Linux

Gentoo, sometime in the early 00's

Mklinux on my powermac G3

SUSE Linux, back in the 1990s. Because you could buy it for cheap, and you got not only the huge stack of floppy disks to install it from, but also a set of thick fat detailed handbooks (these things made from paper full of pictures and letters and glued together, like your grandparents may have had). I spent many nights with them books instead of my wife...

It was a bear to install and terribly complicated to configure back then; at least for me. But in the end, I had a nice server running well for a while.

My first Linux was Gentoo. It took several tries to get code compiled and working on that Pentium 4, but I will say, the process taught me a lot about Linux in general. It was the ultimate crash course. I’d recommend Gentoo for all beginners who don’t mind digging in to the point of frustration, because it’s a great learning experience.

Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron. I miss loving Ubuntu

Ubuntu was my first when I started poking around with it. Not sure which version, but it was during the Unity era. Pop!_OS was the one I started using when I switched full time. I'm still using it on my main computer, but I'm also using Fedora, Ubuntu, NixOS, and Mint on other devices because I like variety!

Raspbian Wheezy.

In the fall of 2006 my friend in high school (shout-out to treyx.net) donated to the Ubuntu people and they sent him a stack of Ubuntu live CDs, must have been 5.10 or 6.06. I remember being so excited when I got it up and running on my computer

ubuntu some time in 2010, but I eventually switched to fedora in 2011, went back to commercial operating systems (windows and macos) in the mid 10s, but returned to fedora some months ago, and that's what I'm using now (I do still have a macbook running macos lol 🤷‍♀️)

strangely I don't think I've tried other linux distros all these years, I may have tried to install gentoo and/or arch for meme reasons but gave up and went back to ubuntu and fedora

Lycoris in 2002. It sucked. I think I tried it because it was pushed towards newbies. I tried Mandrake with KDE not long after and that is when I really became a Linux fan.

Started with Soft Landing Systems (SLS). Pre-Slackware. Many hours downloading floppy disk images at school.

Moved to Red Hat (pre-Fedora and pre-RHEL) until I think 7.3 or so and then Mandrake. I did trial runs with many distros over time but none of them really stuck. Fedora for a release or two. Spent a few years on Manjaro for desktop and CentOS for server. Have been on Arch for many years now (or EndeavourOS). Never used Ubuntu really.

Moved to Proxmox for server. Although I never used Debian historically, quite a few of the containers I have on Proxmox now are Debian based as is Proxmox itself.

Lately, I have been using Chimera Linux for desktop though I have an Arch Distrobox on it so I guess I am a bit of a hybrid at this point.

Ubuntu 16.04, dual booted on my laptop before I knew how much of a hassle that could be! Fortunately, never had any of the infamous issues.

Ubuntu in about 2007 when my windows desktop crashed. A friend installed it in place. Never looked back

Ubuntu sometime around 2010. It definitely wasn't what I was looking for so I didn't try another distro until 3 years ago. Linux Mint's working well for me but I'm curious about Bazzite.

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

OpenSuse sometime around '07

It didn't click, ended up moving to Ubuntu almost immediately. A few years later I moved to Fedora. Circa 2020 I dove into Archlinux and managed that for a couple years. Nowadays as I'm learning server stuff I've switched to Mint.

Mandrake 9

Installed Ubuntu back at 2012 on my Surface. Since then, I’ve hopped to CentOS, OpenSUSE, and Fedora. For now I’ve settled on Arch Linux!

My first was Slackware in the 90s after a friend introduced it to me. He set up a system to use it as a proxy for our network at home to use but would frequently redoing that system so we didn't have internet for sometimes days. It wasn't a good time. Took years to use Linux again.

Ubuntu 6.06 I always come back to Arch now-a-days.

Sometime in maybe 2021-22 I messed up something on a shitty laptop of mine at the time. Changed something on win10 and was trying to fix it to get admin privileges back on the single account on there. Some website recommended flashing Ubuntu onto a thumb drive and entering some commands on the live boot. Didn't work out and I didn't wanna go through with a fresh win10 install for close to, if not, $100 for everything. Ended up with Ubuntu 20.04 installed because I wanted to use that laptop.

I've since tried many and currently have MX on a better laptop. At some point I'm gonna try to either find something new I can learn so that way by October I can make my desktop have a priority Linux boot with an internet disconnected win10 partition, or just go with Mint or MX. Definitely got a small list of distros I might wanna try, so we'll see.

Ubuntu -- the one with the Nelson Mandela video and the picture of people holding hands in a circle.

In the early 90’s I downloaded Slackware to floppy disks. It took me several days to make them. Slackware holds a special place in my heart.

To this day I still use Linux full time. Arch is my go to, but I like and recommend Endeavor often.

Mandriva Linux, then RHEL, the Debian and fedora.

I first got to try Kali Linux while getting my degree.

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

Still shopping for one when I make the switch. Mint looked pretty user friendly.

I am not a computer unfortunately, only a ungabunga caveman

Void linux

Slackware 3.1.

Ubuntu all the way! :) Before I learned there were other ones, then wound up back on Mint again after a trip around the houses. :)

Fedora

Mandrake. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But I did get it installed.

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.

Yggdrasil In the mid 90s.

Raspbian (modified Debian Jesse) on a raspberry pi 2B (which I am still using over a decade later to host some discord bots). Also now using Debian 1Bookworm on an old optiplex as a media server.

Redhat, in 1997. A group at my college was burning CDs and giving them away, along with some "extra" goodies like whatever version of Enlightenment was new at the time, I remember being amazed by that. Or maybe it was just some E themes, don't remember exactly. I think Redhat still came with FVWM95 and maybe OpenStep. I spent so many hours editing those damned Xfree86 configs just to get basic VGA graphics to work.

Mandrake 2003. Followed by Ubuntu server 5.10 in 2005.

Switched to Debian in 2020, been on Debian since.

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

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

I was running Quake 3 servers a few PCs.

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.