I’m new to #Lemmy and making myself feel at home by posting a bit!
My first Linux distribution was elementary OS in early March 2020. Since then, I’ve tried Manjaro, Arch Linux, Fedora, went back to Manjaro, and since early January 2023, I’ve landed on Debian as my home in the #Linux world.
What was your first Linux distro?
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My first steps were with Debian 2.0 and a Suse Version from about the same time. But that was not very successful so I went back to Windows for about a year and then really got into Linux with Gentoo. I had a year of not much to do, had to wait a year to get into University, and I decided to install the complicated Linux Distribution that I could find.
Reasoning was: It will break a lot if it is so complicated, due to this I am forced to learn while repairing it.
Linux Mint XFCE, it was easy to setup and could run on my really old laptop.
It started with Red Hat 6.1 in 1999 and ended up with NixOS.
Corel Linux.
Mandrake
Whatever Ubuntu was available in 2015. I only dabbled in Linux over the past 10 years. More seriously switching over in the last year or so.
I have Unraid as a server OS (Debian based, running a lot of docker containers and a couple VMs). Debian on my laptop. And Bazzite (fedora based) on my Lenovo Legion Go.
Still need to swap my gaming PC from windows. May try Bazzite on that as well. I’ve also tried Mint, Manjaro, and Zorin
I came in just about as Debian Woody was coming out, in 2002. (Main reason I can even date it beyond “Idk, about 20 years ago?”).
Tried Mandrake a while after that, often recommended as pretty much the equivalent of Linux Mint at the time in terms of noob friendliness. I did enjoy that but stuck with Debian for my main system for years, though.
Bodhi Linux. It had to be something that could run on a 32 bit laptop, because that’s what I used as a testing ground before committing to Linux.
Oof. I am pretty sure it was Mandrake in 97. I bounced around trying what was around before settling on Gentoo for a decade plus. Then both my laptop and desktop got too long in the tooth to make distcc even worthwhile and migrated to Arch. I figured it was the closest distro to Gentoo that I wouldn’t have too many problems. I don’t know howong it’s been now, but I’m an Arch fangirl. I’ve installed it many times since on work computers as well. For remote systems though, it’s always Debian stable.
All the old timers are coming out. In the summer of ‘98 I switched to Red Hat Linux.
Sadly, Ubuntu. I quickly moved on to debian…and ultimately landed with Arch, my true love for many years. I use Arch, btw.
The first one I saw was Debian 3.1 (Sarge). I was in school and our objective this time was installing debian + getting a working Xorg session. Never heard of Linux before, didn’t get a working Xorg session, but wow man, there’s something other than Windows and MacOS. I couldn’t have imagined.
The first one I actually used on a desktop (laptop for school, in that case) was Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake).
I’ve tried oh so many different linux distributions over the years, I probably forgot most of them. Maybe some don’t even exist anymore. My goal was always Arch Linux, having seen it on a schoolmates laptop. I really fell for the “here’s a pretty minimum base, do whatever” thing.
In the end, I exclusively used Arch from 2020 until this year. Actually using Arch and reading the ArchWiki were probably what taught me most of what I know about linux in general and how things work.
I’ve been searching for a less DIY-solution which is still up-to-date (especially with kernels and mesa) and I landed on Fedora Workstation, which is what I’m currently using on my work latpop and desktop at home. I do miss some things from Arch, but Fedora has been pretty good to me and I, for the meantime, intend to stay here.
Fedora is a pretty damn solid distro, I like it a lot
Debian 3.1, but was not successful in getting X to work, but didn’t put a lot of effort into it. Then I got Mandrake running with X, but went back to Windows. On a small computer, I got FreeBSD running as a server but never used it, so that went away again. Knoppix a couple of times to recover data from failed Windows installations.
Yeah, it’s not until recently that I installed Debian 12 on a old work laptop and was very impressed. Now I’m on the fence of having a stable distribution or sumthin with newer packages. I love the philosophy of Debian and the wide usage on servers but Arch is personally also up my alley, however I have not used it at all.
I bought one of those Guide to Linux books back in like 2008 that came with an Ubuntu install disc. Installed it on an old family PC but I didn’t really know what I was doing so I didn’t get far.
Then in college I used Mint on my desktop and Peppermint on my Acer Aspire netbook. Around graduation I bought a Chromebook and ran Xubuntu in Crouton.
Went a few years without Linux and recently dual-booted with Pop OS on my gaming PC. Feels good.
I used slackware, btw
Oh yeah well I still boot Bell Labs Unix that I load off of punch cards
^^^That’s ^^^awesome ^^^that ^^^you ^^^used ^^^Slackware, ^^^I’m ^^^just ^^^joking
