Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

Gentoo circa 2002. Soooooo over my capabilities at the time

I couldn't run Linux on my PC due too lack of hardware support at the time, but FreeBSD had support, so I ran that for a couple of years until Linux caught up.

At that time, there wasn't much choice when it came to distros. These days, it's a little bit of everything. Arch on my daily driver, RHEL on my ERP and DB servers, Ubuntu server on my Dev server, and I'm planning on deploying NixOS across the 700 PCs at our different locations.

Mandrake ~7. Back them I had dial-up internet, but got the install CD from a magazine.

I started on Arch and it's the only distro I've ever really loved.

Had to use red hat for a cyber security class in college, but I tinkered with Ubuntu back in highschool. I had no idea what I was doing lmao

Mandrake 7.1 - it was aweful.

Ubuntu 7.04

Ubuntu. But that was an office pc so pretty limited. Mint was the first ever I installed and stayed there for a few years.

OpenSUSE 10.2 I think. Then Ubuntu 7.04. Stuck with it until they moved to the Unity DE.
Then Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Kubuntu...
Recently moved to Linux Mint Cinnamon as I got fed up of more of the base system being Snaps.
I did try Mint MATE but the need for more modern built in features won over the nostalgia 🤣

I distrohopped at the start, no idea what I started with but the first one I settled on was Solus. Still a big fan of Budgie, and the OS felt easy to use, yet had the possibility to download stuff like Spotify as well.

The first time I used Linux was at an old job, and we used Xubuntu for desktop, Debian for servers, and Raspbian on the Raspberry Pis, but technically Xubuntu would have been the first. I currently use KDE neon as my daily driver

Ubuntu -> Manjaro -> Pop! OS

Corel Linux, I doubt anyone else here knows it especially used it. Very user friendly, got me into linux.

I got to use ubuntu in school, but never really got into it. When I started getting annoyed by windows I wanted to move to debian (which I bonked the install for and never got to work). After some shuffling around I settled with Mint (Cinnamon), which I've used since and like very much.

Ubuntu on 1st year of college

Rhel 5? Maybe 6. It was regular gnome in the early 2000s, and we had Solaris too, but no app. My first distro on my own machine was Ubuntu

some 20 years back: Suse 7.0, my first PC, reinstalled it every week, cause me dumb dumb back then and it was not very easy to use as well.

I first tried Ubuntu because it was the only one I knew of besides arch and I heard that arch was hard. I hated Ubuntu immediately and started distro hopping. I'm on Debian 12 now and it's the longest I've been on a single distro.

Ubuntu 18.04

I played with SuSE 6.2 for a while in 1999 but only really turned to Linux in 2001 with Mandrake Linux 8.0.

I think it was mint or elementry

Red Hat

Fedora 6. Had to use it to build a server for my A+ class. Good times.

Manjaro GMOME was my first distro on hardware (had Ubuntu in VMs before)

Fedora. Core 3 or Core 4 according to Wikipedia and the fact that I recognize the names. An acquaintance suggested I try Linux, so I found info on it, didn't really understand what a distro was and settled on Fedora because I had bought O'Reilly Linux Pocket Guide that used that distro.

I switched pretty quickly after that, and used Ubuntu, Debian, then Mepis for awhile. I've run Arch, dual-booted with Windows for several years on the desktop and Debian testing on my remote server

Ubuntu!

I downloaded the installer in 2017 after MS forced an update to Windows 10 from 7. My laptop, from 2010, couldn't handle W10 and I heard Linux was good for old laptops. Not long after that I hopped around to other distros but Ubuntu was first.

My first one was OpenSUSE in the 00-years. I was hardly able to get it up and running on my worn out, home-build desktop.

Tried again later with ubuntu (Gnome) on an old Thinkpad and was taken aback about how smooth it ran just ootb.