BluefoxLongtail

Some type of BASIC came first along with Batch (if it counts) and later Visual Basic. All sorts of easy things that I fully advocate for as first languages in education. The next step for me was C/C++ and various different languages that are more learning examples than anything now like COBOL and Pascal. And then for school, I picked up Python, Java, C#, Ruby, and a smattering of ARM Assembler.

I use a lot of languages for school, but outside of that, depending on the research I'm doing, projects I'm working on, and other things, it varies between C++ (which I use for analytics and research stuff) and Python (which is much nicer for automation and interacting with distributed computing). Bash finds itself very close behind them for automation when I'm being too lazy to write Python.

I'm 99% sure everything for me can be traced back to Blinx: The Time Sweeper, an old Xbox exclusive with anthro cats and pigs. Really awesome game, and to this day, I think it was a gem of mechanics and dynamics that it's a pity never became something more. That would've started in around '06. I was 3-4.

I didn't know the concept of furry until '16 or so, when I would've been 13-14. I had a fascination with fur and animal stuff, and a younger friend (he was like 12) said something like "Oh, so you're a furry?" A few googles later...I was like GOD NO. Came back by early-2017, with a more careful Google and an open mind, and yeah, I was. Joined a furry forum in mid-2017, and the rest is history. Seen a lot of stuff in my time here, but unfortunately, I arrived too late to see a lot of the furry community that used to exist in my local area. Just a few years too young to have caught RCFM.

I might be a little late, and this might be a little controversial, but I'll recommend to you what was recommended to me years ago. Ubuntu. Though the interface is different than it was in 2013 (they use a different desktop environment (DE) now), the spirit of ease-of-use is still there. Ubuntu is a rock-solid Debian based distro, which of course, there are a lot of. Ubuntu however (and I'd assume it's derivatives) go a step further for usability. Coming from Windows XP back then, everything just made sense. Software came from a place called Software, updates came from a place called Updates, and LibreOffice (OpenOffice branch; MS Office equivalent) is a pre-installed app. It also makes driver install (at least for Nvidia, not sure about AMD) easy, a single click will switch you from the nouveau (rather poor open source drivers) to nvidia's latest proprietary drivers, in the Software and Updates menu.

Out of the box, Ubuntu is set to handle it's updates semi-automatically (prompting you for permission). It's install process is a breeze compared to some distros, not being a several step process, but simply a boot-from-disk, follow instructions, process (pre-UEFI, it was arguably even simpler; openSuse also has this advantage). If you only have experience with Windows, Ubuntu is the place to go. If you want something that's similar enough to Windows' interface, but has it's own Linux-isms, I'd say your best bets are KDE (and relatedly, Kubuntu, which is Ubuntu with KDE out of the box). Some other people would recommend Cinnamon or MATE, which both have their own versions as well.

But if you want the Ubuntu experience, GNOME is bulky and sometimes annoying, but very charming. It's certainly better than Unity, which was the previous DE, that had a charming interface, but even more bulk than GNOME. I hope whatever you pick, you come to love (or at least not dislike) Linux. If you find that too much of your software doesn't have a Linux version, make sure to give Wine a go. It's not perfect, but it's nearly so for a lot of modern apps. Valve's equivalent to Wine (Proton) is even more effective, especially for games.

(As a side note, after several years of distro hopping on a secondary computer, my daily drivers changed to Arch earlier this year, which is lovely, but very involved.)