Linux Kernel is now in version 6.something.

The first version of Linux I used was Kernel 0.99, which I ran on my 286 PC back then. My machine was pretty beefy -- I had a full 1 MB of RAM, way more than the meager 640 kB needed by DOS !

We didn't have Internet at home back then. With a friend, we used the FTP at the university to download and write the 30 floppy 3 1/2 disks required to install it.

We used one of the classrooms and basically used 20 computers in parallel to fill the floppies, one copy for each of us.

Then at home I had to feed the 30 floppies back to back to install it. It was... something.

Now that may seem unusual but back then Windows 3 was distributed on a handful of floppies, and Office required up to a dozen floppies at some point.

That was way before we could afford CD readers.

A few years before that, I actually got a copy and ran MINIX on my Atari 1040STF. That only booted from 2 floppies, not bad.
(MINIX was a precursor from Linux, which Torvald learned from).
It was slow like molasses to get to the shell.
It was amazing but…
Then I realized... Why the heck am I using a multi-user environment on my home 16-bit computer?

The idea of having the computer do more than *one* thing at a time did not even make sense to me back then.