(Linux users !) What was the first Linux distro that you used ?
(Linux users !) What was the first Linux distro that you used ?
Are there any linux users here, am i asking this in wrong community ?, If yes then sorry
Anyways the first linux for me was kali linux, I was a hopeless kid who wanted to learn hacking, and as everyone thinks linux is for hackers i just did some random google search about "Best linux distro for hacking" and the result was kali linux (since parrot os was not there at the time)
I watched a tutorial on how to install it, and that's where it got worse. We didn't have that much data to download a 3-4GB of iso file, so i went to a nearby friend to use their wifi and downloaded it. When I was installing it I selected the partition in which we stored all our family photos and other memories ( At the time I didn't knew much about partitions and just wanted to try out linux). As I selected the wrong partition the windows installed on that partition and the files got deleted and I got into Kali linux, it took me some time to realise what I have done, but eventually I realised that many files were missing and was not able to boot into windows. Eventually I got scolded so much from my parents, but I don't regret it because that opened up a new world of linux for me (but with some sacrifices)
Mandrake. Emailed to me on a CD. I feel old.
It was no distro, it was kernel 0.99 and bunch of gnu utils on like 8 floppy disks, and 10 more floppies or so for X11. I was running it on a 486DX50 iirc.
Knoppix Live CD back in 2004!
Linux 0.2, not.joking. a friend came with it to me, just downloaded from a newsgroup (I think) around 1992, on a floppy! We tested it on my PC, didn't know what to do with it, and promptly removed it. A few years later we gave it another try, and the rest is history
Mandrake 9.1.
A friend of mine gave me an official Ubuntu 4.10 CD and that was my first Linux distro that I have tried.
I still have that CD.
Ubuntu... before Canonical nuked it.
Red hat linux
Mint, because it's what my dad put on my first laptop when I was like 10 or something. I remember playing minetest and FTL on it.
Started with Red Had 6 and then moved to Fedora Core 1. Have been on Fedora releases since.
Slackware, and it took years before I tried again.
Ubuntu (can't remember if it was 6 or 8) was the first distro that I used, my cousin and another family friend used it and I got interested and asked to have it installed on my home desktop.
For years, every LTS release of Ubuntu I installed as dual boot to try and experiment for a few weeks and then uninstalled it, using Windows for everything.
2 years ago, I decided that I wanted to try other distributions and to switch and use Linux as my daily driver, so I installed Manjaro on my laptop and I have been using it daily since.
Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake :)
VoyagerOS - no idea about anything other than Windows being a thing, less of a clue about what I was doing, think I read something about it being lightweight and guessed it fit my needs.
Redhat 4.? I'm not really sure of the precise version but it was sometime in the late 99 or early 2000.
Hard to remember because it was in 2000 on my gateway PC, but I remember trying to setup Gentoo and redhat and knoppix and failing miserably.
Redhat. When it came time to upgrade i dug myself into rpm hell so many times. I struggled, had to reinstall. Next redhat upgrade, same experience.
I tried debian potato, and dist-upgraded to next stable with no issues. I was floored. Have been dist-upgrading ever since. And run a few hundreds of debian servers.DSL (Damn Small Linux) was what I started plying with, but my first daily driver was PCLOS.
Knoppix. Was recommended it by someone I chatted with at the time and that did not go well. This was not Knoppix's fault though, but rather me not knowing what I got into. Things worked as one would expect, the applications that were included ran without issues, but the issue came when wanted to install software. At the time didn't know anything about linux, so didn't know how to use the terminal to install software, and when trying to install new ones using exe files that didn't work for now obvious reasons. So threw that stuff out and went back to windows, and didn't touch Linux again until Ubuntu Hardy Heron which went a lot better.
I think it was probably Ubuntu 6.10. a friend from high school have me a CD to install it.
Ubuntu 16.04
Attempted to use Red Hat 4 (pre-RHEL), but couldn't work out the partitioning. However, I tried SuSE Linux Personal 7.0 soon afterwards and YaST gave me a much smoother time when installing everything; I've been using SUSE/openSUSE ever since as my primary Linux distro.
Debian 2.2 on a consulting job in 2001. I'd used Unix mainframes in college, but other than that had only ever done work on DOS and Windows before then. Didn't think much of it at the time, though it was familiar and easy to work with. Certainly a far cry from the experience we all have with Linux today.
I did some research on what would be a good OS for someone coming from Windows and at the time Linux Mint was recommended a lot so that's what I chose.
I learned on Red Hat back in the 90s
I had got a copy for free some place, so I taught myself how to install and use it
Knoppix, on a live CD. Then shorty after, Aurox Linux, distributed as a number of CD with a magazine. Around 2004-2005. Then Mandriva.
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Immediately liked the interface, but was bummed by lack of software and (expected) subpar performance on my shitty hardware. Went back to Windows 7 after a month or so. It took me quite a lot of hopping between many Linux distros and Windows to finally settle on Manjaro as my desktop OS of choice
It's all a blur because I was maybe like 6 or 7 at the time, but I'm fairly certain it was Red Hat. The original, not RHEL.
