Mine was Knoppix because back in the day Libraries used to let you borrow all sorts of computer software and games and that’s what they had and I was stuck on dialup lol
my friend (who was the it manager at one of my first jobs) had a fedora machine in 2007ish? and i loved using it. i only used linux for servers and websites for the longest time before i took the plunge into personal use though so my first personal distro was linux mint earlier this year.
Slackware.
That was 25+ years ago. So don’t judge me.
Ubuntu->Manjaro->Tumbleweed
Slackware. In 1993.
You beat me by 1 year. I switched to slackware when windows 95 came out because I liked cli from ms dos 6.22
Brand spanking new Kali linux after it was redone from Backtrack.
Thought I was cool for 5 seconds until I saw the Kali forums tearing into the thousands of idiots like me who hadn’t touched Linux before but somehow managed to jump through the sketchy Debian installer to load an OS with a metric ton of offensive security tools that none of use knew how to use.
Eventually played with Ubuntu for home use, disliked it, tried Debian which was nice for server, saw Linus Torvalds uses Fedora for user friendly experience, and ended up there.
Raspbian Wheezy. I remember learning how to use apt-get because I wanted to see a Pi 1B run Minecraft. Minecraft Pi Edition was the first apt-get install I ever did.
It was Ubuntu. Can’t remember which version but at the time they would mail you a cd if you requested one.
Same here, though I remember it was 08.04 Hardy Heron for me. I still recall the default background too:
Same for me.
A friend in high school gave me one of these CD, I think it was 7.04.
My first ever distro was Xubuntu. (I did install Lubuntu before it, but found it too “ugly” so switched to Xubuntu after about 30 mins.)
I was still in high school, around 2014-15. My pc was getting old, and I read online that Linux can make your pc run faster. So, I decided to give it a try. I also read online that Xubuntu (and Lubuntu) is among the lightest of distros, so decided to install that. It was worthwhile, to say the least.
I currently use mostly EndeavourOS and AlmaLinux for my personal machines, depending on the type of the device. I have installed Fedora on my sister’s laptop, and Debian Stable on my parents’ PC, so I have to maintain those as well. Also, I have a few Pi zero2s for various things, so I use PiOS (or whatever it’s called these days) from time to time.
Caldera. I don’t know why I picked that. Later I went SuSE.
I’ve been running Debian for long while, although work was RHEL and SuSE
Red Hat, at Uni.
I installed Ubuntu decades ago, then moved and never used it again. The first distro I actually used was Peppermint. Loved it.
Not sure, I installed a distro on my laptop when I was like 11 but I don’t remember which one it was.
Manjaro. And even though I left it for good a while ago, I still sometimes wake up in cold sweat remembering these dark times.
Moblin 2.1 in live environment I think. Ubuntu 11.04 a bit later, which actually had WiFi drivers, but I needed to get them to a thumb drive, because they weren’t shipped by default.
Then random Ubuntu variants (including Linux Mint) before getting back to Windows (8.1 and then 10), but I am back to Linux with Debian 12, and now 13.
Tried ubunto with mint about 10 years back. My first actual daily driver was endeavoros about 1.5 years ago and it has stuck!
Using Hyprland as the DE
