linuxmemes

My first distro was Xubuntu. It was 2014-15. I was still in high school. My pc was getting old, and I read online that Linux can make your pc run faster. Since it wasn't my gaming machine, I decided to give it a try. I also read online that Xubuntu is among the lightest of distros, so decided to install that. It really was a night and day difference in performance.

I've switched distros a few times (Xubuntu -> Ubuntu Gnome -> Manjaro KDE -> EndeavourOS KDE, also run AlmaLinux on a few headless server machines) since then, but never went back to Windows ever again.

I don't remember the year or the version because it has been so long (2003 maybe). It was Ubuntu from the free mail order CDs they used to give away. I remember waiting something like three months for it to arrive.

The year was 2002, and the distro was Caldera Open Linux 2.2

edit to add: Currently running KDE Neon. KDE 6 is pretty great so far.

POS Ubuntu giving me repo cancer every other week making me think Linux for desktop was not ready.

Then I tried Debian (and XFCE) and realized Ubuntu was just on some drugs and eventually landed on Fedora after demoing some distros.

CentOS But now it seems that it has withdrawn from the stage of history.

Pop! OS

Slackware.

Xubuntu just because it was the first one I found when looking for something that worked with a really old computer I had

Some form of Novell-era Suse Linux when I was in college… 20 years ago. I didn’t get it back then. Mint is my daily driver today.

Fedora Core 2 :)

Fedora,

I will never repeat that mistake again, it was more like Dementor.

My first was Suse Enterpise Linux. Bought from Best Buy in the late 90s.

I started with Ubuntu, but since I was a kid at the time, wifi not working scared me away as I only ever knew of "everything works out of the box". After 2 years, I took a shot at linux again and I gotta say that it was mint that helped me build enough confidence in fixing any issues myself and to try other harder distros like arch. Now after all the exploring/distro hopping, I have settled down on opensuse as a daily driver, but mint will always be one of my favorites, and will always recommend it to any newbie.

Kubuntu 5.10 that breezy badger release was the best

Ubuntu, opensuse, or freebsd. I can't remember what I installed first, since it was around 2006-2007. There was a piece about Linux in some PC magazine and I had to check it out.

First time I mucked with Linux I don’t think there were any formal distros yet. Had to rawrite the kernel to my full height 5.25” 100mb hard drive

Fedora Core 6 is when I made the full switch.

manjaro

Red hat on a disc from a for dummies book at the library.

Manjaro GNOME Edition,
But am now on NixOS 😸❄️🐈✨

Ubuntu 12 or 14 on a hdd

Ubuntu 8.10

I don't like Ubuntu anymore but I loved it then

Ubuntu, in 2006.

RedHat 5.2 in 1998. The manual that came with the box set was amazing.

Slackware back in '97.

MkLinux around 1997, but mostly NetBSD back then.

I found a distro that would install on the windows file system and boot. Apparently it was slackware based didn't have a concept in my head of package managers couldn't figure out how to install gaim (now pidgin) gave up. Didn't go back for another 4 years doing C in college. Didn't look back from there.

Red Hat 5.1 CD from a magazine. Ended up at fedora and couldn't be happier.

Slackware, circa 1995. Kernel 1.2.8

Mandrake mid 1990s

Slackware circa 1996

Pop!_OS... About 5 months ago. first time user just hard switched on my main.

But now 3 PCs are running it in the house.

Suse linux. I didnt know what partitioning was, so I partitioned my hard drive 6 times and messed up my bootloader. I didn't know what that was too, so I had to figure out how to do all this....with a Suse linux disk from the library.

Later on, I discovered Wesnoth and that was an awesome game. I also played around with Ubuntu 6+, Slackware, DSL, and a host of others. Its been a fun ride. Nowdays, I like PopOS and Manjaro (steamdeck). Most anything debian.

Something that ran from loadlin, I can't remember. Slackware, probably.

Red Hat 6 in college.

Mandrake Linux 7 at home.

In 2000

Arch

Redhat 5.2 on cd. I learned a lot about compiling kernels as it didn’t support scsi emulation which was required for an ide cd burner. I think I ended up on Mandrake for a while before bouncing around including LFS. Then gentoo for many many years. And I’ve come full circle and been back on fedora for about 10 years now.

For me, it was Mandrake, I think it was back around 2000. I played so much Tux Racer on that machine. However, after they switched the branding to Mandriva, the OS started to run pretty poorly for me around that time. I stayed away from Linux entirely until around 10 years ago when I friend introduced me to Mint. It's been my main ever since, though I've played with others since then, like OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, and most recently, Debian and EndeavourOS.

SuSe Linux in the early 2000s. Came on a couple of CD-ROMs. We used it to run JBoss servers at work, alongside various Unix flavours. But my first experience with Unix was in the late eighties at university. Been using Mint as my daily driver for about two years now and I'm never going back.