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RedHat here in the late 90s, back when you could still find yourself writing a "modeline."
Then Debian in the early 00s when apt was still a major discriminator. Finally, Ubuntu around 2008 just so I was running the same thing I was recommending to family members for ease of use. (At the time, Ubuntu sported the same ease of installation and hardware detection I'd found with Knoppix.)
Now on Xubuntu, but seriously eyeing a return to Debian.
RedHat in the mid-late 90s here too. It wasn't a great time for the linux desktop haha. I think I used afterstep or windowmaker back then. RPM hell was bad and hosed my system enough that Debian was like a savior with apt-get. Never really looked back from debian based systems since.
I forgot about Knoppix.
Slackware, 1996. I had a hand-me-down 486 that didn't have a CD-ROM drive. It was cheaper for me to sit in a Uni computer lab with a case of 3.5" floppies, than it was to buy a drive. Slackware got me through my systems programming course at the time without me having to find time to get to the Unix lab (only open during regular classroom hours) or Telnet in (yes, really.) I was living on campus and the dorms only had time-limited dialup.
I did my first distribution download via the modem pool at the University where I worked. Next time I used my head and just brought a stack of floppies in with me and set one of the SunOS boxes running a script writing disks. It would write one, eject it, then beep to tell me to feed it the next disk.
It wasn't long after that that I replaced the main server in the research lab (a Microvax II) with a 486 running Redhat.
Ubuntu 5.04.
18 years of continuous linux desktop usage, with various distros.
My brain did the math before I could stop myself.
~30 years. Now I feel old.
Jk, I always feel old.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm almost to 30 myself. Started in 1994. If it weren't for those dang kids I wouldn't feel so old :)
Better old than foolish, that's what I say. Kids these days…
As a kid in 1998, I installed Slackware to one of the two family computers. My parents were less proud than you might possibly think.
That's crazy. If one of my kids installed any Linux distribution on a computer, I'd be proud as hell.
Ubuntu 10.10 on a school issued dell latitude d505 with a core 2 duo, windows xp and 512mb of ram. I ran it in virtualbox. I will give one guess on just how well it worked
Mandrake Linux 6.5. At the time I was drawn to it because they had a version that worked with the sims game.
Slackware I'm pretty sure back in 1993. I remember compiling my own kernels that took hours. Those were the days.
Yup I remember downloading Slack on the college network in the early 90's. Good times.
OpenBSD on the Amiga in 95-96 or so.
My first distro was Manjaro. It was really cool, but also I remember having some trouble getting things to work on it without super extensive troubleshooting.
Linux Mint 20. I got my first computer and was choosing an operating system. I didn't even understand differences between Windows and GNU+Linux, but it was faster, UI was consistent, and the community was actually supportive. Most issues I had were already solved so I could find solutions online easily. r/linuxmint also led me to creating a Reddit account xD
Meanwhile support for Windows looked like: Turn it off and on again, run sfc /scannow, dism, chkdsk, you may need to reinstall Windows.
So I went with Mint.
Funny, but at first when I didn't know about "Distributions" I was searching for just pure Linux. Poor old me didn't know I was accidentally searching for the kernel.
Welp, the laptop broke after 2 months (hardware), but it was old. I definitely don't miss that Athlon 64.
Fedora Core 6. That didn't go so well, so I installed Ubuntu 7.04 and I was hooked.
Suse Linux 5.0 in 1998.
Mandrake 8.1 back in 2002.
It was around 2001 and I started by dual booting Windows with Red Hat, don't remember which version. Eventually I dropped Windows and dropped the dual boot and switched from Red Hat to Ubuntu.
Slackware and then SuSE 7.2, I think it was.
Red Hat Linux 6.2. I, too, got it out of a book, but I don't remember which one.
Ubuntu when I was a child, maybe version 6, and my uncle choose their PC with Linux over Windows. I didn't understand it very well, and everything needed commands: move, copy, extract, change name of files... I remember commands like echo, sudo and tar since then.
My first distro with Linux as daily use was Linux Mint 20.
Slackware here, and I still use it! Tried several alternatives but I just keep going back.
Slackware 3.0, so must have been late 1995 to early/mid 1996. It was included with the book Linux Unleashed, I believe.
I recall having to rebuild the kernel to get sound drivers working (voxware, if I recall). I can't remember if they were included with the kernel, or if I had to patch it. I followed the directions in the book, presumably including updating LILO, and it actually worked. I think that if I broke the kernel, there's a good chance I'd've given up on Linux at that point, so good thing it worked first try!
I didn't know about Linux until I was in my late teens, and even then didn't care because I was a "Gamer" (ugh). My first disto was Ubuntu. I have used many distros but like debain the most.
