Re: The ONLY things going for it were
1) Gnome and KDE were in the early stages or even a glint in someones eye, but FVWM was around (and WindowMaker) and these must have been mature by then as they've hardly changed.
2) You mean LaTex, Vi or Emacs aren't good enough?
3) No, but neither had anything much (I do recall the fun of compiling and optimising Xine by hand a year or two later, and gotten OSS working.
4) Well, yes (see 5)
5) Mainly with Winmodems. If you had one, give up and buy a decent hardware one, they generally weren't that expensive (unless you had no option but for a PCMCIA one).
6) Still more fun than Windows. Learn to love using a computer again without feeling degraded, inhibited or patronised by 'wizzard' dialogs or poorly animated puppies or anthropomorphised paperclips.