Two oddities, there's a technical difference between a GUI desktop environment and an operating system, even if the commercial vendors insist they're conjoined

Two oddities, there's a technical difference between a GUI desktop environment and an operating system, even if the commercial vendors insist they're conjoined twins and alternatives to that worldview are a thoughtcrime. So this is an OS of the Gnome variety, not a OS of the retroBSD variety. The other oddity having lived thru a slightly earlier era in high school, we did TONS of sneakernet peer 2 peer filesharing using floppies. The stuff he needed would be getting would be kinda obsolete, on the other hand the school had stuff laying around so if you wanted a "turbo C" it was literally sitting in the library waiting for you to copy it. Anyway I'm surprised he never found anyone to trade "warez" with. In '99 when the story started I already had 5 or 6 years of experience with a linux desktop at home, first with SLS floppy based installs off a BBS, but by 99 I had a couple years experience with Debian, makes you wonder what would have happened if the guy had been on an abandoned isle with a linux distro instead of quickbasic...