Ask Lemmy

My first distro was OpenSUSE (or SuSE Linux back then) sometime around 2002. I picked it up out of curiosity in a book shop. They were selling the handbook, bundled with a DVD with the actual OS. It looked something like this. And thus started decades of distro hopping.

Ubuntu sometime in the late 2000's. I remember a friend showing me virtual desktops that rotated between each other.

I dual booted my machine and it was amazing... For 10 seconds until I realized thats all it did. When right back to windows.

Ubuntu, either version 12.04 or 12.10 when I got my first computer, a Chromebook, in Christmas 2013 when I was 10. I hated how Chrome OS didn't support anything so I found a way to put Ubuntu on it and messed around with Blender and Minecraft. Despite this early start, I proceeded to do nothing productive with it, broke it out of frustration, and now I'm 20 and struggling with Arch lmao

I installed linux mint on some really old laptop when i was a little kid but i wouldnt really consider that my first distro that i actually used on a dailybasis, that would be SteamOS on a Steam deck, it showed me how great linux could be and got me hooked on it.

Gentoo circa 2002. Soooooo over my capabilities at the time

I first tried Ubuntu because it was the only one I knew of besides arch and I heard that arch was hard. I hated Ubuntu immediately and started distro hopping. I'm on Debian 12 now and it's the longest I've been on a single distro.

OpenSuse with KDE on a Netbook

The first time I used Linux was at an old job, and we used Xubuntu for desktop, Debian for servers, and Raspbian on the Raspberry Pis, but technically Xubuntu would have been the first. I currently use KDE neon as my daily driver

Debian... would recommend

I started on Arch and it's the only distro I've ever really loved.

Minix.

But then I wised up and switched to FreeBSD.

Back in 2004, I had a SuSE Linux professional 9.2 on 5 CDs and 2 DVDs. I repeat: SEVEN DISKS!! Even without internet access - which I did not have at that time - it felt like all apps accessible through packet manager. You just had to swap discs when prompted. I just took it out in fond memory... SuSE Linux 9.2

I distrohopped at the start, no idea what I started with but the first one I settled on was Solus. Still a big fan of Budgie, and the OS felt easy to use, yet had the possibility to download stuff like Spotify as well.

My first was Ubuntu about a decade ago. Didn't stick with it at the time. I wouldn't choose Ubuntu for almost any purpose today, but I think at the time it was fine. (By "almost" I mean that there possibly exists a good use case, but I cannot currently think of one.)

Centos in like 2008... idk the version, i had to learn how to set up a basic internal http server with a sql database or something from zero. It was fun.

Ubuntu. I think it was around when Unity was starting off.

I tried Caldera first, but could never get it to boot. The first one I managed to actually use was Ubuntu 5.10, and that's what got Linux to be my daily driver. Lots of distro-hopping later, I'm still daily driving Linux, Debian these days.

I couldn't run Linux on my PC due too lack of hardware support at the time, but FreeBSD had support, so I ran that for a couple of years until Linux caught up.

At that time, there wasn't much choice when it came to distros. These days, it's a little bit of everything. Arch on my daily driver, RHEL on my ERP and DB servers, Ubuntu server on my Dev server, and I'm planning on deploying NixOS across the 700 PCs at our different locations.

Mandrake 7.1 - it was aweful.

Ubuntu -> Manjaro -> Pop! OS

Caldera, followed by redhat followed by Slackware which I stayed on for quite a while.

My first one was OpenSUSE in the 00-years. I was hardly able to get it up and running on my worn out, home-build desktop.

Tried again later with ubuntu (Gnome) on an old Thinkpad and was taken aback about how smooth it ran just ootb.

Corel Linux, I doubt anyone else here knows it especially used it. Very user friendly, got me into linux.

This one!

Raw linux: Android

Raw desktop OS : ChromeOS

GNU/Linux : Ubuntu 18.09

Current : Debian 12

Ubuntu, which I pretty much only installed so I could also install compiz fusion because it looked badass. Nothing like a 3D cube for my multiple desktops, and windows that jiggle when I move them and burn up when I close them.

Red Hat

I think mint, but after that Ubuntu and kubuntu since ~gutsy.

I think it was mint or elementry

Ubuntu > OpenSuse > Mint

Tried some others along the way but didn't liked them.

My mom brought me a disk of mandrake Linux. I tried it and I was pretty lost.

Zenwalk. Not sure why...

Fedora. Core 3 or Core 4 according to Wikipedia and the fact that I recognize the names. An acquaintance suggested I try Linux, so I found info on it, didn't really understand what a distro was and settled on Fedora because I had bought O'Reilly Linux Pocket Guide that used that distro.

I switched pretty quickly after that, and used Ubuntu, Debian, then Mepis for awhile. I've run Arch, dual-booted with Windows for several years on the desktop and Debian testing on my remote server

Fedora, then moved on Debian after I did break my install 😌 No windows since 2013 and snowden reveals.

Ubuntu!

I downloaded the installer in 2017 after MS forced an update to Windows 10 from 7. My laptop, from 2010, couldn't handle W10 and I heard Linux was good for old laptops. Not long after that I hopped around to other distros but Ubuntu was first.

Manjaro, that is the distro in my families computer

Redhat. I can't remember the version, but I found it at Fry's electronics in early 2000. Using Fedora now.

Some really old ubuntu version running in a folder in my windows partition. It kept crashing and uninstall was just removing the folder. Another os was beos which ran from a folder too.

Slackware. Don't remember the version.

The first I had for work was Ubuntu.