Linux

I was in college. I was talking with a classmate how I tried to burn this OS called Linux that I heard of on TechTV, bit the stupid disc never worked. I leaned how to properly burn iso after that. Pretty sure he showed me some copy of Fedora or Mandrake, maybe SuSe. Didn't care for Fedora, bit found this other one that seemed real interesting everyone was talking about, Ubuntu.

Datamining thread

At the time I tried (2009), I was too young and afraid of messing up my Windows (I didn't even know if I was able to remove Windows and not loose the warranty), so I was finally did thanks to the marvelous Wubi installer. It let you try Ubuntu without messing around with partitions. Thanks to that, I was able to start learning Linux until I gained confidence and did a proper dual boot.

Now I only use Arch, even for work.

Started with Ubuntu back in 2016 when it still had the reddish brown mud theme. I still have some.of the installation discs you could order back then.

I started using because I started Computer Science university and I thought I should finally learn Linux. Fell in love with it and have been using ever since. I now use Fedora.

Oh boy. I definitely started with Ubuntu 17.04 in 2017 when I started uni, then soon downgraded to 16.04 because Unity was soooo much better than Gnome. But afterwards it's a blur, I was distrohopping basically every few months, sometimes even more often. I used Antergos (RIP), Manjaro, all flavors of Ubuntu except Gnome, Mint, then I was into the whole minimalistic tiling wm suckless no-systemd rabbit hole with Void, I also did KDE Neon at some point, I definitely did pure Arch as well, and Artix too. Sometimes I even hopped at work when I had a bit more time. God I miss those days...

Right now I've settled on Mint for work and Endeavor for personal use and haven't hopped for over a year which is as long as I've ever gone. I miss hopping but I'm so comfy right now. I've been thinking about finally giving Gentoo a go full time as I've been flirting with the idea forever. And there's also Nix. And I've been meaning to try a system where I fully embrace flatpak (right now I never use it). I'd also like to try something like Qubes eventually. So yeah, plenty to see still after all these years.

Linux 95

I started messing around with Linux when I was ~15. I was trying to install it on an old laptop so I could actually use it. I started with Debian before moving to Linux mint. Eventually I bought a raspberry pi and started to tinker with that and made my own website for shits and giggles. Eventually, I kinda stopped tinkering with Linux for a while

Flash forward a few years and my job has a piece of software that boots into a live gentoo environment in order to perform hard drive wiping, and I got a lot more familiar with the Linux command line (bash in this case) as I had to do a lot of troubleshooting as well as testing as I was in technical support and then later QA. This was also my first experience with VI, as I had to edit configuration files while inside of the live environment.

At that point, I started to experiment with Linux again, and even managed to install arch on my laptop. I did end up switching to Manjaro as my daily driver, as I couldn't be assed to spend enough time to get arch working how I needed. I also now have an Ubuntu server (I know) that I use as a media and game server, and continue to daily drive manjaro though I'm planning on switching to EndeavorOS soon.

I installed Linux on my personal computer about 3 months ago. I have been running EndeavourOS and recommend it.

It all started when every browser dropped support on my old MacBook. I installed arch Linux and was completely blown away by the increase in performance. It's insane how much MacOS was holding me back. Insane. Decided to buy a new drive for my desktop computer and installed Manjaro on a trial basis, leaving windows as a fallback option if needed. A week later I installed EndeavourOS and got rid of windows altogether.

It has been a bumpy road, lots of small little problems. Nvidia GPU certainly doesn't help.

I think it was 1998 or so? I put Mandrake on my Sony Vaio Pentium II MMX.

I'm trying out Fedora again on an AMD Ryzen 5 system I built last year. Was running Nobara for several months prior. And Mint for about 10 years before that. Prior to that I was on MacOS and/or Windows. I don't think I had a Linux system at that time.

Circa 1993, at the age of 13. Took me weeks to download Slackware from BBSs and get it installed. Played around with Mandrake (got an installer CD on an event). Eventually settled on Debian (which took me another few weeks to download, then burn the CDs and install it).

Used Debian on all my computers for many many years. Eventually got a MacBook (around 2005 IIRC) and have been on Mac laptops since. My gaming desktop runs Debian (wrote a blog post about my setup recently: https://blog.c10l.cc/09122023-debian-gaming). My servers, VMs and containers are usually Debian or something directly based on it (Devuan on some containers, Proxmox on my homelab’s bare metal).

I’ve used many other distros along the way, either for work or to experiment. I have huge respect for Fedora on a technical level but still prefer Debian’s philosophy and the apt ecosystem.

Early 2000s, I was a young pc repair guy and Linux offered a free solution to “what to do with these computers people abandon”. Started out with Redhat when it was free but switched to Ubuntu when it came out. Since then I always ran Linux on a secondary computer or laptop because I needed windows to play games. Back in 2008 I ran Linux exclusively for a while because I couldn’t afford a windows license and I played some games using WINE. As of last year I have again switched to using Linux exclusively due to privacy concerns and Valve making Proton work for most games I play.

I started because of ProxMox on my Server. I started about a Year ago with Linux Desktops because of Privacy. I wanted to only use it for Office and have a Windows Dual Boot for Gaming. Then i tried a few Games on Linux and realized that Proton is great. Then i only used Linux. Then i deleted Windows. Now i love Linux and Hate Windows

i started with mandrake linux in 2002, and now i use linux mint. i've tried and used a dozen distros in between.

I broke the ever living hell out of I think hink it was Ubuntu 8 back in the day. I ended up giving up because I was constantly causing issues that I just didn't have time for while going to college. Started using again when Windows 10 wouldn't stop breaking itself and started using Ubuntu 20.04.

1998 - was working for a company using RedHat as a dev environment for AIX mini computer based software.

Started to dual boot my own pc of the time with Win95/8 and RedHat, then Mandrake Linux. Since then I've dual booted every PC I've owned with various distros.

When cfw for ps3 came out you needed either a ti-84 calculator or an iphone to put the firmware on the console. I had an iphone so installed ubuntu on my pc so i could dual boot ios and android on the phone then replace android with the cfw. I never even knew there was anything but windows back then.

It was Red Hat Linux 8.0 (not to be confused with RHEL 8), I think, that I first dabbled in Linux, that was around early 2003, and then I moved on to Fedora Core 1. But I went exclusively-Linux with Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) in 2006.

I've moved around since then but for the last 5 years I've ended up back on Fedora, where I've been since version 28, now version 39.

I started around the time when Windows 95 came out. Slackware was my jam. I now run Arch on one box and Debian 12 on another. It helped my career as a sysadmin.

I really started with Pop!_OS in early April of last year after watching a dual boot setup guide from LTT. I'm currently on Gentoo, tho I prefer Arch.

I was in college looking to avoid writing papers, and I installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (2007). Still run Linux PC s and servers. Work with Windows all day :p

I started a decade ago on Ubuntu for an after-school cybersecurity club. From there, I eventually tried Mint and then Lubuntu and Kinoite. I'm now using Debian in WSL.

@hai@lemmy.ml I started in about 2006 when my work was going to fully convert to Ubuntu. At the last minutes the CIO left and our project champion also left, and Windows continued, but I'd been bitten by the bug and continued to use Ubuntu at work and at home since then. Now on Manjaro KDE.