Linux

@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!

Slackware back in '96 when It was the only option. Then tried everything else before settling on Mint and never having to worry about picking another distribution again.

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

Gentoo, sometime in the early 00's

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

Slackware in the early mid-nineties. But of course there was other Unix variants before that. And what was it called, OS/2 or something like that?

Mandriva. Yes, old and no longer exist. Forst distro i started to to use permantly on desktop is Fedora. The server has always been Ubuntu since the Mandriva time when I first learned about Linux. I think 2005. CS server etc. Desktop was 2024 when MS screwed up Windows too much

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

My first Linux install was Slackware sometime in the late 90's. I didn't really use it though, as I never managed to get it working with my dial-up Internet. Stupid winmodems.

The first distribution I actually used was Mandrake. Others I've used since then include Suse, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Manjaro, and EndeavourOS. I've landed on using Manjaro on both my main desktop and laptop, though I have secondary machines running Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, and EndeavourOS.

Debian 💖

Red Hat, way back in the 90s - must have been 5.0 IIRC.

Since then I went through Ubuntu and now landed on Fedora.

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

Happily been running Fedora for like 2 years now.

Ubuntu at the start of my college years, dabbled with Arch in the senior year. Huge learning experience, but ultimately I went back to Windows because gaming support was nonexistent at the time. Kept the dual boot up and kept it running Arch during the day for coursework, Windows when I was all done.

For the past decade since then I was entirely back on Windows. Aside from an Ubuntu VM for my last job, I didn't really get back into it until the Steam Deck launched a few years ago, and at the start of this year I decided to set up a dual boot again once I got a new full new desktop build. Tried Bazzite, really didn't like how restricted I felt, immediately wiped it and tried out CachyOS instead, and that's my daily driver today.

And just this past week I finally decided got into selfhosting, something I've been eyeballing for ages but never really got around to. Proxmox on the host, Debian VM, pretty standard and works amazingly.

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

Ubuntu, before Unity and eventually Gnome desktop 🫢

OpenSuSE that came with the Linux magazine

Some random shitty distribution for netbooks.

Then Ubuntu 11.04 and I have very fond memories of it. But now Ubuntu sucks.

Using Debian 13 with KDE currently.

Redhat.

Stuck with redhat on the server, had another server with Gentoo, and then Mepis and Debian for desktop.

Now days its arch and fedora.

Debian 🥔

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

I'm loving opensuse rn though!

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

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

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.

Ubuntu, the release right before unity was the one I started actually using.

After that I switched to arch for a very long time, and now i'm on nixos.

I inherited a Sony Vaio in 2009 which was really slow with windows, but unsurprisingly was ok once I swapped that out for Ubuntu 9.04. Took me a while to get the brightness up as the buttons didn't respond, but I kept that machine running for 7 years, the HDD controller died in the end so it stopped detecting any HDD.

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

My first was Ubuntu in a VM because everyone recommended it, I distro hopped in VMs until I just ended up using Mint in a VM almost exclusively. It was when I complained to someone about the issues with the VM when locking the laptop and they asked me “Why not just run that system as-is?” that I installed it for real.

I've also used Manjaro for half a year, a very minimal Arch+i3 install (without the install script because I wanted the “real experience”) for about 1.5 year, and dual booted Bazzite and Mint on my gaming PC for a year (it's just Mint now), all the while trying out other distros big and small on older hardware or in VMs.

I don't feel I've found “the one”, but somehow I keep coming back to Mint... Although, perhaps NixOS is it... Who knows?

Andromeda Linux around 2009. It had cool astronomy based theme and animation.

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

I am not a computer unfortunately, only a ungabunga caveman

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.

Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

Currently, I use Arch BTW.

I guess Ubuntu when I tried to make a minecraft server a couple of years ago. I first started actually using Linux as my desktop with bazzite.

Ubuntu back in the Gnome 2 days.

Red Hat, back when that was a distro. It was a long time ago now and my toying with it didn't last long; and began an obsession with hardware RAID…