I’m new to #Lemmy and making myself feel at home by posting a bit!
My first Linux distribution was elementary OS in early March 2020. Since then, I’ve tried Manjaro, Arch Linux, Fedora, went back to Manjaro, and since early January 2023, I’ve landed on Debian as my home in the #Linux world.
What was your first Linux distro?
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Some ancient version of SuSE Linux way back in like 2001. I did not stick with it back then.
The first one I saw was Debian 3.1 (Sarge). I was in school and our objective this time was installing debian + getting a working Xorg session. Never heard of Linux before, didn’t get a working Xorg session, but wow man, there’s something other than Windows and MacOS. I couldn’t have imagined.
The first one I actually used on a desktop (laptop for school, in that case) was Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake).
I’ve tried oh so many different linux distributions over the years, I probably forgot most of them. Maybe some don’t even exist anymore. My goal was always Arch Linux, having seen it on a schoolmates laptop. I really fell for the “here’s a pretty minimum base, do whatever” thing.
In the end, I exclusively used Arch from 2020 until this year. Actually using Arch and reading the ArchWiki were probably what taught me most of what I know about linux in general and how things work.
I’ve been searching for a less DIY-solution which is still up-to-date (especially with kernels and mesa) and I landed on Fedora Workstation, which is what I’m currently using on my work latpop and desktop at home. I do miss some things from Arch, but Fedora has been pretty good to me and I, for the meantime, intend to stay here.
Fedora is a pretty damn solid distro, I like it a lot
Yes it is. Though after using arch for a few years, I miss the abundance of packages.
If a package wasn’t in the official arch repos, it was probably in the AUR. If you use arch, you don’t need other package managers like homebrew on linux.
Mine was slackware in I think 1997?
Beat you by couple years but that was mine too. My next were redhat which seemed to not be very good at the time other than a nice installer. After that suse for year until I switched to irix to finish the 90’s. Back to suse in the 2000’s, bsd in 2010s, and Mac now. What was your patch from Slackware?
Way back: Ubuntu live CD. More recent history: Pop!_OS > Zorin OS > Fedora.
Happily been running Fedora for like 2 years now.
Ubuntu, like a lot of people my age (2000s)
It’s crazy how much Canonical has trashed their reputation.
I still respect the work they did back in the day but I have negative respect for Canonical and Shuttlesworth (sp?) today
Chrome OS, obviously. jk
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.
I started with Lubuntu, because of Minecraft. My PC was so slow that even Minecraft had improved performance, compared to it running on Win 10.
OpenSuse with compiz going hard on an old laptop
Ubuntu 8.10 in late 2008. while I didn’t use Linux for that long due to a lack of understanding I did come back to it in in a few years to check out I think Ubuntu 10.04 in 2010 or and then Fedora 36 a few years ago and never plan to leave
I used slackware, btw
Oh yeah well I still boot Bell Labs Unix that I load off of punch cards
^^^That’s ^^^awesome ^^^that ^^^you ^^^used ^^^Slackware, ^^^I’m ^^^just ^^^joking
Slackware was the shit in the 90’s. I bounced around slack, Debian, and a bunch of other floppy based distros. My first install was onto my Amiga, before I got a new pc. Good times
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.
It started with Red Hat 6.1 in 1999 and ended up with NixOS.
Ubuntu - > Mint - > Manjaro - > EndeavourOS - > Nobara - > Arch
Those are the main ones, I’ve tried others too but all of those were my daily for a while
The first was about 1995-ish Redhat on school computers, after that was Suse on a 2000s laptop, and currently Mint+Mx on a self-built pc. Hardware support and ease of use has come a long way since then.
Probably Knoppix on some Laptop my dad brought home at around 2001-2002. Still remember tinkering with it and having no idea what I am doing haha. Good times.
