From: bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com   
      
   On 2/15/26 11:16, rbowman wrote:   
   > On Sun, 15 Feb 2026 08:01:28 -0500, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:   
   >   
   >> Anyway, my first distro was the old RedHat 6. Then I bought a no-name   
   >> laptop with Windows NT on it, and used that for awhile. Then I tried to   
   >> install RedHat. Partway through the screen would blank and a weird glow   
   >> would appear. (I later learned it was some issue with the AMD K6 CPU.)   
   >   
   > My first was Slackware. First I downloaded a couple of boxes of floppies   
   > worth over dialup and then painfully assembled them. I forget what the   
   > donor box was.   
   >   
   > iirc the basic OS was under 20 floppies but if you wanted gcc,   
   > build_tools, and other pieces of a working system it was over 30.   
   >   
   > I think the second time around it was Mandrake from a shrink-wrapped box.   
   > Much more pleasant experience. Mandrake was sort of the Ubuntu of its day.   
      
   	I started with Mandriva 2006. Shipped to me from Europe by a pal with 6   
   CD iso files on a DVD.  I had a Good Quality(brand name, not really very   
   good) with DVD R   
   CD rw drive a 2.4 MHz Pentium running XP.  I did very little on XP but   
   then turned those   
   6 CD files into Iso files. Split the disk drive in half and put Mandriva   
   on the space.   
   	I personally feel that Mandriva was way ahead of any Ubuntu I have seen.   
   	I only used Mandriva for a few years before the company went bankrupt.   
   	That was after I got several versions that I paid for with the extra   
   codecs for   
   video and audio.  These were called Power-Packed but the fixed release   
   model was   
   difficult for me with limited space and in 2011 they produced a version   
   that did not   
   run on my Compaq.  I could not get good advice online so I started   
   looking for a   
   replacement.  Finally in 2014 ended up with the PCLinuxOS.   
   	   
   bliss- Dell Precision 7730- PCLOS 2026.01- Linux 6.12.71 pclos1- KDE   
   Plasma 6.5.5   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)