Comment by antod

I also first tried Linux (with zero unix knowledge) about 98 or 99 with RH5.1 which I think was the 2.0.3x kernel.

Frankly I'm amazed I got as far as I did despite it was mostly uninformed blundering about and bashing my head against the wall. I managed to figure out the specific AT codes to make my modem connect, and even managed to download and compile KDE 1.1 (the default UI was so ugly and clunky). KDE took about a day to compile from memory.