[ubuntu-us-ut] Polling for information and fun

[Charles Curley]

On Thu, 14 May 2009 08:40:22 -0600
"Colby W." <colbyw at gmail.com> wrote:

> As many of you may have noticed in #ubuntu-us-ut, Aaron and I have
> been comparing notes on when we first started using Linux. This led me
> to wonder what was the operating system on everyone's first home PC.

Home PC? PCs, home or otherwise, didn't exist when I started playing
with computers.

> 
> 1. What was the OS of your first home PC?

KIM Is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIM-1) had some firmware, but I
don't recall that the MOS Technology folks gave it a name (Wikipedia
says the called it TIM, Terminal Interface Monitor). And I'm not sure
I'd dignify it by calling it an OS.

> 2. What was the processor, speed, and amount of RAM of your first
> home PC?

6502, 1 Mhz, 1152 bytes (yeah, bytes. Not gigabytes, not megabytes, not
kilobytes. Bytes.) That was before I wire-wrapped up a whopping four
additional kilobytes on an expansion card.

> 3. What was the first computer you ever sat in front of
> (think back to elementary school)?

An IBM 360 remote terminal. I don't recall actually kneeling to the
thing, but I suspect some folks might have. This was some time around
1970.

> 4. What was the first Linux distribution and version you installed by
> yourself?

Slackware, as found in the back of a book on Linux I bought in 1993 at
a Walden Books. I did look at Minix, but never installed it.

-- 

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