Your First Experience

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

I thought this would be an interested topic for here.

I started using computers when I was 10 years old (24 now) which was with Windows 95 I believe. I of course used each version of windows up till Windows 8. I used 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7. Once Windows 8 came around it was time to leave for good. Throughout the years I tried Linux many times, not sure why it interested me, but it did, and still does.

I am not really sure how old I was when I first tried it, but I know it was one of the first versions (or at least a very old version) of Red Hat Linux. Of course, that didn't last long, I was quite used to Windows. Then over the rest of the years up till now I tried Ubuntu, Mint, PCLInux and a few others. I now finally landed on Ubuntu as my main system, and plan to stay with it from now on.

So my first experience was Red Hat Linux around the age of 12 years old. How about your guys experiences?

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

I think my first Linux distro was Debian.

Right now, I'm starting to shy away from Ubuntu that I use day to day.

Prepare for trolling...

[firey]

Hmm, I think my first ever experience was with Mandrake. I would have been 11 or 12. I remember looking for longhorn leaks, and the website I found them on also had a Mandrake support section. So I checked it out, and tried it but the internet wouldn't work on it. After that I tried various distros and broke them all.

Currently Arch is my go-to Linux that I have running on a plethora of virtual machines (and primary on my PI) at home and work.

[airedwin]

freebsd

[ZakO]

In 1998 when I was 11-12 I used various linux distributions as my primary OS over a period of two years (Mandrake 5-7, Red Hat 5, Slackware 3, SuSE 6, Debian 2) but then went back to Windows.

I now dual boot Windows 8 & Ubuntu 12.10 on my desktop (OSX on laptop) but rarely boot Ubuntu, the OS itself is great, but I always find myself missing decent software.

[f0rk_b0mb]

Open SuSe here.

[Klownicle]

Redhat back in the day :-/

[tim_s]

My first OS was Dos

1: Slackware

2: Debian

3: Redhat

(Windows for awhile)

4: Fedora Core

(Windows for awhile)

5: Ubuntu

6: Centos

7: Fedora Core

8: Gentoo

9: Arch

10: FreeBSD

11: Arch

12: Gentoo

13: Source Mage

14: Gentoo - Here I am today.

[remixedcat]

first linux exp. was on a server.

[medhunter]

Hmm, I think my first ever experience was with Mandrake. I would have been 11 or 12. I remember looking for longhorn leaks, and the website I found them on also had a Mandrake support section. So I checked it out, and tried it but the internet wouldn't work on it. After that I tried various distros and broke them all.

Currently Arch is my go-to Linux that I have running on a plethora of virtual machines (and primary on my PI) at home and work.

Same here also mandrake and Redhat 6 as I can recall @ the same time around 2000.

I got out after I played with them with my cousin and let him sink into it.

Then came back to Ubuntu, Sabily, Mageia and Mint, and sticking to unity and sometimes KDE (Dual Setup).

[Brandon H Supervisor]

my first experience with Linux was Ubuntu. i believe it was either 7.10 or 8.04

[redvamp128]

For me it would have been : Mandrake Linux 5.1 (it was actually on a cd that was in a magazine) then Switched to Red Hat 5.1 ...- 8.0 then Ubuntu 5.04... now on 12.04 .

Also have ran Puppy Linux, DSL, Slackware.

[Syanide]

I bought a (pirated, ironically) Red Hat 6 CD back in 2000, but it had a physical defect and I could never get it to run. Used only GeexBox a couple of times right up until Ubuntu 8.10, which was the first time I properly got to use Linux. It's been fun ever since, even though because of work and Adobe's programs I'm using Windows to run my stuff nowadays.

[medhunter]

oh, nostalgia

[neo158]

Even though I use Windows on a daily basis I still use Linux occasionally, my first distro was Ubuntu 6.04 I think.

I'm trying to get Ubuntu 12.04 running in Hyper-V, not an easy task because it runs but networking doesn't work.

[insanelyapple]

Caldera Open Linux 3.1 along with Mandrake 8.2, BeOS in 2002, then various distros (also some BSDs) included with linux magazines prior to 2007 when ive found Ubuntu and ordered 7.10. Last july for first time, Ubuntu was present as main and only one OS on my pc. Now im testing everything in Virtualbox.

[Max Norris]

Have been messing with Unix since I was a kid, started with Microsoft Xenix. Think my first foray into Linux itself was with Red Hat and later Mandrake if I remember right. Nowadays for me it's FreeBSD and Ubuntu Server LTS for some servers, Windows on the desktops, occasional dabbling with Arch to experiment with the latest builds of the various desktops and such.

[+Gary7 Subscriber²]

My First experience with Linux was with PClinuxOS around 2000. I sort of liked it at the time .

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

I bought a (pirated, ironically) Red Hat 6 CD back in 2000, but it had a physical defect and I could never get it to run. Used only GeexBox a couple of times right up until Ubuntu 8.10, which was the first time I properly got to use Linux. It's been fun ever since, even though because of work and Adobe's programs I'm using Windows to run my stuff nowadays.

I thought Adobe's software ran pretty good under Wine? Never thought of doing that?

[Syanide]

I thought Adobe's software ran pretty good under Wine? Never thought of doing that?

Photoshop can be run somewhat successfully, depending on the version, but I mainly work in Illustrator and it doesn't work with Wine. I used to run it via VirtualBox, but that severely affects performance so I had to go back to Windows. Plus I'm about to dip my toes into editing with After Effects where stability and performance are crucial.

[Shadrack]

I actually met her at Church Camp in high school. She was a beautiful brunet and lived in the next town over from me. A bit of a trouble maker, but that made her a lot of fun. She came into town to visit me and one thing lead to another... oh wait, this is the Linux forum.

Shoot...let me think. That was a long time ago. I think I was around 12 or 13 and this was back in the 386 days where one of the steps for installation was compiling a kernel to support your hardware. That thing took the whole damn night to compile.

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

I played with a few Live CDs in the mid-2000s before I went to university. When I got to university I installed Fedora 4 (I think) and dual booted for a while. When I tried to update to Fedora 5 in early 2006 the installer broke and kindly corrupted my partition tables. Fortunately all my pending assignments were backed up, but I lost a fair bit of information and notes. Was not happy. I dumped Linux after that and went back to XP exclusively.

Fast forward to late 2008 and I opted to install Ubuntu to allow me to do some of my Linux assignments at home. This didn't last long since newbie programmer me couldn't get code to work on Ubuntu and Redhat (which is what the university used).

In 2010-ish, I chose to install Arch as a learning exercise (and something of a precursor to my current job which entails mostly Linux development now), and have had it installed ever since. I have a 1TB drive for my Linux stuff, and a 500GB disk for Windows (which mainly just contains my games). I use Linux mainly now, and boot into Windows basically just for a bit of fun.

[Growled Member]

I think my first was Mandrake 9 or so. I had to compile the driver for my winmodem to get on the Internet. It was quite an experience for a first timer.

[Hum]

I tried Lindows/Linspire 5 on a laptop -- does that count ... ? :p

[simonlang]

my first linux experience was arround 2000 when i installed suse linux 5.x something ... actually i was pretty impressed that it installed without any trouble and - due to the lack of an internet connection - i used the integrated package manager to install some things. i kept it for 1 or 2 days then went back to windows because of gaming.

stayed with windows till 2009 when i decided to try ubuntu - i was so impressed (and my needs had changed, had an xbox360 for gaming) that i stayed with linux and never went back to windows ever since.