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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I was digging through some stuff and stumbled on this. To think it's been 15 years. Crazy what you used to be able to get a free CD of back in the day.
As much as I prefer other distributions over it, I am grateful for everything that Ubuntu has done to grow the Linux userbase.
I was listed on the page of people who might burn one for you for free!
How often did someone take you up on the offer?
Twice, I think? It's been many years, I think I added myself there when 9.04 was the hot new thing, so around 2009.
A friend once ordered a box of 50 to share with students from university and they delivered to the other side of the world not even charging shipping!
I worked at CompUSA back in the day. I did the same thing for coworkers. It was breezy 5.10. Crazy yo this it's been nearly 20 years since then.
Don't, you're making me well up. A while ago my hard drive died and I was looking for a flash drive to live boot. Only one I had was months old. Tried to get a new one, couldn't. Tried to order online, couldn't. It's crazy how hard it is when they used to literally send out the things for free.
This could be of help if you have Android: https://f-droid.org/packages/eu.depau.etchdroid/
Oh, that's epic. Thank you
to be fair if you don't have a Ventoy stick with a dozen or so distros and recovery tools by now you deserve to be scrambling for a boot disk
😱 I'd never heard of a Ventoy stick until you mentioned it. Thank you.
I hadn't heard of it either, this is super useful! It's funny the things you'll find just around the place on Lemmy.
They even shipped this to me in India. Pleasantly surprised at that point.
Wow the design is incredibly polished and modern
I remember wishing AOL's free disks were on CD-RW :-)
AOL came on floppies originally, but the quality was so poor that you could barely rewrite them.
I remember I had a few of these. If I recall correctly there was also a blue Kububtu one.
Oh wow, wish I had one of those. The blue looks pretty nice.
I still have a ton of AOL coasters laying around.
They always had them at the grocery store XD
Man, I remember buying a Linux Format(?) magazine once and breaking out the included 7.10 CD.
Later distros I messed with I remember waiting hours for those few hundred MB to download on my parent’s DSL connection, oh how times have changed!
Nowadays you can't even boot Ubuntu from disc. The loader is completely bugged out and you need to specify a few boot args to get it to boot within a semi reasonable amount of time. Last time I did, it took 20 minutes to load lol.
You'd have to use a DVD as well, since it's too big to fit on CDs now XP
And here's me having paid $110 (~$170 in today $) for Red Hat back when I was a poor cash-strapped tech student. 😬 TBF it came with an absolute tome of a manual.
I wish I had this. Although I don't use Ubuntu anymore, it was the first distro that I used and I feel grateful.
I loved that Ubuntu did this back in the day, it really made linux easier to get into for me, especially with my not-so-good internet connection. I still have a collection of these CDs somewhere.
I ordered a box of Ubuntu CDs and they came in a wooden box packed with hay!
I had a bunch of these for the first release. I threw them away ages ago sadly.
Yes that's how they killed Mandrake/Mandriva, which was superior IMO at that time (easier install, KDE based, better hardware support).
Of course, Mandriva's management is not blameless, but Ubuntu's free CDs were the cherry on top of the cake.
I might still have one kicking around somewhere. Probably with my OG Quake discs.
They don't anymore?
https://canonical.com/blog/shipit-comes-to-an-end
They've switched to just downloads these days. There are some third parties that still make and sell discs for pretty cheap though.
Mine came in a cardboard sleeve. I still have it somewhere.
This is more or less how I got started. I'd order a few of them, and my computers class teacher was super cool. Let me install it on some older machines destined for ewaste.
That was the first way I installed Ubuntu. I remember the bootleg ones on eBay for $5 also.
Nostalgic! Ordered 5 of these at the time and distributed among the good people :)