[Intro]
Linux is so flexible. It can be found almost everywhere: in some terminals, ATMs, various cash registers, and even on the coffee machines.
In addition, your phone, roughly speaking, runs on the Linux kernel, only slightly modified and with a different name - Android, but we will talk about it in the future.
Linux itself appeared as such in 1991, but as a kernel.
The kernel was later incorporated into the GNU operating system, thereby enabling it to have basic functionality with the ability to build various programs.
It came to the point where the X Window Environment (first Xfree86, later replaced by X11) was ported to GNU/Linux, thus marking the beginning of the development of a graphical interface for Linux.
Even in the days of Windows 9x, there were people who did not like the system and its general philosophy (although at that time Linux did not have one)
This led to stereotypes like "Linux is purely for programmers", "you can't play games on Linux", "where's Word and Excel?", and so on.
But, whatever the stereotypes, at any time there were people who were just interested in trying something new.
Such people were also found in the IT sector.
To install a Linux distribution on your computer at that time, you just had to go to the store and buy a CD (or floppy disk, depending on the "age" of your computer), ...
...come home, boot, partition the disk, and wait for the installation to finish.
Этот способ дожил и до наших дней и устаревать, видимо, никак не планирует. Правда, сейчас на смену CD-дискам пришли USB-накопители, но это уже совсем другая история.
There were also people who wanted to try what Linux was all about without leaving Windows.
In that case, the user had to manually partition his disk to keep both Windows and Linux.
And don't let it all crash at the end :D
We must remember, however, that Linux is a Unix-like system and the way it manages disk partitions at the root is different from Windows.
Inexperienced users, eager to try this system, may inadvertently do something wrong. And in this case, there are two choices - either call someone who understands, or... use a program that knows what to do and how to do it.
That's the program we're going to talk about today.
Meet WinLinux2000, a Linux distro utility designed to simplify the installation process as well as allow the user to boot into the operating system of his choice.
In short, this is the dual-boot of those years. Yes, it's that simple.
How does it all get installed?
I think we should start with the fact that this program is designed only for the Windows 9x family (well, Win95, Win98, you get the rest)
On Windows NT you can not install this program, and why - you will learn in this video, but a little later.
And now we can begin the installation itself.
The first step is quite simple - you put it all in the system like a normal application, even the installer here is classic from those years.
After clicking "Next", we are strictly recommended to check the hard drive with Scandisk before installation, as the program requires a perfectly working hard drive and a non-damaged file system.
But we are fine without ScanDisk, so click "Next" again.
In the next step we are offered to choose the type of configuration: Compact, Full or Normal.
The only difference between them is the number of applications included. If someone is sorry about the hard disk space, you can choose the Compact one.
But I'm not sorry, so we choose Full.
After choosing a package, we are warned that the installer will put a complete system on our hard drive, ...
...because if you try to install the system to a removable drive, like an external hard drive, the system may not end up booting.
And then everything is easy: select a partition to install and a folder in the Start menu. That's it, the program starts copying.
As you can see, from the folder structure, you can see that a complete system is being copied there.
You have to wait, of course, because it emulates a 100 MHz processor, but with Daniel's Special Edit Magic (TM) it won't take you more than a couple of seconds.
[had to symbolize acceleration somehow]
[window forgotten]
After copying the files, the initial configuration window launches (still in Windows), asking for a name, login and password.
It is also possible to set your password to superuser as well.
Later the setup program will detect the devices and suggest to change something in the system configuration of the devices in Linux: here I found my video card, mouse, sound card.
In general, everything that is in Windows is perfectly defined.
This naturally suits me fine, so I click "Next" and the installation is essentially complete.
And yes, after installing WinLinux 2000, never run a disk check via ScanDisk, it will be a total nightmare that...
you will regret it.
After installation, shortcuts to WinLinux configuration and Boot WinLinux 2000 appear on the desktop and in the Start Menu.
Open it and we are immediately informed that this program is configured to run under MS-DOS and, accordingly, we need to reboot to MS-DOS to run this application.
But why so?
The point is that the distribution runs from under MS-DOS mode, on top of a running Windows 9x kernel.
This is all helped by the LoadLin program. The program is a kind of loader which does not touch in any way the already installed DOS and Windows 9x systems.
The program works with the VCPI protocol, which was supported by all DOS and Windows 9x systems.
You can't run it on Windows NT - it will get a protection error.
(and it also seems to me that when running on NT systems, the program destroys itself)
The way it loads Linux on top of Windows reminds us a bit of the Windows subsystem for Linux, only of those years. Funny, isn't it?
So this feature was in Windows long before it became mainstream?
Mystery.
Okay, we click "Yes" and are immediately thrown out of the system into MS-DOS mode, which is where Linux starts from.
This can be seen by the inscription "Uncompressing linux"
So we see Linux start up and now the device detection is going on, at least here it found my hard drive, obviously, and the CD-ROM.
In my computer, both the CD drive and the hard drive are IDE.
Accordingly, in Linux itself they will be marked under the letter "H", which just indicates the HDA and HDB found.
