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?

  • merci3@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 minutes ago

    Technically I first experuenced Linux as a very small kid in 2009 in my school computers, but my first time trying Linux for my personal desktip usage was in December 11, 2021, when I first tried Linux Mint. My setup was a very humble, 14 years old, ddr2 board, and I was amazed at how much faster Cinnamon was compared to Windows 10. Since then, I already helped about 5 people to move to Linux too 😁

  • Rawrosaurus@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    4 minutes ago

    It was Slackware… Back in the late 90s. Do not ask me about how kid me managed that, all I recall is endless terminals, kernel panics and eventually getting a desktop through some arcane means I can’t remember.

    I didn’t return to linux for many years after that experience.

    I still have the 1996 edition of Slackware Linux Unleashed and the CD in my bookshelf as a reminder.

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    25 minutes ago

    Ubuntu in 2009 or so. Booting school computers onto the live DVD felt like hacking. I think around 2016 I installed some spin of Ubuntu on my laptop and used it somewhat regularly. Prior to that it was just random times I felt like using the dual boot function. I mostly used Windows. It took until 2025 for me to switch my desktop to Cachy OS.

  • _____@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    36 minutes ago

    Arch in like 2019 maybe.

    I still like Arch, I tried all sorts of distros in VMs, most feel clunky to me.

    Tiling manager, GUI file explorer, minimal status bar and I’m set.

    For my laptop this is swaywm, swaybar, nautilus.

    I also use drun-like programs

  • polo@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    1 hour ago

    Ubuntu, as they used to send free CD packs to distribute. Was fun booting into live CD on computers.

  • Übercomplicated@lemmy.ml
    1·
    1 hour ago

    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…

  • Culf@feddit.dk
    1·
    1 hour ago

    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.

  • nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de
    8·
    3 hours ago

    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 🤣

  • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
    2·
    3 hours ago

    Red Hat, way back in the 90s - must have been 5.0 IIRC.

    Since then I went through Ubuntu and now landed on Fedora.

  • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
    3·
    3 hours ago

    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.