Open Suse in the mid 2000s.

SuSe Linux in the early 2000s. Came on a couple of CD-ROMs. We used it to run JBoss servers at work, alongside various Unix flavours. But my first experience with Unix was in the late eighties at university. Been using Mint as my daily driver for about two years now and I'm never going back.

I started with Ubuntu, but since I was a kid at the time, wifi not working scared me away as I only ever knew of "everything works out of the box". After 2 years, I took a shot at linux again and I gotta say that it was mint that helped me build enough confidence in fixing any issues myself and to try other harder distros like arch. Now after all the exploring/distro hopping, I have settled down on opensuse as a daily driver, but mint will always be one of my favorites, and will always recommend it to any newbie.

For me, it was Mandrake, I think it was back around 2000. I played so much Tux Racer on that machine. However, after they switched the branding to Mandriva, the OS started to run pretty poorly for me around that time. I stayed away from Linux entirely until around 10 years ago when I friend introduced me to Mint. It's been my main ever since, though I've played with others since then, like OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, and most recently, Debian and EndeavourOS.

Kubuntu

Ubuntu Breezy (5.10)

SLS (Soft Landing System) then Slackware. 30+ years and still enjoying the Linux ride...

Elementary OS Freya. I love a good GUI

Mandrake. After that it gets hazy, but Mandrake was first.

I don't remember the year or the version because it has been so long (2003 maybe). It was Ubuntu from the free mail order CDs they used to give away. I remember waiting something like three months for it to arrive.

I think Puppy or Damn Small Linux, maybe knoppix, i was on dial up at the time. Then I found that I could request a free Ubuntu install disk and the speed and cleanliness and compiz effects blew my mind. 04 or 06, can't remember which. From there I think it was xubuntu, mint, arch, arch nvme died and I needed an os immediately so manjaro, got sick of manjaro and garuda sounded neat so i tried it and that's where I am now on my main. Made a mess toying with wayland and am ready to reinstall, probably back to arch or try out nixos

edit: reading through all these comments is bringing back so many memories of other distros I played with back then.

Knoppix, followed by Mandrake, Ubuntu, etc.

Linux Mint was the only one that I installed and used unironically followed by Kubuntu.

I'm a simpleton, I just want my OS to work.

I think I went Mint - MX Linux - Opensuse tumbleweed which is where I have stayed for the last year and loving it

Epic trolled by my friend, my first was Gentoo

Redhat 5.2 in 1998. I think I bought a box set from CompUSA.

Day 1 was some awesome crazy dude on IRC teaching me how to compile the kernel from source, what options to choose, and then installing Slackware.

Kubuntu 8.04 was my first, with the KDE 4 demo, it was pretty as fuck compared to Windows XP that came with that PC

Knoppix

Arch

knoppix, then slax, then slackware, then.... Ubuntu 4.10

Ubuntu

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS

Some form of Novell-era Suse Linux when I was in college… 20 years ago. I didn’t get it back then. Mint is my daily driver today.

Ubuntu -> Mandriva -> Zorin -> Ubuntu -> Debian

Pardus in 2007

FreeBSD 3.3

Debian with kde, because it looked a bit like Windows.

Then slackware because it was supposedly a "simple" Linux distro. Apparently simple doesn't mean simple to use for a newbie...

My first distro was Ubuntu 8.04, but my first experience with Linux was Damn Small Linux.

Funny enough, Damn Small Linux just had an update after all these years.

Ubuntu -> Linux Mint -> Pop!_OS -> MX linux -> EndeavourOS

Ubuntu -> Xubuntu -> Linux Mint XFCE

Mandrake 8.2

I have fond memories of it, as it weaned me off Windows.

Edit: Actually, Knoppix was my first foray into Linux, but Mandrake was the first Linux distro that I actually installed.

Conectiva Linux. Don’t remember the version, bought a CD together with a manual a news stand.

Suse

My first distro was Xubuntu. It was 2014-15. I was still in high school. My pc was getting old, and I read online that Linux can make your pc run faster. Since it wasn't my gaming machine, I decided to give it a try. I also read online that Xubuntu is among the lightest of distros, so decided to install that. It really was a night and day difference in performance.

I've switched distros a few times (Xubuntu -> Ubuntu Gnome -> Manjaro KDE -> EndeavourOS KDE, also run AlmaLinux on a few headless server machines) since then, but never went back to Windows ever again.