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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ubuntu 9.04, because of WUBI (anyone remember that?). Unstable as hell, but allowed you to run a near bare metal Linux install without the hassle of setting up dual-booting and a separate partition. Liked Ubuntu it so much that I soon replaced Windows completely. Currently running Debian, so I haven’t strayed far from the family.
Slackware.
Mine was an obscure, short-lived distro called LibraNet. It was well done though, by just a father and son team. Unfortunately that was also why it was short lived, because the father passed away.
As for why I picked it, I didn’t really know much about how to choose a distro at the time, so I picked it based on the name, and its description of being easy to use and set up, which it was.
Caldera (probably around 1999).
It was probably Red Hat, late '90s.
Ubuntu
Relatively new full-time Linux user here. My first experience of using Linux was Knoppix. I had it on cd-rom to troubleshoot Windows, got into media servers and xbmc, so had a few OpenElec machines. Now have Mint as a daily driver.
I kept hearing mutahar (someordinarygamers) talk about virtual machines and eventually i managed to get a laptop so i tried making one and Ubuntu was my pick (cus he recommended it for noobs), i hardly knew anything ab linux then but i figured a vm would be the perfect chance to try it :) . Later on when i first decided i wanted to try rawdogging linux it was cus my friend had an old laptop he never used so i asked if i could have it and he didnt mind. The thing was so slow the start menu (the thing u open when u press the windows button) literally took minutes to open. So i eventually checked its specs and downloaded a few distros trying them out and settled on mx linux cus it seemed to tick the most amount of boxes for me :3 (also i got around downloading linux on my main device later on, been using fedora on it.)
