Linux

I somehow could not find the Mint install so I went with Ubuntu Mate. It was fine.

Mandrake! It was a fucking disaster! Fortunately, I came back later using Kubuntu and had a much better experience.

I think I tried to compile Gentoo about 20 years ago for some reason.. Took many hours, and I don't remember even getting it running. Later I tried dual booting Ubuntu, but ended up using Windows all the time since that's where my games were. Started using Linux only (Xubuntu) some time around 2010.

My first was Ubuntu in the early 2000s, I think CDs were being distributed by the IT department in one of the faculties, then SUSE but Linux didn't stick with me at the time. In 2018 I installed Manjaro which helped me make the switch to arch. I've also got Debian on a server and fedora on a laptop

SuSe Linux, I got a CD in the (late?) 2000s and installed it on my old PC. But reality got me pretty fast, I iust wasn't invested yet. Years later I started from scratch on Debian.

Lubuntu :O and Kali linux

Ubuntu 6.06. It came on a CD with a PC magazine. I've used it to convince my parents to allow me to spend as much time as I want in front of the computer because "there are no games on Linux".

WoW worked on it.

I had a friend back in the day that was a big Linux geek. He got me hooked when he showed me this crazy system that let me just type in a command and within a few minutes or an hour (internet wasn't super fast in my house in 2002), I could have something installed without having to search the internet for some potentially cooked installer.

That's the long way around to say I started with Gentoo, installed over the course of 3 long Saturdays with my friend over my shoulder and the install guide printed out on a stack of papers because neither of us had a laptop to look at.

I moved to Debian after a few months, but man portage was life changing.

I think the first I used was Fedora Core 5, but the first I installed myself was Fedora Core 6.

Ubuntu, and the experience was crap lol.

Then I got to try Debian on a server and it was much nicer.

Then I saw Torvalds uses Fedora, and given that he also disliked Debian and Ubuntu for their lack of end user ease, I switched and have been happy ever since.

Seriously though, GNOME 40 really should not be the default DE. It made me think Linux UI was years behind Windows when it was actually the opposite with proven DEs like XFCE, KDE, and GNOME 3/2 etc.

Knoppix live cd

Ubuntu 5.10 back when a random Finnish teenager could ask Canonical for free install CDs and they'd just mail them to you no money asked.

The first was Redhat Linux 7, but not for long. I moved to Slackware soon after.

Puppy Linux. On very old hardware.

Mandrake Linux. I couldn’t tell you what year but I remember booting into it and thinking it was the coolest thing.

Slackware in the early mid-nineties. But of course there was other Unix variants before that. And what was it called, OS/2 or something like that?

CentOS

Red Hat 5.1, which I quickly abandoned after learning the hard way about winmodems

Red Flag Linux 3.0,
taking the RedNote route decades before it was cool,
but did not get much further than the installation screen,

After that it was Ubuntu -> Mint -> Arch -> Parabola -> Manjaro.

Red Hat Linux, about 2002 from a CD I got from somewhere.

I think Ubuntu 10.04 or whatever mint version around then

RedHat, I had to recompile the kernel to be SoundBlaster compatible so that I could play Doom with sound on my 486.

litterally arch btw

Mine was slackware in I think 1997?

My parents had some of the ancient ubuntu (or ubuntu based?) distros that they let me play with, I myself tried Manjaro in 2017 for a month (very scuffed back then), and then full Arch Linux since March or Apr 2021

Haven't bothered switching since, but if I did, I'm lightly curious on the NixOS hype. Why yes, I just installed Arch Linux for the archbtw, but also it feels like it just works for me at this point (yknow, till the next fuckup akin to the grub2 fiasco)

Welcome to Lemmy stranger.

Slackware back in the early 90s on a Compaq 386/SX20 💾

Manjaro. It broke a few times. Then I used plain arch ca 2 years without anything breaking. (Their was no guided installer yet)

The last 2 years I have been happy with opensuse Tumbleweed. Of course I have experiment a bunch of others too. Including running distros on servers.

Ubuntu back in the Gnome 2 days.

That I played with on an old Pentium II rig? The now-defunct Crunchbang (Bunsen Labs is that distro's successor).

That I actually used as a daily driver? Ubuntu 12.10.

I've been daily-driving Linux for well over a decade at this point and have pretty much settled on Arch now after multiple distro-hops in that timespan.

Mandrake

Kurumin, a brazilian offshoot of Knoppix, sometime in early 2007 I think. The distro has been discontinued back in 2008. I was completely amazed that the whole OS would boot and work straight out of the CD, without needing to install anything.

Ubuntu 6 on a Samsung laptop I had lying around 2006ish. The webcam and trackpad wouldn't work, but a mouse and not caring about the webcam made that tolerable. It was the only OS I ran for a year or so. I went back to Windows for gaming shortly afterwards, but have been using Linux off-and-on in some form ever since.

I think it was SuSE 5.1, we're talking 1997. We got a CD at a show but I can't remember which or where.

Knoppix circa 2004-2005, It was in a cd that came from chip.de. I had no clue what linux was back then. I know even less now.

For a long time, I thought it was Fedora Core 4. I did use that, but I recently found my old burned CDs of Mandrake 8.1. That really took me back. I might install it on a VM for some nostalgia.

First:

• Server: Debian
• Desktop: Debian
• Desktop daily driver: Ubuntu

Ubuntu

Red Hat, before the enterprise stuff, back in 1999. Installed from a CD found in a book from the library

Kali Linux. Because I was a kid who wanted to be a hackerman.

slackware, from floppy circa 1996

Sadly, Ubuntu. I quickly moved on to debian...and ultimately landed with Arch, my true love for many years. I use Arch, btw.