I had a dialup connection so I could search the internet! There was a bunch of mailing lists back then where you could ask questions, also sometimes I checked the USENET (alt.os.linux.*) and there were some excellent how-tos... It seems there still are some how-tos (I'm not sure if they are the same as they were back then):

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Sound-HOWTO/x320.html http://www.tldp.org/LDP/lame/LAME/linux-admin-made-easy/inst...

Also the Slackware linux had a nice installation guide:

https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:install

Finally, some configurations were explained in the corresponding man pages of each util.

I still remember installing Slack around the year 2000 and completely borking Xorg.

Luckily I had ethernet and a cable modem - Lynx to the rescue!!! A lot of the linux forums were very 'text' friendly in those days - I dread to think what it would be like nowadays trying to navigate a forum from the cli.

I left slackware about 5 years ago for Xubuntu, mainly because I needed to use my laptop for work and not just having fun tweaking and learning.

The whole "Apt get into it!" just really works for me now. I think the final straw for me was last minute trying to compile a video editing suite (Cinelerra?) on slack, getting frustrated and then finding out it was much quicker for me to nuke the HDD, install Ubuntu Studio and an hour or so later I was happily video editing.

Now nostalgia is knocking at the door so maybe I will make a new partition and see how slackware has developed in the last few years...

man and the Internet. Yes the internet was around in 1998 :) . News groups, IRC, mailing lists... all existed. Trial and error as well of course.

Being from that time period myself (18 years old) and installing Slackware as well RedHat (and even Caldera ... anyone remember that?) there was plenty of documentation.

However unlike the parent poster I got a bunch of Linux distributions by either mail ordering or going to conference. In fact I went to Linux conference in Atlanta circa 1997 and meet Linus himself... but more importantly picked up some distribution CDs/disks.

It was the good ole days for sure.

Oh man, the days of needing to go to a conference to pick up Linux CDs. Yes, I definitely remember Caldera. Only thing from that list I haven't done is meet Linus though I guess I will get around to it at some point.

Actually come to think of it, Ubuntu really hit the CD nail on the head with Shipit, those of you with 28.8 modems will know this feeling. I still have my 7.04 CD.

I also remember volunteers at my university who were organizing sessions where you could go with a blank CD and they would copy over a Linux distro!

And of course there were computer magazines that offered Linux distros in their CDs!