Your first distribution

Slackware. About 1994 or so.

Red Hat 5.0, 1998.

Had to get it on a CD as it would have taken 37.5 years to download according to Internet Explorer.

Kernel 2.0.36 represent 🤘

Slackware in the late 90s. 3.x version. "If you want to know how Linux works, ask a Slackware user" used to be the mantra back in the day.

I've been using Kubuntu on my desktop machines for at least a decade now. So, I've completely lost track of some of the things going on, like docker, flatpak, and so on. Which is actually a good thing: Linux has gotten so good, I no longer need to know how to administer my Linux system. I can just use it.

I currently run Debian on my server and intend to switch my desktop to Debian as well. Haven't gotten around to it...been busy. I also have to figure out how best to set up the nvme drive I have for it - GPT partition tables? Do I need a FAT32 partition? Etc.

Gentoo. I figured I could learn much more that way. It was true. The Wiki was excellent. Still is as far as I know.

My first distro was Suse Linux 8.1. I had to buy the box as downloading was not an option with my dial-up connection back then. However, the first distro that I fell in love with was Fedora Core. The original one. I bought the book which had the DVD with the full installation. I was hooked. That was more than 20 years ago.

For me it was Ubuntu on a laptop in early 2000 my family was going to trash because it had viruses on it.

Red Hat Linux 6.0, back in 1999. It was one of the first distributions to include GNOME as the default desktop environment.

Damn small Linux. Not really "installed" of course, but was fun to play around with.

I started with Pop!_OS, because it was pretty and I was told that it was made for programmers. I was overwhelmed with the options and couldn't get Twitch to work properly (because of missing codecs), so I switched over to ZorinOS, which helped me to familiarize myself with Linux. Later I returned to Pop!_OS.

Someday I got fed up with the major version updates, so I switched to Manjaro and later to Arch btw.

Got fed up of Windows Vista, so I decided to try Linux. I was just a kid messing around, so tried some distros but Ubuntu stuck because I found it noob friendly. I think I went for Ubuntu 6.06. I started to get interested in PC gaming, then I dual booted Ubuntu and Windows 7 since gaming was not really a thing on Linux then. I found that to be a hassle so when Windows 10 came out I stuck with it.

Then I jumped back to Linux when going back to do an IT degree in uni a couple of years back. Tried Ubuntu, but hated it. I tried Manjaro, but it broke my system. Then I discovered EndeavourOS and have stayed with that. Started to jump DE's instead. Went from GNOME to Xfce and now I am going for Cinnamon. I have tried some distro jumping in VM. I really tried to get into NixOS, but it was just too much for me. I liked Mint though.

Ubuntu Late 2000’s. I wanted it because of the CUBE. But left because the only game which worked was TF2.

What was the first ever distro you installed and used?

Slackware with some version of FVWM. Installed from a couple dozens floppies. (yes, I am that old :-( )

What made you choose your first distro diving into the world of Linux?

It is the only one available for download at the time as floppies.

It was probably Red Hat, late '90s.

Mandrake linux on 2001

There are no edgy teenagers here?

Kali Linux to be an elite hax00r

Then Linux mint and now Ubuntu.

SLS

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softlanding_Linux_System

I used to have to head into University to use the Sun Lab ( Sun Microsystems workstations ) to download all the floppy images. Took forever.

I would copy the X configuration from the Sun machines so that my 486 at home looked the same. For some reason, that made me feel like my PC was a “real” UNIX workstation.

Slackware.

Relatively new full-time Linux user here. My first experience of using Linux was Knoppix. I had it on cd-rom to troubleshoot Windows, got into media servers and xbmc, so had a few OpenElec machines. Now have Mint as a daily driver.

Slackware 1.2, because it came on a CD in the back of a fat paperback manual I got at Barnes and Noble. It was only later that I learned what a distro is.

Currently on Fedora with a Frankenstein desktop of my own concoction.

Ubuntu 8.04. Was still in elementary school at the time.

I thought the themes were really cool, especially the compiz effects.

I think it was Mandrake Linux for me.
It no longer exists though. ...I guess I'm old.

