linuxmemes

Fedora

Then Arch

And finally NixOS

First time I mucked with Linux I don’t think there were any formal distros yet. Had to rawrite the kernel to my full height 5.25” 100mb hard drive

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS

SuSe Linux in the early 2000s. Came on a couple of CD-ROMs. We used it to run JBoss servers at work, alongside various Unix flavours. But my first experience with Unix was in the late eighties at university. Been using Mint as my daily driver for about two years now and I'm never going back.

Day 1 was some awesome crazy dude on IRC teaching me how to compile the kernel from source, what options to choose, and then installing Slackware.

Elementary OS Freya. I love a good GUI

Arch

Open Suse in the mid 2000s.

I think Puppy or Damn Small Linux, maybe knoppix, i was on dial up at the time. Then I found that I could request a free Ubuntu install disk and the speed and cleanliness and compiz effects blew my mind. 04 or 06, can't remember which. From there I think it was xubuntu, mint, arch, arch nvme died and I needed an os immediately so manjaro, got sick of manjaro and garuda sounded neat so i tried it and that's where I am now on my main. Made a mess toying with wayland and am ready to reinstall, probably back to arch or try out nixos

edit: reading through all these comments is bringing back so many memories of other distros I played with back then.

I don't remember the year or the version because it has been so long (2003 maybe). It was Ubuntu from the free mail order CDs they used to give away. I remember waiting something like three months for it to arrive.

Knoppix, followed by Mandrake, Ubuntu, etc.

Linux Mint was the only one that I installed and used unironically followed by Kubuntu.

I'm a simpleton, I just want my OS to work.

Ubuntu

I think I went Mint - MX Linux - Opensuse tumbleweed which is where I have stayed for the last year and loving it

Redhat 5.2 in 1998. I think I bought a box set from CompUSA.

For me, it was Mandrake, I think it was back around 2000. I played so much Tux Racer on that machine. However, after they switched the branding to Mandriva, the OS started to run pretty poorly for me around that time. I stayed away from Linux entirely until around 10 years ago when I friend introduced me to Mint. It's been my main ever since, though I've played with others since then, like OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, and most recently, Debian and EndeavourOS.

Epic trolled by my friend, my first was Gentoo

Kubuntu 8.04 was my first, with the KDE 4 demo, it was pretty as fuck compared to Windows XP that came with that PC

Knoppix

Ubuntu Breezy (5.10)

knoppix, then slax, then slackware, then.... Ubuntu 4.10

I started with Ubuntu, but since I was a kid at the time, wifi not working scared me away as I only ever knew of "everything works out of the box". After 2 years, I took a shot at linux again and I gotta say that it was mint that helped me build enough confidence in fixing any issues myself and to try other harder distros like arch. Now after all the exploring/distro hopping, I have settled down on opensuse as a daily driver, but mint will always be one of my favorites, and will always recommend it to any newbie.

SLS (Soft Landing System) then Slackware. 30+ years and still enjoying the Linux ride...

Mandrake. After that it gets hazy, but Mandrake was first.

Kubuntu

Pardus in 2007

it was mine too, in 2020... bring me memories <3

Manjaro GNOME Edition,
But am now on NixOS 😸❄️🐈✨

Mint was my first main. Before that there were some projects on raspbian.

Ubuntu, in 2006.

Slackware back in '97.

Ubuntu -> Mandriva -> Zorin -> Ubuntu -> Debian

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Debian with kde, because it looked a bit like Windows.

Then slackware because it was supposedly a "simple" Linux distro. Apparently simple doesn't mean simple to use for a newbie...

Knoppix I think

My first distro was Ubuntu 8.04, but my first experience with Linux was Damn Small Linux.

Funny enough, Damn Small Linux just had an update after all these years.

SimplyMepis (RIP)

Tried MythTV for a HTPC and had some issue with a log file filling up the the whole drive. Didn't have the skill yet to fix the issue. Does messing around with the terminal in OS X count? It certainly made me more comfortable for the next time tried. I think the next major attempt was another HTPC, but this time, I just used Ubuntu + XBMC and setup it up to also be a headless torrent box. Using OS X as my main desktop still made things easier then it would have been going from Windows to Linux as the file naming and system directories were compatible.

I've been using Mint as my laptop OS for a while now and just recently switched from Mac to Mint on my desktop machine. I made an effort to never get trapped in property file types or an "eco system", so all the apps I was using were available in Linux already and the Majove Hackintosh was becoming less and less viable.

I tried Puppy with a persistent live USB first, then I used Ubuntu through WUBI for a while until it borked my MBR.