Welcome to Lemmy stranger.

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

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

am a simple noob who started with Mint, and remain on Mint on my main gaming machine.

i have fun distro-hopping on my other old, cheap laptops though

Ubuntu > Mint > Manjaro > Arch > PopOS > Debian

(History, not ranking [Debian wins])

Slackware96 from Walnut Creek purchased at Staples back when software came in boxes with manuals. Netscape Navigator 3.0 anyone?

I started with Mandrake 6 when the there were lots of 9's or 0's in the year

Then bounced from Slackware/opensuse/Red Hat/Debian/Gentoo/BSD

Now running Kde Neon and MacOS (Debian and BSD as server OSs)

Ubuntu in the mid 2000s, but it's PopOS that made me a fulltimer ~2 years ago. I don't use it anymore but I'll always be thankful for it.

My first Linux install was Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy. Got those wobbly windows going and felt like a fucking king.

Debian Slink

Before that, Windows NT, A/UX, Solaris and VAX/VMS.

Before that, Vic 20 and Apple II

Still using Debian every day whilst navigating the perils of MacOS.

my first 'distro' was slackware, on floppy disks. then debian or a flavour of, mainly, ever since. i've never really strayed too far from debian and apt over the years but i have tried most everything.

Ubuntu, like a lot of people my age (2000s)

I guess technically, Raspbian.

SuSE in 1996. Then Debian between mid-1997 and late 2023, NixOS since.

I'm not a big distrohopper...

Mandrake 6.0 in 1998. The kernel was still 2.2, and KDE 1.1.1.

Ubuntu back in 2014. Followed by Elementary not long after

I believe it was slackware. it was gifted to teenage me ca 1994, was on the CD of some magazine.

I wanted to try it, so went dual boot. it (or I?) partitioned my 800MB hard disk into a 300MB and an 800MB partition. stupid young me thought this was great and I just gained 300MB. when I noticed date corruption, stupid young me started to copy over important data to the assumed good partition. things didn't end well.

I took a two year break from Linux afterwards 🤣

Mandrake

Mandrake 9

Ubuntu had a thing for a while where they would send you a CD if you asked for it. Friend of mine from school gave me one.

Whatever version of Red Hat there was in 1999. 6 point something if memory serves.

I was running Quake 3 servers a few PCs.

Mandriva Linux, then RHEL, the Debian and fedora.

Mint, then Ubuntu, then Kubuntu, elementaryOS, Manjaro, then I gave up Linux for a while because I needed remote desktop for my PC at work, now back on PopOS!

Mine was slackware in I think 1997?

Slackware 3.1.

The one I settled on back then was Mandrake.

Ubuntu lol

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

For me it was elementary OS. Dual-booted with Windows back in 2015/2016. Maybe 1 year later, I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon and gradually used it more than Windows. Now I am using EndeavourOS XFCE and only using Windows virtually... when I am bored or need to use Adobe Lightroom Classic.

Someone installed Fedora for me somewhere around 2006, then I switched between Ubuntu and Windows until permanently settling for Ubuntu a couple of years ago. But I'm thinking of switching to Debian..

I think it was Slackware sometime in the early 2000s

If just using the Live CD counts, Lubuntu 12.04, to copy files off a broken Windows machine

Then Ubuntu, followed by Deepin (looked cool), UbuntuDDE, Arch, Xubuntu, and finally settled on Debian in 2022.

Slackware, of course, but when Debian was first released two years later I obviously switched (and it's been Debian since then).

Zorin OS because they said it was windows like

Red Hat 8.0, the Linux Starter 2003 double cd edition. From there I tried my first Ubuntu when they where still sending out free cd's which was version 6.06 LTS. After that I dabbled a bit jumping from distro to distro to try out different flavors, tinkering a bit for fun and even tried to build my own with Arch. All the while keeping my Windows (XP, 7, 10) daily driver as my main rig. Finally switched over to Pop_OS! a few years ago as my daily for work. I've been thinking about switching over my gaming rig to a Linux distro but haven't figured out which one is the best one and requires the least amount of tinkering.