Mine was an obscure, short-lived distro called LibraNet. It was well done though, by just a father and son team. Unfortunately that was also why it was short lived, because the father passed away.

As for why I picked it, I didn't really know much about how to choose a distro at the time, so I picked it based on the name, and its description of being easy to use and set up, which it was.

Ubuntu 9.04, because of WUBI (anyone remember that?). Unstable as hell, but allowed you to run a near bare metal Linux install without the hassle of setting up dual-booting and a separate partition. Liked Ubuntu it so much that I soon replaced Windows completely. Currently running Debian, so I haven't strayed far from the family.

The first distro I tried was Red Hat 5 back in the late 1990s but I never got a GUI working so I guess the first one I used properly would have been Mandrake iirc. These days it's Tumbleweed.

Slackware. Installed from 3.5" floppy disk.

I kept hearing mutahar (someordinarygamers) talk about virtual machines and eventually i managed to get a laptop so i tried making one and Ubuntu was my pick (cus he recommended it for noobs), i hardly knew anything ab linux then but i figured a vm would be the perfect chance to try it :) . Later on when i first decided i wanted to try rawdogging linux it was cus my friend had an old laptop he never used so i asked if i could have it and he didnt mind. The thing was so slow the start menu (the thing u open when u press the windows button) literally took minutes to open. So i eventually checked its specs and downloaded a few distros trying them out and settled on mx linux cus it seemed to tick the most amount of boxes for me :3 (also i got around downloading linux on my main device later on, been using fedora on it.)

Knoppix 3.3, then Mandrake 10.1.

Ubuntu

Void. I was so excited when I booted into TTY. A blank canvas like never before.

Caldera (probably around 1999).

Either Slackware or Red Hat Linux 5, can't remember. I do remember that when I first installed RH5 I used "Hick" for my language.

Slackware in 1998, installed from DOS with a series of diskettes. Then Debian, Red Hat Linux (not Enterprise!)... and so on.

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.

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.

Ubuntu 4.10. Soon will be my 20th anniversary with Linux.

Mandrake 9 around 2004

My first ever Linux experience was with the crouton project on a Chromebook in school (Ubuntu 16.04). A buddy of mine figured it out and we all wanted to play Minecraft during class. Thing is, I ended up enjoying tinkering with the OS as much as I did playing Minecraft… so now I’m stuck trying to learn NixOS.

Ubuntu. Now on Linux Mint XFCE

DiLinux. You drop a bunch of files in a fat16 folder, and run a chainloader that chestbursts out of DOS. It used the umsdos filesystem, which was a short-lived thing that lived on FAT and scribed all of the other needed fs features into bonus hidden files.

Yggdrasil in 1993. Why? Because it was the easiest to install at the time, and came with one of my books in college.

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

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 started on Debian with XFCE. I figured if there were so many distros based on Debian, then I might as well just use that so I'd be able to configure things myself and learn more about how the OS works.

Anyway, you know the section in the Debian wiki called DontBreakDebian? I did not follow that advice. It went poorly. I've since learned from my (many) mistakes and have been running Fedora KDE for a while now.

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).

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 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.

My first was Mandriva, it was around 2008.

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 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.

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.

I'm fairly sure it was Scientific Linux because that was the distro used in the labs of my first programming course.

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

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 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...

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

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).

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

Deepin since I heard good words about it.

It wasn't good.

Debian I think? Probably Debian Wheezy.

Edit: All thanks to my college professor.

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

Slackware, 2005

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

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

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

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.

Raspberry Pi OS. Basically Debian for ARM plus some Raspberry Pi specific addons. It got me curious about Linux in general, led me to try dual booting Windows and Ubuntu on my desktop. Then Manjaro, Endeavour, and now just recently ditched my Windows install in favour of Arch. Will never go back if I can help it.

Back Track 5. Now Kali Linux.

I had not suitably prepared. I was a Windows Vista power user who heard how I could crack some Wi-Fi and gave it a whirl.

My chips went into one basket and me, oh my, was the transition ever so uncomfortable. What was dual booting? Who knows. Long story short, I made a mess for myself. I went through a significantly steeper learning curve than most, though it introduced me to script kiddie tools, programming, and eventually exploits.

