Ask

1998. Redhat 5.2, IIRC.

My parents had made our computer dual boot, and I was so annoyed at what Microsoft was doing with Internet Exploder and Excel that I decided to use Linux anytime I was not specifically playing computer games.

Ubuntu 7.10 back in 2007. Had fun messing with it on my computer until I learned that it was horrible for gaming back then. Then it became my school computer OS. Web blockers and remote control? Not when you boot into a live CD.

2002

All the computers in my university computer lab ran macOS.

Except for the CS dept computer lab where they all ran Linux.

I was a CS student, so fall quarter first year came with a crash course in Linux.

Decades ago

Slackware, around 1996 I think. Linux Router Project for quite awhile. Tried OpenSUSE, didn't click, briefly tried RedHat, same junk, then tried Debian and it felt right. Later, got tired of purity over drivers that worked with the hardware I had and went to Ubuntu. Currently on Mint.

Started playing around with Ubuntu in 2009 on a whim. For a while I dual booted Windows+Ubuntu, but when I realized I went months without booting Windows, I deleted the partition and have been Linux-only ever since. I distro hop every few years, currently on Arch. I can't stand Ubuntu these days but it still has a special place in my heart.

Genuinely cannot remember my first distro or who I got it from, but became the "linux guy" locally when Ubuntu was mass distributing install CDs to anyone who asked. Think it was v5? Early 2000s anyways. Got a few hundred, switched a decent chunk of the town over, got the school to do a linux lab

I just looked up the Ubuntu named versions, I'm pretty sure I remember natty narwhal, which seems to match the year I joined university. I didn't make the jump for my main machine until win7 went EoL, I wasn't going to go to win8, and by then steam on linux was good enough.

I used UNIX at university before Windows was even a thing. Then later, I frequently dealt with UNIX and Linux as a server OS. I never bothered with desktop Linux because Windows was simply good enough. About five years ago, Windows enshittification pushed me to explore alternatives. I've been using Mint exclusively in all my personal machines for the last four years or so. I'm never going back.

2002, started with Gentoo and kept at it until maybe 2010 when I stopped with Linux because my laptop died. Started again with Ubuntu MATE around 2017. Switched to Mint in 2024.

I first tried Ubuntu it was around 2004, I had an old Dell laptop and was tinkering around with. It didn't stick though because driver issues and app support and it was my only PC, so no real way to troubleshoot and find drivers to fix it. So I ended up loading Windows Server 2000 onto it as it seemed better than the consumer options of XP or ME. Then again, maybe in 2006, I tried Ubuntu on a PowerPC Macbook Pro, didn't stick with it again due to software limitations, but drivers were better on that laptop.

I really got to using Ubuntu again since about 2017. This was a bit after M$FT introduced .Net Core 1.0 in 2016 with cross platform support. I figured I could try the new flavour of .Net on Linux while using C#. It wasn't a perfect experience but it was working. I've had dual boot on most of my machines since then, but today most of my devices have just Ubuntu or Mint now.

Currently typing this on Ubuntu, but Windows 11 is on the box. None of my main passwords and accounts get used on the Windows partition and I've setup separate emails and accounts so M$FT only gets to see some of my stuff. I'm on the fence and thinking of wiping that partition and just using Ubuntu exclusively since Windows 11 lags in some of my workflows. I mean I have a AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 64GB ram and 2x2TB NVME, RTX 3090 + RTX 5080 and Windows 11 still crawls doing some things. I've even used Win11debloat (https://github.com/raphire/win11debloat) and Windows 11 just sucks.

I think I can do everything I want in Ubuntu these days, with the exception of a few select games, but I'm older now and not that heavily into gaming so not a big deal really. Not really sure why I'm holding onto Windows.

Mandrake in like 97.

I switched nearly two years ago, at first to Fedora Workstation (because GNOME looked neat), then I moved to KDE Plasma (still nuts you can do that by the way, just swap out your desktop). About a year ago I distro hopped to EndeavourOS, which is Arch with small tweaks to make it nicer (but closer to vanilla Arch than CachyOS), still with KDE, and just last week I switched to Niri + Noctalia and am very happy! Linux is awesome and superior to Windows in every way for my usecases

The first time I got serious about Linux would have been 2003, taking a few classes at the community college and joining a computer club w a focus on Linux.

Was my primary OS from 2003 to about 2013, when work drove me back to Windows. I basically haven't had a personal PC since then, switched to gaming on consoles.

Still use it for servers, and plan on switching my new home PC over in the coming weeks.

For me it was late 90s with Red hat linux 4.2.