I first started using Linux in January 1991. I downloaded the bootdisk and rootdisk of version 0.11 from tsx-11.mit.edu. My computer had 2 megabytes of RAM and a 40 megabyte disk, and a 16MHz processor and a 2400 baud modem, so it was super slow. The lack of RAM was the biggest issue, and gcc would be swapping forever to build anything.

So, what I did was to build gcc on the university SunOS computer (which had replaced an Ultrix computer a year or two earlier) to cross-compile to 80386. That worked pretty well. I also tried to build gas to cross-assemble to object files, but that failed. But gas was fast enough on my computer, so, whenever I wanted to build anything, I'd download it to the university computer and cross-compile it, then download the .s files to my Linux computer, and assemble and link it. It beat waiting hours for gcc on my Linux computer. That's how I built nethack, which I played quite a bit back then.

Back then, I thought I'd be switching to some GNU operating system eventually. After all, Linux was 386-only at the time. But nowadays, Linux is very widely used. My main computer at work now runs Linux, though I also have one with Microsoft Windows, as the company email and meetings are on Microsoft Exchange. The production application servers are all Linux, though the databases are Solaris.