What was the first ever distro you installed and used? For me, it was Mint as I seemed like the closest thing to Windows minus all the forced updates and chappy changes.
Currently on Fedora GNOME now but what about you? What made you choose your first distro diving into the world of Linux?
I wanna hear your thoughts!
Slackware. About 1994 or so.
Same! With the stack of disks!
Luckily we could FTP
Look at fancy pants over here with ftp and internet access!
Sounds like me. I ordered it from a magazine and installed it from 3.5 floppy disks also. After that it was Debian and i used that for years.
Slackware2 or maybe 3 in 95.
RHL4.x from 1998 . Looked at debian, but a local snob convinced me halfway through explaining “the debian way” to steer clear. Didn’t even learn of the validation glitch in the .deb format by then.
Now it’s Rocky. But if PCLinuxOS had a better installer (like a good kickstart) I’d be there in an instant. Its massive versatility in having so many versions of apps available without the appstream bullshit - it’s just Alternatives and proper naming - really makes it stand out.
Now let me packer some templates and I’m SO done with ELs and the shit RH has done to their crown jewels.
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 🤘
I was RedHat 3 back in 1996. Not even sure how we got the CD but we all passed it around and were amazed.
5.2 for me. I got it as a gift, in a offical retail box. I think the box with manuals is still around somewhere, but I’m not sure where.
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.
Gentoo as a first distro is scary as fuck as a common person. How did you manage?
Great. The Wiki explained everything I needed to do to get a working system.
Any distro that’s well-documented is not a big deal to install and use. Never understood the big deal people used to make (still do sometimes? though I think it’s mostly ironic now) about Arch. I did my first install Arch when I was kinda a dumbass but I just read the wiki (very thorough, btw, still use that wiki nearly daily) and followed the instructions. Especially with Arch, the wiki is so informative it explains the things you don’t know so you understand what you’re doing even though when I first installed Arch I didn’t know what an fstab file was, what the initramfs was, etc. I’ll disclaim that I’ve not installed Gentoo myself, but I hear from people who have installed it that it’s very well documented, so makes sense that newcomers could install and use it if they’re willing to read and learn.
What would you say is a distro that is badly documented? Genuinely curious.
Tbh, as a current Artix user, I think the Artix documentation is lacking. Their full disk encryption installation guide doesn’t have any UEFI instructions and while they have a wiki, it definitely doesn’t cover a lot of the things that differ from systemd, which is the purpose of the Artix Wiki, ie to cover everything from Arch Wiki which needs to be changed without systemd. I get most of my info from the Artix forums. I even used the Arch wiki installation guide for installing Artix instead of Artix Wiki’s installation guide (it’s only like 3 commands that are different, they use basestrap instead of pacstrap and you install a different init system with basestrap, they use fstabgen instead of genfstab, and artix-chroot instead of arch-chroot (that last one should be obvious though)). I still like the distro ofc, otherwise I wouldn’t use it, but I think it’s lacking in good documentation. Maybe that’s just my perspective after being spoiled by the Arch Wiki for so long though lol. I can’t really speak for many distros though, I’ve not daily-driven many
Gentoo is on my to-do list to try out, going to set of a whole weekend to just sit down and enjoy the process of installing it. Have never touched it before, but always heard good things about it, as well as the things you learn along the way. Glad to hear you think so too!
it wasn’t my first distro but i did the full bootstrap install so it must have been pre 2005. ran it as my daily driver for years
Arch wiki has entered the chat
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.
This is really cool man, its wild how much things have changed but those are super endearing.
For me it was Ubuntu on a laptop in early 2000 my family was going to trash because it had viruses on it.
Damn small Linux. Not really “installed” of course, but was fun to play around with.
I remember running DSL on the OG Xbox! Good times.
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.
Mandrake linux on 2001
I had the Mandrake Powerpack that came with two books. I basically memorized the entire console handbook while on the loo…
Ubuntu Late 2000’s. I wanted it because of the CUBE. But left because the only game which worked was TF2.
Red Hat Linux 6.0, back in 1999. It was one of the first distributions to include GNOME as the default desktop environment.
+1 for the OG RH gang.
It was probably Red Hat, late '90s.
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.
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.
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.