Now a decade or so later, I've settled away from Arch to Debian. Though I miss the bleeding edge, my update frequency has lost much of it's zealous edge.

Mine was Ubuntu. I can't remember what version but they used to mail install discs to you.

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.

My real first time using Linux was with Pop!_OS in April last year.

I first installed mint on a pc, but only for homebridge. First distro I really used was openSuse tumbleweed and after that I shortly switched to Arch because I liked the way the AUR work (using yay) better, than the community repos of openSuse.

I still recommend openSuse TW to anyone that wants to try a rolling release distro. You don’t even need the Terminal in that distro.

fedora 38 KDE Plasma. still using it today

SLS (Softlanding Linux System) was my first.

It was slackware 2.0.

It was the only distro I could get my hands on because who would download a distro on dialup. Also there were no CD burners nor USB sticks yet. So whatever your friend had on CD waa the option. I guess the only other possible option would've been red hat back in those days.

Ubuntu 10.10 on a Dell Latitude D505 with an intel core 2 duo and 512MB RAM running Windows XP. It was a school laptop that i cracked the admin password for and installed virtualbox. It ran like crap!. I knew it wasn't ubuntu's fault and later always booted from a nub sized USB that i always had plugged in with persistance. I can't remember the name of the OS at this moment, but it was made for low-end hardware and was specifically environmentally friendly with a green leaf as its logo.

Ubuntu, 2005

My first, I'm pretty sure, was Ubuntu but for playing around with.

My first one that I stayed with and kept as an actually OS was PopOS. Haven't changed since. Works well and does what I need. Can't wait to see what Cosmic has in store.

As for what made me go to Linux. Windows was cumbersome to program in. Had to use another app to run command lines, putty. Used Linux terminals before and knew that it was easier to run programs from command line so I decided to give the desktop a try. So much better! Ended up keeping Linux because it was faster, more clean, and I was able to accomplish majority of the tasks I used windows for. For the things that don't work on Linux, I have other devices for.

I ordered a laptop (five years ago) that had Ubuntu/Gnome preinstalled, but soon replaced it with Debian/Mate, mainly because of what I read about it on Distrowatch. My new laptop (one year old) shipped bare metal and runs Fedora/Cinnamon.

My first distro was Ubuntu because it is a beginner distro and it looked interesting.

I started with trying distros in live mode out of general curiosity. My machine had a ton of data and didn't support dualbooting so I didn't want to install something. Then my Windows license broke and I decided that pirating is not great so I wanted to install a distro. I liked Manjaro the most(I know I know but hey back then I didn't know about its issues) but couldn't install it because of a wrong boot device mode (lol I was an absolute noob then). So I flashed KDE Neon and installed it after finally figuring out the BIOS/UEFI stuff (was too lazy to reflash Manjaro lol). It wasn't much of a conscious choice. I just installed one of the KDE distros I liked pretty much the same after I couldn't install Manjaro but that probably saved me a few hours of troubleshooting so that's good. KDE was a requirement though. I did want a Windows-looking distro so my older family members could use it. After that I tried many distros. Now I'm on Cachy just because of the significantly smoother experience (optimization rules!). It's unstable though so I don't recommend it

Knoppix 3.2 Live CD 2003

IIRC it was Ubuntu 8.10

messed around some with slack 0.99.

but first one to actually see some regular usage was buzz, which progressed over time through to potato.

and the first to get its own dedicated box long-term was woody.

Ubuntu Studio 8.04, I believe. I was a broke high schooler looking for free recording software.

The first distro I used would be CentOS, followed closely by Gentoo. CentOS was installed on the computers in the computer lab in college, and Gentoo was on the computers in the library. I think I went to the computer lab first. I'm probably biased against those two now, since every time I was using them I was banging my head against the keyboard trying to get some programming assignment to work, or desperately finishing a paper before midnight. :P

The first I installed and used myself was Ubuntu, which I still use. I just bought a System76 laptop, though, and I'm debating if I'll just go with Pop OS or switch to Debian.

