From: bowman@montana.com   
      
   On Sun, 15 Feb 2026 17:27:46 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:   
      
   > When I first decided to set up a Linux machine, I went to the local   
   > bookstore and perused the various Linux books which had an installation   
   > CD included.  The book I liked best happened to be by Patrick   
   > Volkerding, so my first distro was Slackware 3.5, which ran happily on a   
   > laptop with 48MB of memory and a 1.3G hard drive.   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackware#Birth   
      
   I must have caught it somewhere between the 24 floppies in 1993 and the 73   
   in 1994, I've got an unopened box of Memorex 3.5" floppies -- $3.99 for   
   10. No idea when I bought them but it was sometime after 2002. They may or   
   may not have been cheaper in the '90s but 8 boxes, plus the time to ftp   
   them down was a serious commitment.   
      
   I don't remember when CD drives became common. I have a '93 Compaq   
   Concerto laptop with a floppy drive and an optional PCMCIA CD-ROM drive.   
   Funny how that works. All my current laptops need an optional USB optical   
   drive. I do have a big old one that has escaped turning into a Linux box   
   that has a builtin drive. It's XP, I think.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)