I have vivid memories of playing a game that involved collecting gems and avoiding falling rocks in a maze, similar to Boulder Dash or Emerald Mine. I have no idea what it was, but I know it wasn't Rocks'n'Diamonds because I played that a lot and the graphics were different.
This is the weirdest attempt to get my website security question answers... But... Slackware on floppies.
Red Hat Linux back in 1999.
Some version of Ubuntu. I forgot which version number.
I don't actively use Linux anymore but I think I first used puppy Linux in middle school. I was a strange kid and got a kick out of anything that could run off a flash drive.
Then I'd use like Ubuntu, lubuntu, and mint typically. I'm back to using windows because I only really use my computer for gaming and I honestly had a rare gift for bricking distros by installing something wrong.
I installed linux mint on some really old laptop when i was a little kid but i wouldnt really consider that my first distro that i actually used on a dailybasis, that would be SteamOS on a Steam deck, it showed me how great linux could be and got me hooked on it.
Deepin
Gentoo circa 2002. Soooooo over my capabilities at the time
Ubuntu. I couldn't afford a new laptop for college so I desperately googled for some way to make my old machine last.
God I am old, I remember before kali rebranded 😭.
Phlak and Knoppix were mine. Neither lasted long since I couldn't install it on my home computer. The first one I installed as a dual boot was Ubuntu. While I have strayed from them over the years they have been my daily driver for the better part of 15 years
I started back on Ubuntu Hardy Heron. It was so much prettier than Windows, it got 11 yr. old me into hosting web servers
My first distro was SlackWare 7.
I'm not anywhere near my desktop(s) but it has largely been an Ubuntu box of differing flavors.
Though I experimented with Yoper, Knollix, SuSe, Mint, and a few other distros.
Slackware 7, year 2000. Never seen linux before. Thanks to help from IT geek next door managed to boot net-installer it from single 3.5". After many hours managed do finally get xfree86 working. As far as I remember it was running with KDE.
Kubuntu 6.06. Got the CD with a computer magazine that had a good tutorial on how to install the thing next to a pre-existing Windows partition. To this day I miss the look of KDE 3!
I spent weeks installing Linux in 2002, finally got it up and running and was like wow this is barely usable.
Turns out I had a fundamental misunderstanding, and there were pre-made distributions of it for you to use! Took me two years to realize that. Picked up Ubuntu and it just worked (other than wifi)
Linux Mint. It's been a while since I used Mint now, but I do missTimeshift
Installed and tinkered with Mandrake 6.0 First full time: Ubuntu 04-10. Warty Warthog
Ubuntu sometime in the late 2000's. I remember a friend showing me virtual desktops that rotated between each other.
I dual booted my machine and it was amazing... For 10 seconds until I realized thats all it did. When right back to windows.
Slackware, dont remember the version but it was 1996.
Some version of Ubuntu. I got a free laptop that didn't have an operating system so I just put linux on it because I didn't want to buy windows.
RHEL 2.3, still have the cd somewhere
Linux Mint
Mandrake 7 was the first one I installed on my pc. In those days you could buy a boxed version with about 10 cds to install from.
Started using Linux a year ago. My friend recommended Manjaro (not a good distro) because he himself used Arch. I was a little to stupid to use Manjaro at the time so I moved to Ubuntu, then Kali and finally Arch which is what I use now. I have practiced some distrohopping with Arco, Vanilla, Archcraft and my favourite Gentoo.In the future I want to dabble with LFS and Gentoo but I do see myself using Arch from this point forward. Linux is such an amazing operating system and it has taught me very much. Also use Neovim.
Ubuntu, either version 12.04 or 12.10 when I got my first computer, a Chromebook, in Christmas 2013 when I was 10. I hated how Chrome OS didn't support anything so I found a way to put Ubuntu on it and messed around with Blender and Minecraft. Despite this early start, I proceeded to do nothing productive with it, broke it out of frustration, and now I'm 20 and struggling with Arch lmao
The very first Linux? That would be DSL (Damn Small Linux).
I don't know whether it still exists but in 2003-ish, I was looking for something on-the-go and came across DSL.
I recently (2 years now) started using Linux as a daily driver again. Had to learn a lot of new things. This time someone on GamingOnLinux adviced me to start with Mint. But it wasn't for me. So it's been a great journey.
Redhat. I can't remember the version, but I found it at Fry's electronics in early 2000. Using Fedora now.
Gentoo.
Ubuntu with Gnome Classic.
DLD 5 in 1998, a colleague at work handed me a CDR and said "i think this might be something for you", and he was right ;)
Arch. Went in at the deep end.
Suffice to say that I no longer use Linux. Got it built with relative ease though inevitably hit issues along the way, but got tired of having to use terminal for everything. Would not recommend Arch as your first distro unless you already love existing in a terminal.
Not sure but it was slackware or red hat in 1997
Slackware. Version 3.1 if I remember rightly, with Linux kernel 2.19.x.
It was installed from floppy disks, you needed about 10 of them to do a full install including X Windows.
At the time (1997 or 1998) I only had dial up internet at home, so over the period of several days I brought blank floppies in to work, downloaded the relevant images and copied them on to the disks.
