From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
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?
Ubuntu, as they used to send free CD packs to distribute. Was fun booting into live CD on computers.
Lubuntu — what a horrible experience (back then)! Now I'm happy with openSUSE Tumbleweed, Void Linux, and Nobara (for my wanna-be gaming PC, lol; trying to get just enough frames for CS2). Every once-and-a-while (I feel like hyphenating that), I do a fresh install, just to get rid of the cruft. Nowadays that makes me wonder if I should be switching to immutable...
Ubuntu lol
Mint
Ubuntu, like a lot of people my age (2000s)
I started using Linux this year. I first tried out Debian, but then switched to mint. Has been very happy with mint every since, so I don't think I will switch again in the near future.
I believe it was slackware. it was gifted to teenage me ca 1994, was on the CD of some magazine.
I wanted to try it, so went dual boot. it (or I?) partitioned my 800MB hard disk into a 300MB and an 800MB partition. stupid young me thought this was great and I just gained 300MB. when I noticed date corruption, stupid young me started to copy over important data to the assumed good partition. things didn't end well.
I took a two year break from Linux afterwards 🤣
Red Hat, way back in the 90s - must have been 5.0 IIRC.
Since then I went through Ubuntu and now landed on Fedora.
Red Hat 5.0 "Hurricane" from 1997. I still have the CD.
It's hard to remember but it was some version of Mandrake probably in the early 2000's. At the time, they were one of the only distros (along with Red Hat) to offer an installation GUI. As a first time user I found partitioning a hard drive too complex to do on the command line.
I only used Mandrake for a short time before reverting to windows but it wasn't long after that when I came back and then started using Debian. Since then I went back to Windows then to OpenSuSe, then Debian, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, and now Pop!_OS.
Raspbian if that counfs
I guess it was suse or red hat somewhen end of 90s or beginning of 2000. Anyhow I didn't like KDE back in the days and haven't touched it since. Although the screenshots I've seen of the latest kde looked kind of good. But I'm mostly running arch or manjaro today and prefer gnome or some tiling manager like herbstluftwm.
Way back: Ubuntu live CD. More recent history: Pop!_OS > Zorin OS > Fedora.
Happily been running Fedora for like 2 years now.
Slackware in 1998 I think, from a cd that came in a book I bought while in university.
It didn’t stick, but it demystified it and I’ve used a lot of flavours of *nix since then.
I remember not being able to get sound to work at all on my pentium computer.
Slackware gang!!!
Slackware was my first intel Linux. First linux ever was red hat for DEC alpha. Quite weird after OSF/1.
Still use slackware, though mostly now actual work is done on debian, arch, and alpine.
BackTrack 5 because I was too poor to pay for my own Wi-Fi back then, so I had to become creative heheh
Pop!_OS since January of this year \o/
Ubuntu 6.06 was my first Linux install. I still remember the pain of ndiswrapper to get Windows WiFi drivers working on Linux.
Welcome to Lemmy!
For me the first Linux distribution I used was Ubuntu 8.04 - though I never had installed it on physical hardware, just a VM - VirtualBox IIRC (that didn't occur till Ubuntu 8.10). I was in my early teenage years and had discovered Linux and found it interesting, I used the WUBI tool to install it through Windows and updated the bootloader to keep Windows as the default (with a one second timeout) since it was the family computer, I think my family would've shat their pants if they randomly rebooted the PC and was greeted with Linux heh.
Though a few years later on an old secondary family laptop (it was the "someone else is using the other computer" spare/backup) that was running Vista, it had gotten so buggy and bogged down that I installed Kubuntu for my family and they happily used that until eventually that laptop was retired. It never got them to really look into permanently switching to Linux, but I think that's more than fine - I've never been one to "proselytize" Linux: If it is the right tool for you, fantastic - if not, no hard feelings is how I see it. In the aforementioned case, it was the better tool over the bogged down and buggy Vista.
As for nowadays, its CachyOS on my desktop (I'm not married to it, but its been working alright for me for about a year now), SteamOS on my Deck, Fedora on my secondary laptop (an old intel macbook), and then Bazzite on my ROG Ally. Windows is still installed on a secondary drive on my desktop, but I very rarely have to boot into it.
Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron. I miss loving Ubuntu
Same! I remember getting Warcraft 3 to run with wine. Ubuntu used to be exciting...
