What Was Your First Linux Distro?
 

While we run an annual set of polls called the Members Choice Awards, I thought it might be fun to run some semi-official polls periodically throughout the year. Unlike the MCA's these polls will have no set end date and you can see the results real-time. First up, what was your first Linux distribution? Feel free to post, but do make sure to vote as well. If you'd like a distribution added, let us know (although do keep in mind it's simply not possible to include every distribution). If you have any suggestions for a future poll, feel free to post in this LQS&F thread.

--jeremy

Slackware 3.0 (1995)

Mine was Shoestring, a port of Red Hat to the Motorola 68000 architecture. That was on a Q60 with the M68060, when the Mac was only using the 68040!

I tried red hat. It wouldnt see terminals on the serial port. Got a bunch of versions on cd and tried. Slack ware was awesome. 8 terminals on rs232, ip terminals, local terms all worked. Ran a web and file server for over 5 years on it. only rebooted 3 times when had to move machine. Windows requires a daily reboot.

Mine was Slackware from the 90's. First distro as a real linux user was Redhat pre-Fedora. Had to install RH7 on the computers in a lab at the two year college where I used to work. Install was via lilo with RH7 and Messywindows. Made a basic image and then ghosted the lab. Had to rerun lilo on odd sized drives.

Lindows, Inc. transferred the Lindows trademark to Microsoft and changed its name to Linspire, Inc. The first Linux distro I ran here was Linspire, back in 2005. Came "pre-installed" on a cheap notebook from Walmart. Debian-based.

My first distro was Caldera OpenLinux 2.3. Caldera later morphed into SCO.

The first distro I tried was Knoppix live cd back around 2005. I was blown away by how advanced something that booted from a cd and ran in ram alone could be and I really loved the Kde desktop. I never tried to install it and don't think there was even that option at the time. I voted for PcLinux because it was the first I installed in early 2007 and used exclusively everyday. I found it on a website I believe was called the "live cd list". I can say it was the most flawless distro I ever used until the switch to Kde4 then not so much. I still use Pclinux as my anchor system on my multiboot system but mostly run Slackware currently.

SLS - 45 floppy disks downloaded using a 2400 baud modem over a weekend. 8-)

Got the first install CD of SuSE Linux 7.3 from a magazine, shortly after that 8.0 was released, I bought the professional version, with 7 CDs, 1 DVD and a nice handbook. Sadly, I don't have that package anymore.

I intentionally answered a slightly different question than you asked. I answered "Mepis", which was the first Linux distribution in which I successfully used a Linux computer as a tool for getting other things done, rather than just as a means of learning Linux.

I had used Linux several years before, even successfully modified device drivers, but I never got to the point that Linux was effective as a means of doing other things. Before I found Mepis for my home use, I also used Linux many times at work (with lots of on site help from a Linux expert) to port code AFTER developing that code very portably on Windows. Then I tried many Linux distributions at home, in some cases getting them semi usable.

But Linux as a tool for Linux centric goals has always seemed lame to me. An OS should be easy enough to use, that you are thinking about whatever you are using the computer for and rarely thinking about the OS itself. I reached that point quickly with Mepis, after never really getting there with any other distribution.

I chose Fedora Core 4 even tho my first distro was Linspire, because Linspire didn't work and I kept it for less than 24 hours.

Slackware 7.1 CD bought from the local bookstore.

You forgot

MinGW and CygWin
i used those before installing Fedora 4

My first was a retail boxed version of Red Hat Linux from the late '90s, I think it was version 6.0.

The post by johnsfine above strikes a chord with me because Mepis was the first distro I successfully installed on my own, and the first distro I really used a lot for more than just feeling my way around Linux (although I'm still actually feeling my way around Linux, a lot of the time!). But after running Linspire, I tried a few Knoppix live disks before I found out about Mepis.

It was a long ago version of Red Hat... don't remember the exact version, though. This was way before they started releasing the enterprise vesion.

