Linux

Zorin OS because they said it was windows like

in order (2000-present): red hat, slackware, debian, ubuntu, arch, manjaro, nix

My first was Ubuntu 06.06, but I was only messing around using a live CD. I tried it again with Ubuntu 12.04 when Steam added Linux support, but went back to Windows because gaming on Linux wasn't really there.

Finally decided to dual boot and distro hopped a bit in 2015 between Mint, Kubuntu, then KDE Neon for a bit before settling on Manjaro some time in 2017. Eventually I switched to Arch in 2022 after Manjaro forgot to renew their certs again.

I tried to set up arch, realized I didn’t want that kind of work for a gaming setup and swapped to debian, and i’ve used that since lol

Ubuntu, I hated it lol

I guess it was suse or red hat somewhen end of 90s or beginning of 2000. Anyhow I didn't like KDE back in the days and haven't touched it since. Although the screenshots I've seen of the latest kde looked kind of good. But I'm mostly running arch or manjaro today and prefer gnome or some tiling manager like herbstluftwm.

Raspbian (modified Debian Jesse) on a raspberry pi 2B (which I am still using over a decade later to host some discord bots). Also now using Debian 1Bookworm on an old optiplex as a media server.

I started with Ubuntu back when you could put in your parent's home address and they sent you free CDs. I'm on Arch (since about 2010), and I can't change.

Ubuntu sometime around 2010. It definitely wasn't what I was looking for so I didn't try another distro until 3 years ago. Linux Mint's working well for me but I'm curious about Bazzite.

Started with Mint and stuck with that for a year. No issues, just felt comfortable enough to try something "fancier", I guess Mint was a little too reliable lol. Went with PopOS a while for the native dock and tiling manager, loved it. Now I'm on a brand new PC build and enjoying gaming with Bazzite. No tinkering involved, it setup my 5070 Ti automatically.

Installed Ubuntu back at 2012 on my Surface. Since then, I’ve hopped to CentOS, OpenSUSE, and Fedora. For now I’ve settled on Arch Linux!

Welcome to Lemmy!

For me the first Linux distribution I used was Ubuntu 8.04 - though I never had installed it on physical hardware, just a VM - VirtualBox IIRC (that didn't occur till Ubuntu 8.10). I was in my early teenage years and had discovered Linux and found it interesting, I used the WUBI tool to install it through Windows and updated the bootloader to keep Windows as the default (with a one second timeout) since it was the family computer, I think my family would've shat their pants if they randomly rebooted the PC and was greeted with Linux heh.

Though a few years later on an old secondary family laptop (it was the "someone else is using the other computer" spare/backup) that was running Vista, it had gotten so buggy and bogged down that I installed Kubuntu for my family and they happily used that until eventually that laptop was retired. It never got them to really look into permanently switching to Linux, but I think that's more than fine - I've never been one to "proselytize" Linux: If it is the right tool for you, fantastic - if not, no hard feelings is how I see it. In the aforementioned case, it was the better tool over the bogged down and buggy Vista.

As for nowadays, its CachyOS on my desktop (I'm not married to it, but its been working alright for me for about a year now), SteamOS on my Deck, Fedora on my secondary laptop (an old intel macbook), and then Bazzite on my ROG Ally. Windows is still installed on a secondary drive on my desktop, but I very rarely have to boot into it.

Ubuntu... Then Slackware... Then Fedora... Then Arch I still dont know why tf I went to Slackware... It was painful, but worth it

Ubuntu 6.06 I always come back to Arch now-a-days.

I grew up a windows user, as was my father before me. I first started with Linux in my teens, initially on Raspbian as I was gifted a raspberry pi 2b with a camera, and I wanted to try goofing around with python and computer vision (which was the style at the time.) Once I entered university, I dual booted Windows 7 and Linux Mint, since my professor suggested moving to Linux for C++ homework to make things simpler. I was scared of jumping to a new desktop OS due to my upbringing, so I couldn't abandon Windows, not yet anyway. Following that I had a cheap Summer fling with Kali as it was a requirement for a cyber security course I took. This replaced my Mint install. After college I got into self-hosting, and my server ran Debian for stability (and still does to this day), however I was still scared of leaving the safety of my littlr Windows garden I called home. But then Windows betrayed me by putting ads on my taskbar, and I got fed up. I installed EndeavorOS on my main machine which was a laptop. I immediately fell head over heels for the AUR, and not needing a deep understanding of linux during the install was a plus. I got comfy with the ins and outs of linux over the next year and a half or so, and when I finally went to build myself a new desktop PC, I made the switch to Arch. It's been great, and I felt like I understood all the decisions I made during the install. That was 6 months ago. If Arch ever fails me catastrophically,(which would be pretty hard as I am using an os snapshot manager, and backing those snapshots up to my server) I will move to either Debian or Mint for stability, as I am kind of tired of hopping around at this point.