However, in addition to these it will try to find devices such as HDC, HDD, HDG, HDH to check the availability of disk devices, and if anything, mount them.
Here the Linux kernel is version 2.2, which was released back in 1999.
Next comes the UMSDOS add-on, which helps the kernel see FAT disks and mount them to the system.
Then you create and enable swap (or swap file), load users, run daemons (that's the name of the service), wake up the X display and load the desktop environment.
The system is started, we are at the login screen. We need to log in to the system.
The background here is the inscription "Now your computer R", the rest of the inscription simply did not have enough space, well, it happens :)
And the desktop itself is KDE 1.0, which was released in 1998.
Of the accounts here, there is our created account, guest account and superuser account.
But I'm interested in my personal account, so I'll use it to log in.
After logging in, we see the KDE desktop, which is interrupted by a window saying "we installed a new version of KDE and the template files may have changed, do we want to install new ones?"
I have no such wish, so thank you for the offer, but I will decline.
And there it is - our desktop.
The concept of the desktop here is absolutely familiar: here's your icons, here's your recycle garbage can, here's your taskbar.
In the first KDE the taskbar is unusual here - it is somehow more informative and functional: you can minimize to a compact view; through the panel you can switch between desktops; immediately make the exit from the account.
And that's without clicking on the local Start menu, in this case the application menu.
The design of lists, colors, right-click context menus, and window buttons is almost exactly the same as in the old Windows
Even the official announcement of the release said the following: ...
KDE is a network transparent, contemporary desktop environment for UNIX workstations. KDE seeks to fill the need for an easy to use desktop for Unix workstations, similar to the desktop environments found under the MacOS or Windows 95/NT.
On our desktop we have of course our Recycle Bin; our startup folders and default templates; our, so to speak, "disk" partition with Linux; ...
...the DOS Folder, which will fully open our Windows 98 partition and our floppy drive; ...
...and then there are shortcuts to run the installed programs.
What's in the applications?
All installed applications are in the applications menu (which has the KDE logo on the panel) and sorted into groups: games, graphics, system, multimedia and so on. Well, in general, the classic way.
In addition to the programs sorted by category, in this menu we can access the recycle bin and the home folder, in case you have a lot of windows open and it's a bit difficult to minimize them all at the moment.
...to the Disk Navigator, which allows you to browse various folders on your PC from under the menu; and to the settings of this very panel.
In the Applications folder here we have the Netscape 4.7 browser, but we can't access the internet from it - our network card wasn't found after all, sadly ...
...standard organizer and text editors.
The Games folder contains the standard games written by the KDE community in those years, from minesweeper and mahjong to socoban and poker.
In the Graphics folder here will be the familiar GIMP, here version 1.0.4; Acrobat Reader 4.0 and viewers in some way; icon editor and a simple program for creating screenshots.
The Internet will have various mail and IRC clients, news aggregators and simple network utilities.
In Multimedia there are of course simple MIDI, audio and CD players; and a sound mixer.
Finally under System and Utilities there will be Task Manager, Terminal, File and Font Managers, ...
...calculator, archiver, address book and menu editor.
As mentioned before, almost all of the applications are standard applications from KDE itself and in some points in terms of functionality they may be too sparse and simple here.
The application center here is KPackage, from the same KDE, and the packages are a mix of RPM and Debian.
What is there in terms of customization?
All the most basic things you would normally see on your desktop belong to the first group, which is called "Desktop".
Here you can customize everything from your desktop background to fonts and your preferred interface language. In short, it's just "Display Settings" like Windows, only divided into separate buttons.
The next group configures the input: the behavior of the mouse, the keyboard and its layout control.
In the next group is the basic network-internet setup. In those days, there was no automatic setup, so you had to do everything manually.
Next we have information about the system. More precisely, the possibility to find out this information. Here you can find out everything you need - the amount of RAM, the processor, which disks and devices are installed in the computer, whether there is sound and how the display "X" feels.
The next three groups (such as "Sound", "Keys", and "Windows") don't need much attention as they are offshoots of the basic settings.
The same cannot be said for "Applications". Here you will find applications separate from the settings, which are also major components of the system.
For example, the "Login Manager" is needed to simplify the management of users, because, as we all remember, WinLinux 2000 was created for those who use Windows, right?
However, we can not edit it because of config protection, which is funny. (probably solved simply by logging in from a Root account)
It is unlikely that anyone would go to a terminal as usual and try to create (or change) a user on the system with the typical commands (such as "useradd" or "passwd"). (and that is, for example, "useradd" or "passwd")
And now it's time for a summary.
To me that was probably an interesting way to try a Linux system at that time without having to demolish an already installed Windows 98 or DOS.
Even the video itself has been slightly remade into a review of KDE 1, because that's really... full-fledged Linux of those years.
And yes, you can run full Linux in Windows 9x and DOS, not only with WinLinux 2000.
As mentioned before, this is done using the LoadLin.exe program and a compressed kernel image.
And whether it is necessary now - the answer speaks for itself.
That's all.
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