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Back around 2007 or so, I discovered BasicLinux (https://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/ https://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/), a stripped down version of Slackwar
by ipcress_file 3y ago
Back around 2007 or so, I discovered BasicLinux (https://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/ https://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/), a stripped down version of Slackware for old PCs, compatible with Slackware 4.0 packages. It installed from a couple of floppies onto my ancient ThinkPad 365X.
BasicLinux had a great community and introduced me to mailing lists. I learned a lot about how Linux works, tracking down dependencies with ldd and modifying config and init scripts. After a year or so of playing with BasicLinux, I moved on to Slackware, but continued to use the mailing list for help.
So happy 30th to Slackware and cheers to anyone who provided assistance on the BasicLinux mailing list!
- akoster 3y agoGreat story and thanks for sharing! As someone newer to mailing lists, how did (or do) you use them without flooding your inbox? Lots of rules/filters and directories? Using mutt, alpine or gnus? I appreciate the USENET newsgroups perspective of having a separate directory (other than your inbox) to read and respond to posts but it seems not many projects use NNTP these days.
- ipcress_file 3y agoThanks! The mailing list was never that busy, so it wasn't really a problem. I'd probably automatically redirect to a folder if I needed to do that. Funny that you mention USENET. I'm subscribed to about 20 newsgroups, using Claws-mail. It is quite nice that they're separate from my other mail accounts.
- qingcharles 3y agoThat's great, thank you. In the mid-90s I was running all sorts of large public Internet nodes off 386s with 4Mb of RAM on Slackware. Great to see you can still find Linux to run on these.