Asklemmy

Windows 3.11 and Kubuntu 6.06LTS (still have the CD!)

DOS and Windows 95. First linux distro was Ubuntu in the mid-2000s when I got a used netbook that I wasn't aware had linux instead of Windows on it.

First social media post that's ever made me feel young! Earliest I remember was Windows 95, but I didn't do much besides play with MS Paint.

Windows Vista on my old family desktop.

First Linux distro, if it counts, was the Raspberry Pi OS

Windows XP

As a kid Amiga Workbench was my first desktop environment, and then later Win 3.11 in MS DOS.

I remember my dad toying with Linux but can't remember which one (he did settle on SuSE though I recall). My first linux distros was Ubuntu.

Commodore basic on the PET computer, back around 1981-1983. My grade school had three of them in the library, and since my mom was a teacher, she would sign one out for summer break and bring it home if any were available.

Apple ][ e: pictures of me playing point-and-click story games.

Ubuntu 4.10 “warty”

C16. Ugh I'm old.

Hmmmm Amsdos on an early amstrad CPC machine

First I put real time on would have been the Atari TOS, man those machines where the biz at the time!!

MSX, some version of MS-DOS, DR-DOS, Windows 3.0, 3.11, Slackware 3.0, Windows 95,98,NT,XP,7, CentOS, and now, MacOS.

At work, Windows XP,7 and 10, and several versions and flavors of RHEL.

Commodore64 for first OS, taught myself to type and then taught myself BASIC on that beast.

I honestly do not know what my first Linus distro was, whatever was on the machines in the CS half of the computer lab in college. First one I installed myself was Ubuntu, but I abandoned it almost immediately in favor of another distro that I also don't remember.

Probably some version of DOS, I can't remember. First Linux distro was Fedora Core 4.

Briefly some form of DOS on an Amstrad PC when I was very young, then Windows 95

My first Linux was a few years later with Mandrake IIRC, which I dual booted with Windows 98SE

Been running combinations of Linux and windows since then, with MacOS getting involved in the 2010's too

VIC=20, Commodore 64, Vendex HeadStart, Zenith (forget the model), Tandy TL/2, then I had a 386SX/20 built, then I started building my own starting with a 486-DX4/100.

First dabbled with Linux when I bought a CD from Staples with "Linux95" on it. It was just Slackware. Then Red Hat 4.0 and Corel Linux.

My desktop OS history:

1. Windows 98
2. Windows XP
3. Windows Vista
4. Windows 7
5. Ubuntu
6. Linux Mint
7. Antergos
8. Arch Linux
9. NixOS

I've used others, but not enough to warrant a place in the list above.

Well, this sets a new level of recent here judging by the comments.

Desktop OS: Linux Mint 20 MATE. Yep, that's right. I only got my first proper computer in 2020.
Thankfully, I had to install the OS myself, which was of course preceded by choosing an OS.
I had Windows 10 on that laptop for 2 days which served me to compare different OSs and burn the install DVD. I had no flash drives, and just dug out one old DVD-RW. OK, I'll be honest, hearing about Linux first I was searching for "just Linux", pure Linux, not derivatives. Oh well, GNU+Linux copypasta actually being helpful.

Alright, but why did I "have" to install an OS if I got it with Windows? It was used. I did reset it, but even though it was my first proper PC, I had no lack of paranoia. I thought that someone before me could have put spyware on that.
And I was right. Not the way I thought, but I was. That someone was Microsoft.

Sinclair Basic on my ZX81 with 1k ram. My first personal linux distro was Redhat 5.2. I used VAXVMS at work.

I started with Commodore KERNAL/BASIC 2.0 on the VIC-20, if that counts as an operating system. Otherwise GeOS on the Commodore 64.

First Linux distro was slackware 3.0.

I cant help but feel this is some sort of password reset question farming...

Anyway,

ZX BASIC SUSE Linux 6.1

First OS: TRSDOS 1.3

First Linux distro: Slackware 4

I'm probably on the younger side of Lemmy, my first OS was Windows 98, but the first one I truly remember using is XP.

When I really started getting into computers, our family PC was running Vista, and the first nerdy thing I remember doing was trying to "downgrade" that computer to XP. My parents were none too pleased when they saw that the PC wouldn't boot, thinking I had bricked it. It took me about a week to getting XP running properly, and that feeling of satisfaction is what started my love for tinkering with computers (I'm definitely a noob compared to the average Lemmy user, though).