Started with Soft Landing Systems (SLS). Pre-Slackware. Many hours downloading floppy disk images at school.
Moved to Red Hat (pre-Fedora and pre-RHEL) until I think 7.3 or so and then Mandrake. I did trial runs with many distros over time but none of them really stuck. Fedora for a release or two. Spent a few years on Manjaro for desktop and CentOS for server. Have been on Arch for many years now (or EndeavourOS). Never used Ubuntu really.
Moved to Proxmox for server. Although I never used Debian historically, quite a few of the containers I have on Proxmox now are Debian based as is Proxmox itself.
Lately, I have been using Chimera Linux for desktop though I have an Arch Distrobox on it so I guess I am a bit of a hybrid at this point.
I grew up a windows user, as was my father before me. I first started with Linux in my teens, initially on Raspbian as I was gifted a raspberry pi 2b with a camera, and I wanted to try goofing around with python and computer vision (which was the style at the time.) Once I entered university, I dual booted Windows 7 and Linux Mint, since my professor suggested moving to Linux for C++ homework to make things simpler. I was scared of jumping to a new desktop OS due to my upbringing, so I couldn't abandon Windows, not yet anyway. Following that I had a cheap Summer fling with Kali as it was a requirement for a cyber security course I took. This replaced my Mint install. After college I got into self-hosting, and my server ran Debian for stability (and still does to this day), however I was still scared of leaving the safety of my littlr Windows garden I called home. But then Windows betrayed me by putting ads on my taskbar, and I got fed up. I installed EndeavorOS on my main machine which was a laptop. I immediately fell head over heels for the AUR, and not needing a deep understanding of linux during the install was a plus. I got comfy with the ins and outs of linux over the next year and a half or so, and when I finally went to build myself a new desktop PC, I made the switch to Arch. It's been great, and I felt like I understood all the decisions I made during the install. That was 6 months ago. If Arch ever fails me catastrophically,(which would be pretty hard as I am using an os snapshot manager, and backing those snapshots up to my server) I will move to either Debian or Mint for stability, as I am kind of tired of hopping around at this point.
SUSE Linux, back in the 1990s. Because you could buy it for cheap, and you got not only the huge stack of floppy disks to install it from, but also a set of thick fat detailed handbooks (these things made from paper full of pictures and letters and glued together, like your grandparents may have had). I spent many nights with them books instead of my wife...
It was a bear to install and terribly complicated to configure back then; at least for me. But in the end, I had a nice server running well for a while.
Mandrake 9
Gentoo, sometime in the early 00's
Raspbian Wheezy.
Ubuntu in about 2007 when my windows desktop crashed. A friend installed it in place. Never looked back
Slackware, of course, but when Debian was first released two years later I obviously switched (and it's been Debian since then).
Mandrake 6.0 in 1998. The kernel was still 2.2, and KDE 1.1.1.
Me as well. I don't remember where / how I got the CD. Linux as a desktop has come so far since then!
This brought back some memories: https://www.mandrakelinux.org/
OpenSuse sometime around '07
It didn't click, ended up moving to Ubuntu almost immediately. A few years later I moved to Fedora. Circa 2020 I dove into Archlinux and managed that for a couple years. Nowadays as I'm learning server stuff I've switched to Mint.
In the early 90’s I downloaded Slackware to floppy disks. It took me several days to make them. Slackware holds a special place in my heart.
To this day I still use Linux full time. Arch is my go to, but I like and recommend Endeavor often.
My first was Slackware in the 90s after a friend introduced it to me. He set up a system to use it as a proxy for our network at home to use but would frequently redoing that system so we didn't have internet for sometimes days. It wasn't a good time. Took years to use Linux again.
Ubuntu had a thing for a while where they would send you a CD of you asked for it. Friend of mine from school gave me one.
Ubuntu was my first when I started poking around with it. Not sure which version, but it was during the Unity era. Pop!_OS was the one I started using when I switched full time. I'm still using it on my main computer, but I'm also using Fedora, Ubuntu, NixOS, and Mint on other devices because I like variety!
Mandriva Linux, then RHEL, the Debian and fedora.
Welcome to Lemmy stranger.
Slackware back in the early 90s on a Compaq 386/SX20 💾
Floppy sets represent!
Slackware 3.1.
Ubuntu -- the one with the Nelson Mandela video and the picture of people holding hands in a circle.
My first Linux install was Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy. Got those wobbly windows going and felt like a fucking king.