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The very first Linux? That would be DSL (Damn Small Linux).
I don't know whether it still exists but in 2003-ish, I was looking for something on-the-go and came across DSL.
I recently (2 years now) started using Linux as a daily driver again. Had to learn a lot of new things. This time someone on GamingOnLinux adviced me to start with Mint. But it wasn't for me. So it's been a great journey.
I learned on Red Hat back in the 90s
I had got a copy for free some place, so I taught myself how to install and use it
Knoppix, on a live CD. Then shorty after, Aurox Linux, distributed as a number of CD with a magazine. Around 2004-2005. Then Mandriva.
Backtrack then crunchbang. Eventually I moved to arch. I've been using debian and mint lately though.
Backtrack was my first consistent distro as well. Ah, the good old days of wardriving WEP! Also landed on Debian as my daily driver since Ubuntu is a bit chonk.
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Immediately liked the interface, but was bummed by lack of software and (expected) subpar performance on my shitty hardware. Went back to Windows 7 after a month or so. It took me quite a lot of hopping between many Linux distros and Windows to finally settle on Manjaro as my desktop OS of choice
Some version of Ubuntu. I forgot which version number.
Attempted to use Red Hat 4 (pre-RHEL), but couldn't work out the partitioning. However, I tried SuSE Linux Personal 7.0 soon afterwards and YaST gave me a much smoother time when installing everything; I've been using SUSE/openSUSE ever since as my primary Linux distro.
Slackware, floppies, my 486.
Debian 2.2 on a consulting job in 2001. I'd used Unix mainframes in college, but other than that had only ever done work on DOS and Windows before then. Didn't think much of it at the time, though it was familiar and easy to work with. Certainly a far cry from the experience we all have with Linux today.
Installed and tinkered with Mandrake 6.0 First full time: Ubuntu 04-10. Warty Warthog
Kubuntu 6.06. Got the CD with a computer magazine that had a good tutorial on how to install the thing next to a pre-existing Windows partition. To this day I miss the look of KDE 3!
I started back on Ubuntu Hardy Heron. It was so much prettier than Windows, it got 11 yr. old me into hosting web servers
I can't remember if it was Ubuntu or openSUSE, but I read about both in a PC magazine around 2005-2006 and had to try them out. I'm guessing it was probably openSUSE as it has a cooler logo.
This was years before I ever thought about Linux and still a Windows slave, but I can vaguely remember a guy on a bus working on a laptop and telling me all about Ubuntu. That was probably my very first exposure to Linux and I forgot about it for a decade.
Ubuntu back in 2005.
RedHat 5.2, purchased in a plastic-wrapped cardboard box from Best Buy. God I'm old 😭
Ubuntu with Gnome Classic.
Ubuntu sometime in the late 2000's. I remember a friend showing me virtual desktops that rotated between each other.
I dual booted my machine and it was amazing... For 10 seconds until I realized thats all it did. When right back to windows.
I forget whether I did Mandrake or Redhat first. This was on a 3.5" floppy, heh.
Old GenToo, when I finally got off of dial-up, was an interesting experience. Building everything from the ground up definitely taught me a lot.
These days, I mostly use Ubuntu at home (and various at work). I may give mint a shot, however.
Redhat lol back in the 90’s
I probably played with some Ubuntu live CDs beforehand, since you could order them for free, but the first time actually using it was back in 2004-2005. I had gotten one of the first AMD 64 bit laptops, with 32 bit Windows and I wanted to see what 65 bit “could do”. So I installed Ubuntu as a dual boot setup. Worked quite well! I played around a lot with customising the experience, making my desktop 3D with Compiz. Great times! I also remember the lack of game support it had, I could only play OpenTTD on it. How times have changed! I’m now running Linux full time on my game machine (EndeavourOS) and haven’t touched Windows in a long time.
God I am old, I remember before kali rebranded 😭.
Phlak and Knoppix were mine. Neither lasted long since I couldn't install it on my home computer. The first one I installed as a dual boot was Ubuntu. While I have strayed from them over the years they have been my daily driver for the better part of 15 years
Ubuntu, either version 12.04 or 12.10 when I got my first computer, a Chromebook, in Christmas 2013 when I was 10. I hated how Chrome OS didn't support anything so I found a way to put Ubuntu on it and messed around with Blender and Minecraft. Despite this early start, I proceeded to do nothing productive with it, broke it out of frustration, and now I'm 20 and struggling with Arch lmao
I installed linux mint on some really old laptop when i was a little kid but i wouldnt really consider that my first distro that i actually used on a dailybasis, that would be SteamOS on a Steam deck, it showed me how great linux could be and got me hooked on it.
DLD 5 in 1998, a colleague at work handed me a CDR and said "i think this might be something for you", and he was right ;)
Gentoo circa 2002. Soooooo over my capabilities at the time
Started using Linux a year ago. My friend recommended Manjaro (not a good distro) because he himself used Arch. I was a little to stupid to use Manjaro at the time so I moved to Ubuntu, then Kali and finally Arch which is what I use now. I have practiced some distrohopping with Arco, Vanilla, Archcraft and my favourite Gentoo.In the future I want to dabble with LFS and Gentoo but I do see myself using Arch from this point forward. Linux is such an amazing operating system and it has taught me very much. Also use Neovim.
I think it was Debian! My dad had an old cd of it and we live booted into it for fun like almost 20 years ago.
i think the first one i tried was Ubuntu 7.04 when i was just messing around with linux on an old Windows XP Machine. A few years later I ran Mint on my laptop and now I'm kind of getting back into it with Manjaro on my current old laptop lol.
No better way to learn about linux than to just try it out
I am not really sure but I think it was yggdrasil. I remember loading a ton of floppies one after the other. 5 1/4 inch ones too!
Not sure but it was slackware or red hat in 1997
RHEL 2.3, still have the cd somewhere
My first distro was OpenSUSE (or SuSE Linux back then) sometime around 2002. I picked it up out of curiosity in a book shop. They were selling the handbook, bundled with a DVD with the actual OS. It looked something like this. And thus started decades of distro hopping.
SuSe Linux from an installation CD about twenty years ago. A right royal pain in the arse it was.
Slackware 7, year 2000. Never seen linux before. Thanks to help from IT geek next door managed to boot net-installer it from single 3.5". After many hours managed do finally get xfree86 working. As far as I remember it was running with KDE.
I spent weeks installing Linux in 2002, finally got it up and running and was like wow this is barely usable.
Turns out I had a fundamental misunderstanding, and there were pre-made distributions of it for you to use! Took me two years to realize that. Picked up Ubuntu and it just worked (other than wifi)