I then spent most of a weekend trying to persuade an (even then elderly) PS/2 with 4 MB of RAM to become a Linux box. Got there in the end, though!
Redhat lol back in the 90’s
Slackware, floppies, my 486.
Fedora 6. Had to use it to build a server for my A+ class. Good times.
Manjaro GMOME was my first distro on hardware (had Ubuntu in VMs before)
Ubuntu on 1st year of college
The first distro I used was Ubuntu as part of a computer class at school, but it was preinstalled on a school computer. The first distro I installed on a personal computer was Arch because le reddit said it was le epic hackerman's IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGE TO INSTALL distro. It installed, and after that I didn't use it because my favorite Windows apps couldn't work.
Ubuntu 18.04
The first distro I used was Guadalinex, a distro developed by my Government (Andalusia, Spain) for education. I used it at school.
The first distro I installed was Ubuntu.
The first distro I daily drived was Fedora.
for me it was: Puppy Linux for a desktop machine with 254MB of RAM when I was on 1-2nd semester in Preparatory School
10 years ago Arch and it was a bloodbath. No background and both IT bros said I should not do it. Took about 4 days and countless rescues, so much manual fstab editing, looking up what the thing I destroyed even is. Glorious times. Dual boot because I thought I might need windows, not anymore.
I first tried Ubuntu because it was the only one I knew of besides arch and I heard that arch was hard. I hated Ubuntu immediately and started distro hopping. I'm on Debian 12 now and it's the longest I've been on a single distro.
The first time I used Linux was at an old job, and we used Xubuntu for desktop, Debian for servers, and Raspbian on the Raspberry Pis, but technically Xubuntu would have been the first. I currently use KDE neon as my daily driver
Minix.
But then I wised up and switched to FreeBSD.
Back in 2004, I had a SuSE Linux professional 9.2 on 5 CDs and 2 DVDs. I repeat: SEVEN DISKS!! Even without internet access - which I did not have at that time - it felt like all apps accessible through packet manager. You just had to swap discs when prompted. I just took it out in fond memory... SuSE Linux 9.2
My first was Ubuntu about a decade ago. Didn't stick with it at the time. I wouldn't choose Ubuntu for almost any purpose today, but I think at the time it was fine. (By "almost" I mean that there possibly exists a good use case, but I cannot currently think of one.)
Centos in like 2008... idk the version, i had to learn how to set up a basic internal http server with a sql database or something from zero. It was fun.
OpenSuse with KDE on a Netbook
My first one was OpenSUSE in the 00-years. I was hardly able to get it up and running on my worn out, home-build desktop.
Tried again later with ubuntu (Gnome) on an old Thinkpad and was taken aback about how smooth it ran just ootb.
Raw linux: Android
Raw desktop OS : ChromeOS
GNU/Linux : Ubuntu 18.09
Current : Debian 12
Fedora. Core 3 or Core 4 according to Wikipedia and the fact that I recognize the names. An acquaintance suggested I try Linux, so I found info on it, didn't really understand what a distro was and settled on Fedora because I had bought O'Reilly Linux Pocket Guide that used that distro.
I switched pretty quickly after that, and used Ubuntu, Debian, then Mepis for awhile. I've run Arch, dual-booted with Windows for several years on the desktop and Debian testing on my remote server
Ubuntu!
I downloaded the installer in 2017 after MS forced an update to Windows 10 from 7. My laptop, from 2010, couldn't handle W10 and I heard Linux was good for old laptops. Not long after that I hopped around to other distros but Ubuntu was first.
Manjaro, that is the distro in my families computer
Ubuntu, when I started studying IT after high school, my tutor was very insistent that we know about different weird things, and how tech in general worked, and because Ubuntu was so simple, that's where he started.
Iirc it was actually Lubuntu instead of Ubuntu, since I liked the idea of Ubuntu but found it's UI atrocious
It was SuSE 5.3, in 1998. That's about the time I went to Linux workshops with a HAM club, getting into packet radio, AX25 and stuff. Good times
Debian. Can't remember the version. I copied the images on a handful of floppy disks and ran a graphical desktop OS off 32MB of RAM and 200MB of storage.
Never really moved away from that since then, except when using a piece of hardware that came with something specific.
SimplyMEPIS, I really liked it & after it was discontinued I switched to Ubuntu
Ubuntu 21.10
Ubuntu, I kept distro hopping but I still kept on coming back to it until I switched to Arch Linux.
I still use Ubuntu for my servers though.
Kubuntu 14.04 burned on a CD my brother gave me when I started studying programming. Switched a lot along the way and ironically ended up on Kubuntu 23.04. I love KDE.
In highschool my tech teacher was handing out official Ubuntu discs . That's when I first heard of Linux . Was probably about 15 of
Mandrake ~7. Back them I had dial-up internet, but got the install CD from a magazine.
Ubuntu. I think it was around when Unity was starting off.
Red Hat
Fedora from a cd around 2006
H J Lu's boot/root, followed by MCC Interim, followed by Yggrasil on CD
Mandrake Linux, there was a guide in a computer magazine I subscribed to back on 2003 I guess.
Mandrake ! Autumn 1999 if I remember well...
