Ubuntu > Mint > Manjaro > Arch > PopOS > Debian
(History, not ranking [Debian wins])
this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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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...
I started with Mandrake 6 when the there were lots of 9's or 0's in the year
Then bounced from Slackware/opensuse/Red Hat/Debian/Gentoo/BSD
Now running Kde Neon and MacOS (Debian and BSD as server OSs)
Way back: Ubuntu live CD. More recent history: Pop!_OS > Zorin OS > Fedora.
Happily been running Fedora for like 2 years now.
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.
Slackware, of course, but when Debian was first released two years later I obviously switched (and it's been Debian since then).
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.
Slackware96 from Walnut Creek purchased at Staples back when software came in boxes with manuals. Netscape Navigator 3.0 anyone?
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Ubuntu in about 2007 when my windows desktop crashed. A friend installed it in place. Never looked back
BackTrack 5 because I was too poor to pay for my own Wi-Fi back then, so I had to become creative heheh
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.
Slackware 3.1.
Mint cinnamon
Whatever version of Red Hat there was in 1999. 6 point something if memory serves.
I was running Quake 3 servers a few PCs.
my first 'distro' was slackware, on floppy disks. then debian or a flavour of, mainly, ever since. i've never really strayed too far from debian and apt over the years but i have tried most everything.
Raspbian Wheezy.
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.
Debian Slink
Before that, Windows NT, A/UX, Solaris and VAX/VMS.
Before that, Vic 20 and Apple II
Still using Debian every day whilst navigating the perils of MacOS.
Ubuntu in the mid 2000s, but it's PopOS that made me a fulltimer ~2 years ago. I don't use it anymore but I'll always be thankful for it.
SuSE in 1996. Then Debian between mid-1997 and late 2023, NixOS since.
I'm not a big distrohopper...
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Red Hat 8.0, the Linux Starter 2003 double cd edition. From there I tried my first Ubuntu when they where still sending out free cd's which was version 6.06 LTS. After that I dabbled a bit jumping from distro to distro to try out different flavors, tinkering a bit for fun and even tried to build my own with Arch. All the while keeping my Windows (XP, 7, 10) daily driver as my main rig. Finally switched over to Pop_OS! a few years ago as my daily for work. I've been thinking about switching over my gaming rig to a Linux distro but haven't figured out which one is the best one and requires the least amount of tinkering.
Fedora
Yggdrasil In the mid 90s.
I guess technically, Raspbian.
Ubuntu -- the one with the Nelson Mandela video and the picture of people holding hands in a circle.
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.
I think it was Slackware sometime in the early 2000s
Arch Linux, on an old Compaq pizza box server when I was 16. It took me 3 months to install Arch because there was a DIP switch on the motherboard that somehow prevented you from updating the MBR or some shit.
I basically never used it and didn't touch Linux again until 7 years later, when I used SLES 11 SP2 at a job.
Void linux
Mint, then Ubuntu, then Kubuntu, elementaryOS, Manjaro, then I gave up Linux for a while because I needed remote desktop for my PC at work, now back on PopOS!
Someone installed Fedora for me somewhere around 2006, then I switched between Ubuntu and Windows until permanently settling for Ubuntu a couple of years ago. But I'm thinking of switching to Debian..