Linux Distro Meme

1) Which was your Linux distribution story?

I started using Linux in 1992 or so with MCC Interim Linux. I had been working with a realtime Linux called LynxOS porting a primitive version of Sendmail to it so it could actually send me mail if the remote telescope it was supposed to operate was functioning.

2) What is your preferred $your_distribution version?

I primarily use CentOS-5 as a desktop these days. While it is very far behind what the cool kids are using.. it matches the servers (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) I am running so code I compile/run are better assured at working at it. When I get a chance I switch to Fedora on desktops that are my preview systems so I know what the servers will be later. However I constantly run into projects that lifetimes for the core OS API's are 5 to 7 years which leaves using Fedora on them not much of an option.

3) Write a short story (more like an anecdote) about your past distribution.

I had spent a month or so working on that versus my school work and one of the technicians downstairs decided to help by bringing up a stack of floppy disks... in 2 days of loading (getting replacement floppies etc) I then got a bunch of tar-balls and got a lot of things working that had cost us over 10k for. While the kernel did not have a millisecond realtime factor.. we were actually getting a lot of stuff done we had not expected to have done. I think we then went to TAMU and SLS over the next couple of months as they had X and other things 'working' in them. By the end of 1993.. we had a working SLIP connection over a 50 km microwave link using custom hardware. By the middle of 1994 I had gotten my own 386 and was using Slackware for everything. I used it until 1996, when I worked for a company that was infamous for giving Microsoft Internet Explorer 1-> 3 and somewhat infamous for Red Baron browser.