Afterwards, I fell into the Apple fanboy pipeline and begged my parents for a MacBook. I was a huge Mac nerd, even saving up money as a teen for an iMac, until I started wanting to game more on PC, especially with friends on Steam. I then started dual-booting, initially XP but then Windows 7, and eventually I realized I was never booting into my Mac partition. I played around very occasionally with dual-booting Linux as well, Ubuntu and then Linux Mint, but this was more for computer nerd clout than a genuine need or interest for libre software, also the command line scared me and I still played too many games to main a Linux distro.

I then built a PC for gaming, and ran Windows 7 on it until around 2 years ago when I got really into FOSS and switched to EndeavourOS which is what I've been happily using ever since. I've always enjoyed tinkering on computers, but with EndeavourOS I feel like I'm less battling with my OS and more with my lack of skill/knowledge, which is much more rewarding to surmount, and makes me feel like my system is truly mine.

MS DOS 2.11.

For Linux I started with Wubi to install Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. It installed Linux as a program in Windows and added some kind of hacky boot entry to boot into Ubuntu from your windows partition. Pretty cool, and I'm still pretty nostalgic for the GNOME 2 aesthetic with compiz effects from that time.

First OS was DOS (I think) on an Apple IIE at school. I think there were a few Commodore 64’s there as well. A couple years later we got our first home computer running Windows 95. Good times playing Doom, Jane’s Apache, an MS Flight Simulator.

My first personal computer was running Windows XP and I switched to Ubuntu sometime in 2004. Ran Ubuntu for the most part till a few months ago when I switched my desktop and laptop to NixOS.

Started self hosting services in 2012 and started with Ubuntu as base OS. Now though most of my servers are Proxmox with the VMs usually running Ubuntu LTS, though NixOS is starting to creep in there as well.

Technically (but only very technically as we basically never used them and they were obsolete at the time already) it would have been a version of Acorn MOS but realistically it was Windows 3.1.

My first OS was most likely DR DOS 3.41

For my daily driver desktop PCs that was followed by

• MS-DOS 5.0
• Windows 3.11
• Windows 98 SE
• Windows XP
• Windows 7
• Windows 10

On the linux side, I got started with Gentoo, experimented with several lightweight distributions for an old laptop and had a Mint VM for a few years. These days I run Ubuntu on a couple of servers and in WSL. Never got around to using it as my main desktop OS.

For university I had (in order) an iBook G3, a MacBook and a MacBook Pro, so you can add most of macOS 10.x to that list.

School: if it wasn’t a Macintosh Plus it was something like it. We were given very little time with it and had to go to a special computer room to use them so I don’t remember a lot of specifics about it, beyond the school tech guy having to painstakingly load each program we wanted to use manually from a floppy

Home: Windows 3.1. I don’t think we got the internet until Windows 95, though

In high school I got my hands on an old Sun workstation with Solaris, and eventually after a week or so of compiling switched to Gentoo

Amiga back when you booted off floppies.

Then I guess ms-dos for pc.

For Linux I got a box set for redhat from compusa in 99 and learned from there.

Holy CRAP, am I literally the oldest person here?

CP/M, with the 8" disks

Then DOS -> Windows -> Linux (Mandrake, then tried a few different ones, then Debian and stuck with Debian)

TOS

Apple DOS on an Apple IIe in school.

First Linux distro was Debian.

For operating systems in general, my first computer ran Windows 95.

For my first Linux distro, that'd be Debian 12 Bookworm.

First Operating System: Windows 98

First Linux Distribution: Ubuntu Trusty

• Commodore 64 (kernal)
• Amiga OS
• MS-DOS 3.2, 5.0
• Windows 3.1
• Slackware Linux
• Windows NT 4
• RedHat Linux
• Windows XP
• Ubuntu Linux
• Windows 7
• Windows 10
• Rasbian
• PopOS

Roughly in order of appearance. Personal devices only. I used many more for work.

Windows 95 and Macintosh LC, elementary school computer lab stuff. My grandpa had a Windows 3.1 IBM PS/2. Those were all pretty old and practically obsolete computers when I used those, 98SE was out and ME was right around the corner.

My very first Linux distribution experience was Mandrake Linux I believe version 9 or something like that. Didn't last that long though, I revisited Linux later with Ubuntu 7.04 which is when I actually switched to Linux full time.

ArchLinux since 2011. Still running that install to this day!

Windows 95