My first I used was Slackware back in 2002 on a 486 with a 250MB disk. Wasn't easy when you have to compile half the software and there's basically nor enough room for the build environment. This was on a small test and development PC I used whilst at uni.
When I went all in on my desktop and waved Windows goodbye I used Ubuntu as that's what I'd had good experience with on my headless VMs.
Now running EndeavourOS and love it.
I just flashed back to running my first Linux box and struggling to get X Windows working with a miniscule amount of RAM and a swap partition.
I'm thinking I had 1 MB RAM on that machine. I can't wrap my head around that. It just seems impossible. I do remember my wife bought me 16MB RAM as an anniversary present after that, and I was excited by how much easier everything was with so much memory.
I think the 16MB was around $1000.00 at the time.
Debian 3.0 for me in 96. I used the boot floppies version as my PC didn't have a CD-ROM in it. I think there was like 20-something floppies.
I also still have my CDs from that era for Slackware and Redhat 5.0 somewhere...
Ubuntu around 2006-2007, not sure the exact one I used.
My first was Yggdrasil, quickly replaced by SLS. It was on a 368dx with 16mb of ram. I tried pretty much every distro that came out in the 90's. I don't remember the name, but there was one that ran entirely from floppy like a live-cd.
RedHat was the one that stuck for me. Every time I tried another distro, something about it just wouldn't work or rubbed me the wrong way and I would go back to RedHat. Boy was it fun though!
I'm kind of stuck with Redhat (or CentOS, or now Rocky or something) because I support them at work, and work is standardized on Redhat.
I've got an Ubuntu box at home, and my main personal PC at home runs Fedora.
It's funny, this post has me thinking about what made me stick with RedHat/Fedora. Debian was great, but for some reason I just felt like there was a level of friction that I didn't have with RedHat. I want to say that it was related to setting up X, but I could be wrong. There are so many great distros out there, but I am so accustomed to the RedHat/Fedora "feel" that I can't move to anything else at this point. At this point, I've been pretty much RH/F for over two decades, rapidly approaching three.
At my old job I set up a couple of Debian servers, but used Fedora on my workstation/laptops. My new job is all Windows.
Ubuntu 8.10, in 2009, after Windows Vista died on my laptop. I'd vaguely heard about Ubuntu and thought I would give it a try, not even realizing it was Linux until I was learning how to use it. I've used Ubuntu, Fedora, Sabayon Linux and OpenSUSE for significant lengths of time and I'm currently running KDE Neon.
For me it was an old version of red hat. Back when our internet connection got upgraded from dial-up to cable. I wanted to have access in my own room, so started figuring out how to setup a router. This was with ipfwadm, so in the kernel 2.0 day in the mid to late 90's
Red Hat 6.2 - Got it on 2 CDs that came with the 1999 version of Red Hat Linux for Dummies.
Slackware, installed with floppies on a 486.I tried debian red hat suse coral linux but always came back to Slackware.There was a bunch more, that I cant remember the names of, one I do remember was Stampede linux, Daniel Robbins put it out, he then dumped it and made Gentoo, I used Gentoo for a year or so, on an original AMD Athlon, it was night and day different from un optimised Slackware. I saw an announcement for a new distro on the gentoo forums for Arch, 686 optimisations, no need to compile!. I installed that and used it for about 9 years. I got sick of all the breakages, the systemd adoption drama, briefly went back to Gentoo( or Funtoo, actually), then discovered Void. I have been using Void since 2010, I also use Openbsd, reminds me of the 'old days' of linux before the tech bros and corporations.
RedHat Linux, Straight outta magazine. Bought the boxed version shortly thereafter. hmm i wonder if i still have the box???
Ubuntu 09.04.. on my highschool days. :)
I'm still remember that I ends up quitting right away because I have no internet on my house to install codecs and other necessary software, thus made the ubuntu installation useless. lol
I attempted Slackware but was completely lost at the time. So my first active distribution (I think) was Linux Mint 9 (I think). Back then I multi partitioned like 8 different Linux distributions at a time. It was like I was at the candy shop.
Mandrake Linux 6.5. At the time I was drawn to it because they had a version that worked with the sims game.
ubuntu around 2003
SLS in ‘94
Redhat installed from 3.5" floppies. Don't remember what year it was.
Debian Sarge, now I'm in arch and been here since 2015, this install has seen 4 new machines lol
As a daily driver, Manjaro. It was a lot more stable than people would have you believe.
When I was still dual-booting with Windows, I used Ubuntu Server 14.04 for university stuff - I SSH'd into my home PC for programming classes. Needless to say, I was the stereotypical Linux dickhead (and didn't even use Arch at the time, btw).
Linux Mint in like 2018. Now i use Debian.