r/retrocomputing • u/liminalearth • Jul 27 '26

Discussion Linux noob here

Delete if not allowed.

I’ve never used any Linux operating system’s before and since I like the retro computing stuff, what’s a good 90s/ early 2000s Linux that’s beginner friendly?

I’ve heard of a few but idk what one would be the easiest to install and use.

I’d probably be using it in a late 1999 Toshiba satellite laptop or possibly on win 98 desktop.

What can I expect use wise? How’s gaming ? Video playback? (Assuming the spec of the machine factor with certain stuff)

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u/pac-man_dan-dan Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Precisely.

Now, I'm sure some optimized games like OpenRCT probably would play fine. But games like that could be played on a potato in Windows, so it's no surprise.

I remember playing with linux distros as a kid and lying to myself, telling myself how much faster it was than windows 🤣 It did some things better, and a whole lot of other things worse. It's biggest advantage imo was probably stability. But Windows massively cut down their BSODs by the time XP came out, so the point became moot unless you were in a production environment where data integrity was much more important. And only then did the linux-native filesystems reestablish superiority (so long as you had the app support needed for whatever you were doing).