Installing Linux Like It's 1999 - Red Hat 6.1

Red Hat Linux 6.1 was released in October 1999, 25 years ago this month! So let's install it out on period hardware, compare it to modern day Fedora, and see what 25 years of desktop Linux progress looks like.

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Chapters:
00:00 Is Linux Really That Complicated?
01:22 What's In The Box?
08:35 Installation Process
16:47 First Impressions & Problems...
21:17 Classic Linux Problem 1: GPU / Monitor Configuration
25:45 Classic Linux Problem 2: Networking
28:54 Classic Linux Problem 3: Sound Card
32:13 25 Years Of Linux Progress

[vwestlife]

Ironically that "graphical mode" setup actually runs in text mode, just styled to look graphical.

[neuronic]

This era of Red Hat was just so cool. I dearly love that logo. I dabbled in Linux back in '99, and it was good geeky fun. Now the magic is gone because pretty much just works. That being said, it's my home server/gaming desktop now, and it runs real games. We're not limited to Frozen Bubble and TuxRacer anymore.

[Lawnie]

I remember my father installing Red Hat Linux on my old 486 machine when we got a Pentium to replace it. It took him ages. I couldn't believe it, and stomped my feet and wailed about how bad it was. Little did I realise that a few decades later every computational device I had would be running some sort of Linux OS. So much of what people take for granted in the latest OSes has been highlighted here beautifully. ESPECIALLY the networking issues. Good work as usual!

[tappel]

I first installed Slackware from a few dozen floppy disks in 1995. In 1996 I got the Infomagic 6 CD Linux collection. I think I tried out Redhat back then but eventually stayed on Slackware.

Linux was so powerful back then, with virtual terminals and true multitasking and all the stuff from the Unix world. And if you had a suitable video card you might have been able to tease out video modes from your monitor that were not possible on Windows.

[jscipione]

0:32 “They say Linux is complicated that you have to jump into terminal all the time, networking doesn’t work, sound doesn’t work.” Proceeds to jump into terminal after sound doesn’t work, network doesn’t work. At least in 1999 “they” were right about Linux!

[aeleequis]

I watched your Mac mini eGPU video and after seeing this one, I'm officially subbed. Keep going with weird Linux shenanigans, I love them

[KeefJudge]

I remember the main issue when I tried this back in the day was I didn't have Ethernet at home, instead was using a PCI 56k modem, which I recall was what was known as a "WinModem" where the hardware was fairly basic and the proprietary Windows driver did all the hard work. I believe it took a LOT of effort and reverse engineering from driver coders to get these working in Linux at all.

[timmturner]

I switched from Suse to redhat around 1999 and was amazed at the performance difference between the two, redhat had a very notable boost.

About a year later I switched to Gentoo when it released and was quite happy with yet another performance boost.

This was back when simple compiler optimizations could make drastic differences to performance, I was running a coppermine Pentium III.

[dizwell]

Brings back memories of many hours spent trying to get Red Hat 5.1 running on an HP Vectra in 1997. Whether X would work was always seemingly in the lap of the Gods and I never had a clue about vertical sync rates: I recall dire warnings about 'if you enter the wrong ones, your monitor might be destroyed', which was certainly a novel and scary departure from Windows 95 installations! Never could get networking working 😢. But fun times: and what a pleasure to see Gnome 1.4 (?) again: the days when Gnome was my preferred usable desktop seem very long ago now!! Loved the video. Thank you for it.

[DrivingSander]

To this day, having a Broadcom WiFi chip is still a problem, while Intel stuff works without issue.

[miasma]

Wow this was my first linux distro actually. This video is gonna be great to watch!

[ThomasCameron]

I got my first RHCE certification on Red Hat Linux 6.1 back in 1999. This brought up a lot of really cool old memories. Thank you.

[Ancipital_]

They took so much care of the textbook manuals, I remember the inside was so comprehensive and left no question unasked. That alone makes me nostalgic, in-print documentation was great.

[ncot_tech]

I wanted to have a more traditional Linux experience, so put Arch on my PC. It only took two attempts to get it working, I was well impressed. Sadly I didn't have to manually compile the kernel, but X did break in amusing and hard to figure out ways to add some spice. But I did forget to set up the bootloader so the machine didn't boot after installing it. 11/10, highly recommend if you have a long weekend and nothing to do.

[thera]

Thank you for this nostalgia hit ! Used RedHat in late 90's on school's server, spent lots of hours learning, letting it overnight to render PoVRay images, compiling whatever picked our teenage attention or simply having a blast with our 256kbps line.

[vicenary]

Thanks for bringing back the memories. I anticipate waking up screaming in the middle of the night for the next week or two from having nightmares about configuring Linux.

[willemvdk]

Ahhh I love the retrogasm. I vividly remember wanting to try Linux back in 1999 or 2000. I was an avid PC user, about 15 years old back then, and definitely a geek. I heard about Linux and wanted to try it. I had installed DOS and Windows in various versions many times over so I felt quite confident I'd be able to do it. Bought Red Hat. Failed. Bought SuSE. Failed miserably. Couldn't get it to boot. Got all kinds of error messages I couldn't make sense of. Finally tried Slackware and succeeded, to much of my delight. Used it as a daily driver ever since. Got into compiling my own kernels and everything. But I remember getting started was very, very hard. Mind you, the internet wasn't full of tutorials and articles yet, back in the day.

[brmolnar]

Back in 1999 I bought that same box and installed it on a ~120MHz Pentium. Your adventures in networking were not as bad as mine. I had help getting it up and running, but picked up the most generic network card, and for reasons I don't remember, had to download an updated kernel module on another PC, then copy it over the serial port, compile, and it worked.

A year later I had added a SCSI card to the machine and had a massive 18 GB /home on it. I had also added an early Lucent Wavelan on an ISA to PCMCIA card adaptor and could wirelessly connect to my computer, and also allow wireless roaming around my college dorm.

I do not miss these early days, but I certainly learned a lot.

[BWGPEI]

Man you bring back happy memories. It was Red had that our computer club installed back in the day.

[Chriva]

I bet you that thing would even run on a 386 if given enough ram. It took distributions aaaages to finally switch over their x86 binary packages to 586+