Linux

Ubuntu sometime around 2008 or 2009 after there was an install disk in a PC magazine. I didn't use it for long and went back to windows, but I experimented again with Debian a few years later and these days I daily Manjaro.

Debian I think? Probably Debian Wheezy.

Edit: All thanks to my college professor.

My first was Ubuntu 14.04 on some old HP laptop my dad had lying around. I still miss Unity sometimes

I'm all in on Fedora nowadays though, unless you count SteamOS lol

Mandrake 9 around 2004

Slackware

Red Hat back in the 1990s. I had to buy it from a local stationary shop because being in a small, isolated country and the internet being in it's infancy, it was all I could find. Came with a manual bigger than a phone book and cost about the equivalent to these days $200.

Deepin since I heard good words about it.

It wasn't good.

Fedora 38, one year ago. I am on 39 now and had to do a reinstall. It has its problems, a lot of problems actually, but is still miles better than windows in my opinion

I used Ubuntu until PAE became required and then switched to either Puppy or DSL (tried them both, honestly don't remember which I stuck with). Eventually got a new computer and used Fedora and Arch (btw) for years. I've recently switched to Debian on a machine I just don't wanna be arsed with worrying about breaking.

I’m on a similar path to you: Started with Ubuntu because a friend of mine had also dabbled in it, plus it has a large online community. Switched to Mint shortly thereafter, where I stayed for a while (more than a year). Currently on Fedora for the more recent packages, but sometimes I miss the familiar look & feel of the Cinnamon desktop environment (came from Windows and still use Windows for work).

On my gaming PC, I’ve gone from Windows to Pop_OS! to currently on Nobara (again, for the more recent packages).

ETA over Christmas of 2023 I installed Mint w/ Xfce on my mom’s new (used) laptop and themed it to look and feel like OS X. She knows it’s not a Mac, and I had to teach her some new workflows, but more than a year later she’s getting along well with it. Saved her a grand in the process.

My first non-family PC was a Acer netbook with Linpus [Lite] Linux. I was 12, so my first priority was trying to get Rollercoaster Tycoon to work. Eventually I realized how silly that prospect was and instead managed to install Windows XP via a bootable USB. I used XP for a while until Vista came out, and then I gave Linux Mint a try and really liked it. These days I'm using NixOS and Fedora.

Linux Mandrake in 1999. It was a bit rough and featured a very ugly KDE. I didn't use KDE again until about 18 months ago, and it is now my desktop environment of choice.

The first I tried was Ubuntu 10.10 but for reasons I don’t remember anymore I‘ve decided to rather install Linux Mint 10.

Used Mint for quit a while, then I had my distrohopping phase before finally setteling on plain Debian a couple of years back.

My very first linux distro is Zorin OS since it is Windows like and heard it is more light weight. After using it for a while, it didn't feel like more light weight to me so I switched back to Windows.

After some years later, I decided to ditch Windows completely and used Ubuntu 20.04 for about a year. When I broke Ubuntu after using about a year, I switched to Arch and still on Arch to this day.

My first distro was PopOS! I choose it because I heard it had Nvidia drivers pre-installed into the image which sounded nice, also having the support from a bigger company that know Linux. However, I've distrohopped a lot since then, probably 2 years ago now. These days I'm finding myself liking Tumbleweed the most, and I have tried a lot of different distributions..

I started with Crunchbang in its final years. It was a great introduction to Linux, to be honest. It was also a very solid distro, as it was Debian-based.

But, sadly, it eventually folded. It still has a spiritual sequel in BunsenLabs but, in the meantime, I'd moved to Arch (btw).

I think the first one I installed was Debian back in '97 when I was 12. I think my dad helped a bunch, but I can't really remember stuff from back then very well.

My initial thought was that it was gentoo which I used as my principal OS for close to ten years. I don't know how many times I reinstalled, but enough that I basically had it by memory. Taught me to keep my home dir on a separate partition.

These days I mostly live in windows because AutoCAD is a part of my professional life, but I dual boot popos on weekends. Unless kernel updates break my displaylink docking station...

Slackware 1.2. It was easier to install than Debian at the time.

My first was Mandriva, it was around 2008.

Slackware. 3.x. I was studying computer science and wanted to have a similar system at home as in the lab.

Pop!_OS in mid 2021. Switched to Fedora GNOME in mid 2022, haven't looked back, but am looking forward to Fedora COSMIC.

Arch was the only thing I could get working on my E200AH when I started. It's a weird SoC x86_64, with some non-free drivers. Now I can run anything, but the default with arch was figuring out what to do... Debian installer didn't have a mouse and the keyboard didn't work right and I just got stuck. Arch installer dropped me into a TTY and made me figure it out

Ubuntu back when it was decent lol. I picked it because everyone said that was a beginner-friendly distro, and I had already used it anyway as my parents had an Ubuntu ASUS laptop when I was little (though atp I didn't really remember much from using that laptop).

Debian Sarge which was testing back then. Woody was stable.

Lubuntu was the first distro I remember installing on a low-end netbook.

my first time installing linux was ubuntu, because it was what i'd seen a friend using. i meant to install it to dual boot with windows, but instead ended up wiping everything from the family PC, which was very distressing, and my dad quickly reinstalled windows. this was back around '06 i think.
in '08, i first installed linux on my own system and actually got to use it. i'm not sure what i installed first, cause i did a fair bit of distrohopping, but i settled on ubuntu mate for a while.

Ubuntu back in 2013 (I think?) to get the exclusive TF2 item. Good times! :D

I had messed around with various distros in the mid 2000's but never more than a day. Just as a "this seems neat" kinda thing. Recently I wised up, tried Zorin OS was on that for a year, then went back to windows for a while. now I'm running EndeavorOS and there isn't even a windows partition on this machine, I will not be going back. Still debating setting up QEMU for the only windows only program I miss though.

Because my first computers were shitty, I started with antix as main system, Ubuntu or others were too laggy for my systems.

I think the first distribution I tried was Fedora on my PlayStation 3 around 2007. From what I remember, you had to use terminal a lot so I couldn’t do anything with it.

Then a few months later I tried Ubuntu on an old Dell computer from my father’s office.

Dual booted windows and Ubuntu for years until fully switching to Linux around 2021.

Now I’m only using Fedora with a few virtual machines for some specific needs.

Fedora 6 back in 2007-8 as a part of my CompTIA A+ training. It wasn't required but my instructor wanted some of us more advanced students to experience a life outside of Windows.

First full time distro was Manjaro. First exposure to desktop Linux was Ubuntu on a crappy school netbook. Now I use Arch (btw)