Gentoo, sometime in the early 00's

I first got to try Kali Linux while getting my degree.

elementary os in 2016. I still use eos on my desktop machine, mainly because it's kinda ubuntu but not quite. Running Fedora on one of my laptops, the rest are running macos

Still shopping for one when I make the switch. Mint looked pretty user friendly.

I am not a computer unfortunately, only a ungabunga caveman

Caldera OpenLinux 2.2 somewhere around 2000. Ran that for a year or two until the PC it was on died.

Next time I was able to run it was 2008ish on a pos dell laptop on which I installed Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). When that laptop died a year or so later I went macOS and was happy there until about 2022ish.

Now I'm running it across several machines for different purposes.

Arch dualbooting OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on my tinkering laptop.

Ubuntu Server 22.04 on my server (started with 18.04)

Fedora 41 on family computers/laptops

Asahi on the last bit of Apple hardware left in the house

Raspberry Pi OS on a number of PiS serving different purposes.

Mklinux on my powermac G3

Yellow Dog in early 2000s, and I think I switched to Debian PPC not long after. My memory of back then is quite hazy. A way while after that I had an Eee PC which I think I put Ubuntu on initially (the desktop was dog slow) and then changed over to LMDE. Have a feeling I had something else on it before Ubuntu... may have been the default Eee distribution, which I forget the name of (think it began with an X).

Slackware in 1997.

I ran it on a 486SX/40 with 32MB of RAM and a 2GB harddrive.

It turned me into the man I am today.

Slackware back in '96 when It was the only option. Then tried everything else before settling on Mint and never having to worry about picking another distribution again.

I dual booted Ubuntu originally, but I never used it. Had to really make the jump when I installed Arch on my desktop in ~2020 because I heard it would run games better. I've stayed 100% on Linux since! After trying quite a few distros (Fedora, Debian, EndeavourOS, Garuda, Archcraft, more I'm forgetting) I have finally settled on NixOS... it's been over a year and I still haven't switched, that's gotta be worth something :)

Ubuntu was my first when I started poking around with it. Not sure which version, but it was during the Unity era. Pop!_OS was the one I started using when I switched full time. I'm still using it on my main computer, but I'm also using Fedora, Ubuntu, NixOS, and Mint on other devices because I like variety!

Dreamlinux :) 2.2 maybe.

Ubuntu, circa 2005ish I think. Played with all the *buntu derivatives back then, went back to windows for a while, then tried Manjaro, found it frustratingly unstable, and now I use PopOS.

In the fall of 2006 my friend in high school (shout-out to treyx.net) donated to the Ubuntu people and they sent him a stack of Ubuntu live CDs, must have been 5.10 or 6.06. I remember being so excited when I got it up and running on my computer

ubuntu some time in 2010, but I eventually switched to fedora in 2011, went back to commercial operating systems (windows and macos) in the mid 10s, but returned to fedora some months ago, and that's what I'm using now (I do still have a macbook running macos lol 🤷‍♀️)

strangely I don't think I've tried other linux distros all these years, I may have tried to install gentoo and/or arch for meme reasons but gave up and went back to ubuntu and fedora

Lycoris in 2002. It sucked. I think I tried it because it was pushed towards newbies. I tried Mandrake with KDE not long after and that is when I really became a Linux fan.

Ubuntu 16.04, dual booted on my laptop before I knew how much of a hassle that could be! Fortunately, never had any of the infamous issues.

@midtsveen if I remember correctly, I think it must have been Ubuntu 12.04
My first steps into the Linux world - it's incredible to see how far the Linux desktop has come since. I've got a laptop that runs exclusively Zorin OS and I love it!

Lubuntu about 10 years ago, then Mint, openSUSE, and I've stuck with Debian for the past eight.

First attempt was Slackware, installed from a CD that came with a magazine because we didn't have the internet in about 2001 or 2002. It worked for one glorious afternoon but I'd tried to dual boot with Windows and nuked that partition. Got into big trouble and was banned from the family computer for the rest of the summer. Couldn't try again until a couple of years later when I got my very own laptop and paid my friend £5 to leave his PC on overnight downloading an ISO of dynebolic over dial up and burn it to a CD for me.

That was great but then I got my hands on a beefier PC and used Ubuntu thanks to the free CDs you could get in the mail. When I finally got a job and a broadband connection I switched to Mandriva, then Ubuntu again for a few years with most of that being Xubuntu and for like the last 10 years mostly Debian. I switched to Fedora a couple of times and tried a few others like MX Linux and Qubes. I also had a Pinebook Pro for a while running Manjaro ARM. I just always ended up going back to Debian. I can't see myself ever changing distros again.

My first linux was Ubuntu 10.04. And I swapped to Arch only when Ubuntu added snap.

Knoppix on live cd which I installed later on hdd but a few days later switched to Mandrake, I think it was... 2001? Good times, good times. There has been a lot of distrohopping since then.

OpenSuSE that came with the Linux magazine