably weighed more than my next two laptops combined, and one was a 17" “Media” edition HP with the DVD ROM and the full keyboard with numpad. I actually loved that machine, and it ran Arch for a good while, before HP’s garbage thermal management (and, likely, aging solder) killed it.
I still have it because of sentimental stupidity and it being the only one I’ve ever stickerbombed the hell out of. I might need to craigslist a toaster oven just for hobby projects and see if I can bake it back to life. Would make a fine addition to “in case of LAN party” stack of old laptops I keep around for when friends are over and want to run some CS:S, Quake 3, Brood War or whatever.
I am glad you have fond memories of it. I had to support them in a business environment so my perspective is somewhat different, lol.
Went with Mint as I was pretty nervous. Already thinking about which distro for my old laptops though…
Mint is a solid choice.
Thanks! I’m lucky and at home I have a pair of computers from work. And happily, had so few issues with the initially install that I didn’t really need to use them!
(That being said, absolutely great advice.)