I tried Ubuntu for the first time in 2009 which I no longer use. Now, I use Fedora and Debian.

I believe it was Red Hat Linux 6.0 "Hedwig" back in 1999. Bought it with book included, at a brick-and-mortar software store. This was the pre-RHEL, pre-Fedora days.

My first distro was Yggdrasil (seem to be the only one so far), but the oldest physical disk I could still find laying around is attached.

--jeremy

Libranet.

Slackware in March 1994

Markus

My first ever installed version of linux was Turbolinux, around 1996-1997 then i did some real work installs with redhat 6 in 1999 and so on... now at home i use mint 15 x64 and Mageia. Two solid distros.

Slackware 10.0 (the last release that included Gnome), in late 2004.

Somebody gave me a disk with Ubuntu on it about 2007. I stayed with Ubuntu until Unity and then I moved to Linux Mint which I like very much. I am now running Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon which I think is brilliant :)

Slink! Installed with the help of a local wizard, 2 (3?) floppies and a 10 Mb/s ethernet from a pcmcia card.

Mine was RedHat version 7 purchased from a local newsagency. It would install but never worked. I tried others (Mandrake) after that and they would install but never worked properly. I then come across Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) and everything except the wireless worked out of the box. I researched the wireless issue and installed ndiswrapper and I've been using Linux ever since. Now on Debian but had a brief foray into Linux Mint.

OpenLinux from Caldera Systems, around November of 1999.

openSUSE 11.2! Sometime in late 2009 when it was fresh, so i'm quite a newbie compared to most of you guys. My Radeon worked only with VESA driver so moving application windows was painfully slow but i didn't care much then, it was whole new exciting experience.

My first operating system was Fedora 8. I actually started in with it because I forgot the admin password on my Windows XP laptop. I had to install something else after attempting to recover the windows sam file via forensic recovery, and failing. Fedora 8 was the OS of choice because it was readily available, and I've been a Linux fanatic ever since. :D

Puppy 2.1x frugal dualbooting inside of Windows 95 on a Compaq 1540DM running a 16bit wireless B Netgear pcmcia card. My first computer also (wife gave it to me).

Yellowdog here, on a mac powerbook g3 'wallstreet' edition, didn't even have a cd burner, i faked the install by 'burning' the iso to a hard drive partition, still not sure how it worked... oh well.

Slackware 10.0.

It was an accident. I tried to install something else first--can't remember what, and it didn't like me, so I wandered off looking for something else and stumbled into Slackware.

I've never really left. Wandered a bit, but never really left.

Slackware 3.3 (I even got X!)

I have worked first on NOVEL 4.1 and 4.2 and parallel on linux6/9

Why is missing Mandriva - a great successor of Mandrake a predecessor of Mageia? But seriously, when I learned, that Linux is Open Source and free of charge, I wakled through several distributions: Ubuntu, Fedora and so on, and stopped my attention on Mandriva and OpenSuse as my favorites.

I've added Mandriva and Linspire.

--jeremy

First was Mandrake 10, but I played with it for about 2 days, only GUI, not any console.
The real experience came about 2 years later after that with Slackware, and I'm still in love with it. The major things I've learned about UNIX was with the help of Slackware.

My first distro was Caldera eDesktop

Linux was young and didn't support many of my hardware so I dual booted windows95 and caldera. I though linux sucked at that time because of the lack of hardware support.

Today, linux is awesome and it kicks a$$ and that's why linux is my main OS on my system. Currently using arch and PClinuxOS 2013

Slackware 2.x... 'cuz NetBSD (which a friend was running) seemed too hard ;) I still have (bad) memories of trying to get basic things like ppp (modem), XWindow (fvwm), sound and printing working.

Red Hat was my first, and when its free-subscription ran out I decided to dive into the operating-system waters with this OS ... experimenting first with Linux From Scratch, then Gentoo.

