I first tried it in late '96. Followed the instructions, got it installed on a spare machine at work, rebooted and it was working! Logged in and tried some com

I first tried it in late '96. Followed the instructions, got it installed on a spare machine at work, rebooted and it was working! Logged in and tried some command (I think it was "dir") I got back "bash: dir: command not found" (although I recall it as "syntax error" so my memory is fuzzy) I was taken aback. Did I really make such a huge mistake that the operating system wanted to bash me?