Linux

Red Hat 5.0 "Hurricane" from 1997. I still have the CD.

Dreamlinux :) 2.2 maybe.

Ubuntu, circa 2005ish I think. Played with all the *buntu derivatives back then, went back to windows for a while, then tried Manjaro, found it frustratingly unstable, and now I use PopOS.

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn.

Way back: Ubuntu live CD. More recent history: Pop!_OS > Zorin OS > Fedora.

Happily been running Fedora for like 2 years now.

BackTrack 5 because I was too poor to pay for my own Wi-Fi back then, so I had to become creative heheh

Manjaro -> openSuse tumbleweed -> Fedora (Desktop) and tuxedoOS (Laptop)

Gentoo, sometime in the early 00's

My first steps were with Debian 2.0 and a Suse Version from about the same time. But that was not very successful so I went back to Windows for about a year and then really got into Linux with Gentoo. I had a year of not much to do, had to wait a year to get into University, and I decided to install the complicated Linux Distribution that I could find.

Reasoning was: It will break a lot if it is so complicated, due to this I am forced to learn while repairing it.

Linux Mint XFCE, it was easy to setup and could run on my really old laptop.

Corel Linux.

My first Linux was Gentoo. It took several tries to get code compiled and working on that Pentium 4, but I will say, the process taught me a lot about Linux in general. It was the ultimate crash course. I’d recommend Gentoo for all beginners who don’t mind digging in to the point of frustration, because it’s a great learning experience.

Whatever Ubuntu was available in 2015. I only dabbled in Linux over the past 10 years. More seriously switching over in the last year or so.

I have Unraid as a server OS (~~Debian~~ slackware based, running a lot of docker containers and a couple VMs). Debian on my laptop. And Bazzite (fedora based) on my Lenovo Legion Go.

Still need to swap my gaming PC from windows. May try Bazzite on that as well. I've also tried Mint, Manjaro, and Zorin

I came in just about as Debian Woody was coming out, in 2002. (Main reason I can even date it beyond "Idk, about 20 years ago?").

Tried Mandrake a while after that, often recommended as pretty much the equivalent of Linux Mint at the time in terms of noob friendliness. I did enjoy that but stuck with Debian for my main system for years, though.

Lycoris in 2002. It sucked. I think I tried it because it was pushed towards newbies. I tried Mandrake with KDE not long after and that is when I really became a Linux fan.

Bodhi Linux. It had to be something that could run on a 32 bit laptop, because that's what I used as a testing ground before committing to Linux.

Ubuntu sometime around 2010. It definitely wasn't what I was looking for so I didn't try another distro until 3 years ago. Linux Mint's working well for me but I'm curious about Bazzite.

Debian 3.1, but was not successful in getting X to work, but didn’t put a lot of effort into it. Then I got Mandrake running with X, but went back to Windows. On a small computer, I got FreeBSD running as a server but never used it, so that went away again. Knoppix a couple of times to recover data from failed Windows installations.

Yeah, it’s not until recently that I installed Debian 12 on a old work laptop and was very impressed. Now I’m on the fence of having a stable distribution or sumthin with newer packages. I love the philosophy of Debian and the wide usage on servers but Arch is personally also up my alley, however I have not used it at all.

Installed Ubuntu back at 2012 on my Surface. Since then, I’ve hopped to CentOS, OpenSUSE, and Fedora. For now I’ve settled on Arch Linux!

Ubuntu 6.06 I always come back to Arch now-a-days.

I first got to try Kali Linux while getting my degree.

Still shopping for one when I make the switch. Mint looked pretty user friendly.

I am not a computer unfortunately, only a ungabunga caveman

@midtsveen if I remember correctly, I think it must have been Ubuntu 12.04
My first steps into the Linux world - it's incredible to see how far the Linux desktop has come since. I've got a laptop that runs exclusively Zorin OS and I love it!

Casual Deck owner here. Arch Linux is my answer.

Lubuntu about 10 years ago, then Mint, openSUSE, and I've stuck with Debian for the past eight.

SuSE, about 1999, although I didn’t really start ‘getting’ Linux until I tried Slackware a couple of years later. After that I’ve just been bouncing between trusty old Debian and different distros based on it.

Edit: I’ve also tried Gentoo, Arch and Mandrake briefly many years ago.

I guess Ubuntu? 10 years ago or even more? can't remember... Tried it for a bit but didn't stick at first and went back to Windows until 2020.

Installed my first homelab and selfhosted application on my old spare laptop with Debian (only over command line).

So I gave Linux desktop another try... Ubuntu for a few days => Manjaro for a few days => EndeavourOS !

Got hooked and are now a proud EOS user for about 3 years and never will I look back into Windows !

I'm still in the learning process, but in the long run I will probably switch to bare bone Arch.

My first linux was Ubuntu 10.04. And I swapped to Arch only when Ubuntu added snap.

Knoppix on live cd which I installed later on hdd but a few days later switched to Mandrake, I think it was... 2001? Good times, good times. There has been a lot of distrohopping since then.

OpenSuSE that came with the Linux magazine

Red Hat 7

I think mine was gentoo, waaaay back in the day. It didn't go great lol.

I'm loving opensuse rn though!

Red Hat 9 in 2004

It was DSLinux, Linux for the Nintendo DS. I tried it while hacking with the DS just to try that "Linux" everyone was talking about. I installed Ubuntu on my PC short after it.

I played a bit with Suse around 2000, but I switched to Linux as my main OS with Ubuntu in 2005.
Now I use Manjaro, because I like the rolling release concept, and it's easy to use different kernels, and it's a good KDE distro IMO.
In my experience it's also among the best for Steam games.