Linux

Deepin in 2019 or so. Yeah don't ask...

I played a bit with Suse around 2000, but I switched to Linux as my main OS with Ubuntu in 2005.
Now I use Manjaro, because I like the rolling release concept, and it's easy to use different kernels, and it's a good KDE distro IMO.
In my experience it's also among the best for Steam games.

Installed Ubuntu back at 2012 on my Surface. Since then, I’ve hopped to CentOS, OpenSUSE, and Fedora. For now I’ve settled on Arch Linux!

It was DSLinux, Linux for the Nintendo DS. I tried it while hacking with the DS just to try that "Linux" everyone was talking about. I installed Ubuntu on my PC short after it.

Ubuntu 6.06 I always come back to Arch now-a-days.

Yellow Dog Linux ~2004 or so

Ubuntu sometime around 2010. It definitely wasn't what I was looking for so I didn't try another distro until 3 years ago. Linux Mint's working well for me but I'm curious about Bazzite.

Yggdrasil in 1998 or so.

Slackware in 1996(?), then SuSE when they came up.
I then tried a bit every once in a while, but really never got fully comfortable with it on a desktop.
A few weeks ago I bought a new Desktop PC, which is now running with the Arch-fork #endeavouros and I really love it.

@midtsveen

Mandrake -> Whatever came on the Linux Magazine CD -> Backtrack -> Arch

Red Hat Linux, about 2002 from a CD I got from somewhere.

Lycoris in 2002. It sucked. I think I tried it because it was pushed towards newbies. I tried Mandrake with KDE not long after and that is when I really became a Linux fan.

Turbo Linux in the late 90s. It didn't go well.

Later I gave Redhat a shot - 5.0 or 5.1, I forget. Stayed with RH and now Fedora.

CentOS

Ubunutu for a server in ~2019.

Arch for my workstation Jan 2025

My first Linux was Gentoo. It took several tries to get code compiled and working on that Pentium 4, but I will say, the process taught me a lot about Linux in general. It was the ultimate crash course. I’d recommend Gentoo for all beginners who don’t mind digging in to the point of frustration, because it’s a great learning experience.

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 :‐/

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.

genderfluid fetch spotted!!!! also im not sure which was first but i use arch and openbsd ;3

Red Hat 7

For a long time, I thought it was Fedora Core 4. I did use that, but I recently found my old burned CDs of Mandrake 8.1. That really took me back. I might install it on a VM for some nostalgia.

Red Hat 9 in 2004

Windows vista.

Manjaro. It broke a few times. Then I used plain arch ca 2 years without anything breaking. (Their was no guided installer yet)

The last 2 years I have been happy with opensuse Tumbleweed. Of course I have experiment a bunch of others too. Including running distros on servers.

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 6 on a Samsung laptop I had lying around 2006ish. The webcam and trackpad wouldn't work, but a mouse and not caring about the webcam made that tolerable. It was the only OS I ran for a year or so. I went back to Windows for gaming shortly afterwards, but have been using Linux off-and-on in some form ever since.

Casual Deck owner here. Arch Linux is my answer.

Arch, btw

It was the distro that my friend uses all the time, and I've had to use his laptop on occasion so I'm somewhat familiar with the distro, enough so that I've installed it on persistent USBs before and already chosen it as my next OS after Windows (I would switch now, but I rode Windows 7 till the end date, so I figured I'd ride out 10 until the final day this October)

Also! Gender fluid hello!! It made me so insanely happy to see that flag in the Linux terminal, I feel so seen!! It feels like trans girls hog all the Linux spotlight this side of the fediverse, I'm happy for them! But I still don't feel like I have a proper community where I belong, especially since I stay off of all other mainstream social media >.<

So seeing another enby, another gender fluid especially, for the literal first time since I made my lemmy account just makes me so ecstatic!! We're so rare x3

Anyways, thank u for existing and simply posting this, seeing another makes me feel seen and I can't really express enough how unreasonably happy something so small just made me c:

Thank you! And I should sleep so good night also lol

First:

• Server: Debian
• Desktop: Debian
• Desktop daily driver: Ubuntu

Kurumin, a brazilian offshoot of Knoppix, sometime in early 2007 I think. The distro has been discontinued back in 2008. I was completely amazed that the whole OS would boot and work straight out of the CD, without needing to install anything.

That I played with on an old Pentium II rig? The now-defunct Crunchbang (Bunsen Labs is that distro's successor).

That I actually used as a daily driver? Ubuntu 12.10.

I've been daily-driving Linux for well over a decade at this point and have pretty much settled on Arch now after multiple distro-hops in that timespan.

My parents had some of the ancient ubuntu (or ubuntu based?) distros that they let me play with, I myself tried Manjaro in 2017 for a month (very scuffed back then), and then full Arch Linux since March or Apr 2021

Haven't bothered switching since, but if I did, I'm lightly curious on the NixOS hype. Why yes, I just installed Arch Linux for the archbtw, but also it feels like it just works for me at this point (yknow, till the next fuckup akin to the grub2 fiasco)

OpenSuse 5, I think it was called suse Linux back then.

My first distro was Debian, probably back around 2008. I used that and Ubuntu for years without having even looked at a desktop environment. For me, Linux was a server OS and I had to teach myself how to use it to spin up Teamspeak/Mumble, webservers, VPNs, etc.

I first started using Linux as a desktop OS in 2016. Tried SUSE and Fedora, but really liked Manjaro and eventually gravitated to Arch. I tried out NixOS a year or so ago and liked it, but I still go back to Arch with KDE Plasma.