For those veteran linux people, what was it like back in 90s? I did see and hear of Unix systems being available for use but I did not see much apart from old versions of Debian in use.
Were they prominent in education like universities? Was it mainly a hobbyist thing at the time compared to the business needs of 98, 95 and classic mac?
I ask this because I found out that some PC games I owned were apparently also on Linux even in CD format from a firm named Loki.
the first contact i had with linux back in mid-90’s brazil was with my isp’s login terminal, which displayed some arcane text reading “red hat linux version x.x”. after that, during my father’s final years working in bank of brazil he had to deal with cobra’s homemade distro in his workstations (cobra had developed an unix in the 80s that run on m68k’s, so no surprises here). it was an absolutely esoteric system to those who only knew the dos/windows 3.11 duo, since w95 only arrived in our country in numbers only in 96. the thing really caught on during the early to mid-2000’s, with faster and cheaper adsl connections, and with them, abundant knowledge and downloads available to any script kid.
I remember using Conectiva Linux in Brazil. Also tried Kurumin Linux, both Brazilian distros. The biggest pain I recall from these years was to make a modem work and I ended up buying an expensive US Robotics, which worked like a charm.