While rummaging about at an computer refurbishing shop I discovered The Complete LINUX Operating System 6.5 still in its original box. The box had never been opened its price $2.00; I bought it.
The Linux distro specs are as follows:
Linux-Mandrake 6.5 (Red Hat Linux with enhancements)
Special versions of PartionMagic and BootMagic
3500+ pages of electronic Linux references from Que and Sams
Linux Kernel 2.2.13
KDE 1.1.2
XFree 3.3.5
System Requirements:
CPU Intel Pentium and compatible processors
Pentium l / MMX/ Pro/ ll/Celeron/ lll
AMD K6/ K6-2, Cyrix 6X86/ M-ll
Ram: 16MB required. 64 recommended for X Window System
Disk Space 500MB Minimum. 1+ Gig recommended
3.5" floppy drive
This Linux - Mandrake OS was packaged and marketed by Macmillian Software; Year 1999.
Lots of information printed on the box, too much to list here. However, below is just two reviews by the days industry experts:
"Macmillan's package offers a bundled set of programs that has the potential of being far easier-and therefore far faster to install than Red Hat Linux 6.0, which is quite an accomplishment for a package that cost less than half the price of the competition."
-Jeff Mace of MACELABS Corp
"You can't go wrong buying Mandrake 6.5; it is an excellent Linux distribution, and I suspect I will keep using it as a desktop OS>
-CPU Review on Complete Linux 6.5
Well my review is this: Linux-Mandrake allowed this Newbie [Still Are One] to get his feet wet with Linux, and I'm grateful.
The machine I used to load Linux-Mandrake: Gateway P5-120: Pentium l / 120MHz / 128MB / 1.6Gig
It was an difficult installation process for a Newbie. But, there were included two reference manuals, and the installation guide was laid out well. [STILL] the Linux speak used was often confusing and required steadfast effort to learn Linux speak. There are many questions asked during the installation, and many were unanswerable by me. So guess work played an important part of my installation. BECAUSE my guesswork was more often wrong than right; many installation attempts were needed before I finally got the distro on the machine.
Well finally it happened:- Linux - Mandrake duel booted with Windows 95a. Back then it was dial-up for me. It took awhile but eventually Linux-Mandrake was surfing the net, and I was sold on Linux. By todays standards, Linux - Mandrake would not rate as an acceptable distro. It was stiff, clumsy and locked up regularly but lots of fun