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.

For whatever reason it was Puppy Linux, it was kinda cool and small and ran off a 700MB CD.

Someone asked this over on linuxmeme a week ago: https://lemmy.world/post/13355277

Linux Lite lol

The first I used was some version of Red Hat Linux. The first I installed was Mandrake 10.1.

I wanted to try Ubuntu on a live disk back in highschool (~2012) but ended up wiping the drive on my laptop. Had to ask a friend who knew Linux for help so I could actually use it. That was eventually followed by debian and Manjaro. Later I tried arch on my desktop, got tired of that and switched back to windows for a few years. I've been running nixos for a while now and have been really enjoying it.

First UNIX was QNX, random free CD on a magazine.

First Linux was Mandrake 7.0, then moved to RedHat, then distro hopped for about...20-25 years so far I guess :-p

Fedora Linux thanks to some random YouTube video. I liked it, slowly made it my daily-driver, and still use it today. It just works, often, at least.

@Tekkip20

My first installed Linux distro was Ubuntu 5.10. I started experimenting with Linux because my neighbour at the time said good things about Linux. He used windows himself but he also heard good things about Linux and spread the word in curiousity. Eventually I was the one of us who made the jump.

@linux

Caldera linux 1.2.

Those days were magical.

I had just started my university days and I had two young kids who wanted to watch cartoons but we couldn't afford cable. I ended up scrounging parts from the garbage bins in and behind the computer lab to scrape together a workable desktop.

If I recall correctly it was 333 MHz. Originally installed Windows 98 SE on it. But media would stutter no matter what I did, even if all other processes were killed.

A monk friend of mine (my university was geographically attached to a Benedictine monastery) asked me if I had tried Linux as it should be easier on the system resources and still allow me to play most media.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I chose Pop!_OS as my first because I was worried about Nvidia drivers and everyone told me Pop was a safe bet. Stayed with it for about 3 weeks despite a lot of weird issues with audio drivers and just not liking a lot of the Ui even after customizing it heavily, before it completely shit itself one day and I couldn't even load a backup.

Went back to Windows for 2 months before trying EndeavourOS w/KDE and it's been my main for almost a year now.

My first was Linux Mint as well because it was more simplistic and cinnamon is really simple to use, good extensions available and stable for the most part, sometimes happened memory leaks but fixed on version 5.8; currently using Debian RC

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.

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

Ubuntu, and I've been using it for 10 years without trying anything else until this week, I use arch now.

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

@Tekkip20 MKLinux DR 2, my first distro on a PowerPC. Followed by LinuxPPC and finally Yellow Dog Linux. Linux on a Mac pre OSX. Red Hat was the DE.

Pop-Os in summer 2021, running Arch Linux with Hyprland now in 2024.

Mint of course, then Manjaro and MXLinux. The weird stuff people recommend. Then Kubuntu, KDE Neon, Fedora KDE and now various Fedora Atomic variants.

• mint crashed randomly
• manjaro is very shady but was awesome, convinced me of KDE
• MXLinux was great but horribly outdated. Will never use a "stable" distro as desktop. Nextcloud was incompatible so I needed to switch
• Kubuntu crashed and many Ubuntu .deb apps where horrible, Flatpaks where awesome
• KDE Neon was an unstable mess and likely still is
• Fedora KDE was nice but also had KDE blackscreens
• Fedora Kinoite also gave me issues but either they are hardware related, or upstream KDE issues, or upstream Kernel issues, etc.

Zorin then AntiX I had a potato PC

I think it was SLS. I know it took a pile of floppies. At some point I made a tape to make it easier to install. Why I needed to install that often eludes my aging memory but those experiences still pay to this day.

It was some weird tablet like UI that I installed on a weak old laptop to use it again.

I have no clue which distro it was but I never came across it again

debian in 2007. still using it alongside mint

The very first one was Fedora but it seemed very bare and I had no idea how to get apps etc.

So I switched to Ubuntu and used that for a while before distro hopping.

Now I've settled on Linux Mint Debian Edition

I'm pretty sure it was Debian in the early aughts.