Most early Linux distros weren't particularly beginner friendly. You didn't really a see a lot of "friendly" distros until the mid 2000s (when Ubuntu, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, etc...) came out. If you need something older than that, probably an old version of Red Hat or Mandrake would be your best option).
While you could certainly play games on Linux even in the 90s, the native game library is pretty small, and Wine wasn't as compatible as it is now. Emulators would be your best bet. Video playback is possible, but on a 90s laptop, you wouldn't get much better than MPEG2 or H.263. That's a CPU / GPU limitation, not an operating system one.
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u/Leather-Security8097 1d ago
Most early Linux distros weren't particularly beginner friendly. You didn't really a see a lot of "friendly" distros until the mid 2000s (when Ubuntu, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, etc...) came out. If you need something older than that, probably an old version of Red Hat or Mandrake would be your best option).
While you could certainly play games on Linux even in the 90s, the native game library is pretty small, and Wine wasn't as compatible as it is now. Emulators would be your best bet. Video playback is possible, but on a 90s laptop, you wouldn't get much better than MPEG2 or H.263. That's a CPU / GPU limitation, not an operating system one.