These days, I run my Linux-es as virtual machines under OS/X ... with one notable exception, "Old Dobbin." A laptop, originally bought with Windows-95, whose video card don't work so good anymore (okay, okay, it's blind), but which still runs (Gentoo) and has an uptime, as of today, of 207 days. Even though it's quite a small machine, with a fast-and-efficient Linux configuration that's tailored to its exact hardware with no "fluff," it is, well, "positively zippy." Microsoft Windows is a dim and still-unpleasant memory.

My first experience with Linux was when I bought a Caldera box with disks and a manual and tried, unsuccessfully, to install it instead of Windows 98.
I then didn't use Linux for a couple of years until I picked up Mandrake from the front of a magazine and managed to install it -- it is that which I count as my first distro. Then went through a period of distro-hopping through Mandrake, SuSe and Fedora before settling on Ubuntu, then Kubuntu. I even bought a PC with Kubuntu pre-installed from a now gone sole trader here in the UK.
I went off Kubuntu when KDE 4 came along and went to Xubuntu then Debian. In the mean time I bought a netbook with some horrid version of Xandros or something on it and changed that to Mint which I ran on it until fairly recently (it's now on Sid).
Sadly I managed to throw out the Caldera disks and book a couple of years ago.
Having a high[ish]-speed internet connection has certainly made life a lot easier for those wishing to try, and use, Linux and not just because it meant the death of the dreaded Win-MODEM.

rrow at present, I have the distinction of being the only person insofar to say yellowdog

I had actually tried YellowDog early on, on old Mac PPC hardware, but I can't say it was my first. Probably more like my fourth. I think it was Red Hat > Mandrake > Corel > YellowDog. SUSE may have been in there somewhere, though.

Mine was Redhat Linux 4.0 in the days when lRedhat was community-developed. I bought the Redhat book and tried it. Didn't find it particularly user-friendly. Later I moved to Ubuntu and never went back to Microsoft.

Well,

The first linux distro I installed was Red Hat 4.0 in the mid-90's (which I later found out was really a "preview" release... Hence, we get the saying: "Never trust a x.0 release!" ;-p hehe) and quickly followed that up with Red Hat 4.2!

My first experience with linux was when I had started at a new company and the Exec-VP sat me down at the owner's system and handed me the book "Unix Made Easy" (about 4 inches thick and didn't look easy! :-p hehe), told me to follow his Post-It note bookmarks and left. The bookmarks he had in the book covered the FSH, permissions, file manipulation and 'vi'. Well, he came back at about noon to see how I was doing, and I had already gotten a pretty good handle on basic operation with 'vi'/'vim', and had even found 'man' and 'fortune' on my own.

The real selling point for me with linux was when that same Exec-VP came into my office and put a dusty, nasty 386 system on my desk, said "The hard drive is making noise." and left. I booted the system to a liveCD, chrooted in and, just to check, did an uptime... and it said 2576 days!!! I was pretty sure that it had to be wrong, so I went down to the Exec-VP's office and asked, "It says an uptime of 2576 days... That can't be right, can it?" He did some quick calculations in his head and said, "About 7 years? Yeah, that sounds about right." To me that was unbelievable!!! A computer could run without reboot for 7 years? You'd *never* get something like that from M$!!! So, apart from a few (*ahem* holdout... *cough, cough*) game developers, I have been loving linux and have never looked back. :)

Penguinus Potestate! ;)

Good question. I guess. Just opened my Practice and deciding which O/S after Windows 98. A few years later, Windows or Linux? Eventually, decided, I guess, on Windows. Must purchase hardware to install XP.
Then after having constant problems with the XP O/S on my Compaq, before merger or purchase, installed SUSE accidentally. Trying to Test it out.
Finally, free after rebate, Linspire.

Take your pick. As to which one was first.

Slackware 11 (2006)

Redhat 5.2
About 1998

live CD Feather Linux for my "Other" vote.