Linux

Ubuntu all the way! :) Before I learned there were other ones, then wound up back on Mint again after a trip around the houses. :)

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..

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.

Fedora

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

If just using the Live CD counts, Lubuntu 12.04, to copy files off a broken Windows machine

Then Ubuntu, followed by Deepin (looked cool), UbuntuDDE, Arch, Xubuntu, and finally settled on Debian in 2022.

Ubuntu 6.06 was my first Linux install. I still remember the pain of ndiswrapper to get Windows WiFi drivers working on Linux.

Some ancient version of SuSE Linux way back in like 2001. I did not stick with it back then.

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.

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

Knoppix. I didn't see it listed yet so I had to chime in.

I saw it and was confused that computers could run something that wasn't Windows and wasn't Mac. Then I was handed a Knoppix LiveCD and suddenly MY computer was Linux. Absolutely blew my mind.

I then explored Mandrake (now Mandrivia?) for a while but it never really stuck.

A few years later Ubuntu was handing out LivdCDs to everyone running Warty Warthog and soon after window managers started to use Beryl (?) which let you have a fancy cube desktop. Absolutely pointless but that's how it all started.

Zorin OS because they said it was windows like

Ubuntu 8.10 in early 2009, after Windows Vista otherwise bricked my laptop. I've distro-hopped on a few occasions but most of my 16 years of Linux have been on Ubuntu. That said, I moved away from Ubuntu after a failed upgrade to 22.04 LTS, to OpenSUSE and then to KDE Neon, now I'm on Nobara and couldn't be happier.

For me it was elementary OS. Dual-booted with Windows back in 2015/2016. Maybe 1 year later, I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon and gradually used it more than Windows. Now I am using EndeavourOS XFCE and only using Windows virtually... when I am bored or need to use Adobe Lightroom Classic.

Ubuntu -- the one with the Nelson Mandela video and the picture of people holding hands in a circle.

Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron. I miss loving Ubuntu

in order (2000-present): red hat, slackware, debian, ubuntu, arch, manjaro, nix

Casual Deck owner here. Arch Linux is my answer.

My first was Ubuntu 06.06, but I was only messing around using a live CD. I tried it again with Ubuntu 12.04 when Steam added Linux support, but went back to Windows because gaming on Linux wasn't really there.

Finally decided to dual boot and distro hopped a bit in 2015 between Mint, Kubuntu, then KDE Neon for a bit before settling on Manjaro some time in 2017. Eventually I switched to Arch in 2022 after Manjaro forgot to renew their certs again.

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.

Raspbian Wheezy.

Mandrake. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But I did get it installed.

I tried to set up arch, realized I didn’t want that kind of work for a gaming setup and swapped to debian, and i’ve used that since lol

Mandrake 2003. Followed by Ubuntu server 5.10 in 2005.

Switched to Debian in 2020, been on Debian since.

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.

Ubuntu, I hated it lol

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

Red Hat 7

Red Hat 9 in 2004

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

elementary os in 2016. I still use eos on my desktop machine, mainly because it's kinda ubuntu but not quite. Running Fedora on one of my laptops, the rest are running macos

I started with Ubuntu back when you could put in your parent's home address and they sent you free CDs. I'm on Arch (since about 2010), and I can't change.

Redhat 4.1 back in 97. I even purchased the CD from PC World, seems wild now to buy a CD/DVD of a distro.

First PC I installed it on was a work laptop, had to compile a bunch of kernel modules and then the kernel to get everything working but get everything working I did, Thinkpads being good for Linux even then.

One of the first slackware (so many floppies) on my mighty 486 DX 50. Linux wasn't at 1.0 yet at the time.

Linux (many versions) has been my daily driver ever since, with windows as a gaming backup a lot of the time. I still have it on a single machine in a small partition because of VR :‐/

Gentoo, sometime in the early 00's

Started with Mint and stuck with that for a year. No issues, just felt comfortable enough to try something "fancier", I guess Mint was a little too reliable lol. Went with PopOS a while for the native dock and tiling manager, loved it. Now I'm on a brand new PC build and enjoying gaming with Bazzite. No tinkering involved, it setup my 5070 Ti automatically.