OK JEREMY ...
I'm sorry about that ... my english is poor, but next time .. I will make my best ..

I answered PCLinuxOS although technically it wasn't my first... It was however the second distro that I used for any length of time. The first was actually Xandros!

I played with a few different Linux installs when I first heard of it. Ubuntu was my first actual install (5.04 IIRC). It was a total disaster (issues with my ATi graphics card...) so I gave up. I tried 5.10 and 6.06 too. 6.06 was the first distro that I actually managed to get to a 'workable' stage, although it still had buggy issues and I managed to destroy it beyond repair (for my means at the time anyway... other than reinstall that is - which I didn't bother...)

In 2007 I bought an EeePC 701 which came pre-installed with Xandros. It was much more stable and much less buggy than the previous Ubuntu installs I had used... It was great because it used UnionFS so I could play to my hearts content then reset it once I broke it. I found the apt cache (/var/cache/apt) which I would copy out to USB so I could get it back up to date quick and easy after reset. That really started to get me hooked!

Then the first distro that I installed and actually used on a 'proper' computer and stuck with for some time was PCLinuxOS 2007. I had that running for quite a few months IIRC. It was from a highly customised remastered ISO design specifically for WinXP users which worked for me at the time.

After that died I went back to Ubuntu (8.04) and that was when I got hooked totally, fell in love with Gnome and haven't looked back!

First linux distro
 

Actually started with openBSD, then mandriva, openSUSE, now linux mint on all computers. Used an old computer with windows xp just to drive an old laser printer with only centronics connection. Just found a usb to centronics cable for a few bucks that works great, got rid of xp computer. Now I am strictly on linux and android, even my wife uses linux mint.

SuSE 6.4 back in 2000 I believe it was.

First post from me. My first linux distro..... I actually started using was Linux Storm on one CD. Then Ubuntu. I went totally into using linux after my Windows XP computer got locked up by a virus that claimed I had DLed copyrighted material and had to pay a fine to release my computer.
I currently use Puppy Slacko and Precise and can no longer use FotoXX in them. It keeps telling me I must install exiftool something 8 and I have installed the latest version.

Ubuntu
 

Ubuntu

My first was an Ubuntu 9.10 back in 2009 on an Intel P4. I was in 9th grade and I came across a tech. magazine which gave an Ubuntu ISO. Installed it using Wubi and there started my linux journey. After that I tried almost all distros that came along with the mag's DVDs.

I am another Newbie on this forum. My journey to open source started from library. I saw linux journals and magazines in computer section and started taking interest in getting more info. Our college labs were running popular windows operating system which had have been pretty nontransparent in its process. First linux I install on my pc was Fedora 9.0 followed by Suse and Ubuntu. Since than I have never look back and still on Ubuntu

I first tried Linux... 04, 05? I was barely into my teens if at all. Dad had made this Knoppix LiveCD when the XP drive failed on our Pentium 4. The LiveCD bit didn't surprise me unlike how most people would've reacted, as I come from a System 7 background (Mac OS install CDs/Floppies were Live until OS X came out :D) I do remember enjoying the simplicity behind the KDE 3 desktop (before I knew the whole concept behind desktop environments, haha!), and being outright addicted to Frozen Bubble.

Since then I've experimented with Linux on a lot of our PowerPC Macs. Ubuntu to Kubuntu, experiments with Puppy and SuSE (bad memories with Puppy :P), putting Xubuntu on an old PBG3, and eventually I finally got an eMachines (cause dad was tired of me buying PowerBooks xD) with Linpus installed as my 16th birthday present (2009)

On that thing, never gave Linpus a 'startx', instead chose one of the *buntus (I think Kubuntu), started having fun with Fedora, then took the guts to jump straight to Slackware and even FreeBSD. Got a MacBook Pro, dual booted with Kubuntu, gave it away to grandma two years later. In the meantime re-tried Ubuntu on the eMachine (It has been my favorite setup thus far), and eventually settled with Slackware up until this January, when I tried Arch. I honestly love Arch :]

My life with Linux is basically one experiment after another, and with only one exception (Ubuntu 10.10 running on a Power Mac 7500 as a Web Server!), I've honestly never kept a Linux install on my computers for more than a year and a half. One setup actually ended up lasting less than a week in 2012 :P

I guess Linux distros are like jelly bean flavors: They're numerous, most of them are great, they all have the same base, and you just wanna try em all :D

1st distro
 

I started my Linux journey in 1999 with RedHat 5.1 :)

Technically, the first distro I used (which was in 2004), was Amigo Linux. Although I soon converted it to a full Slackware install.

My first ever was RedHat Linux. I think it was version 5.1, which I bought as a 4 CD set way back in the day :) Back when you had to use the mount command to get a CD running. I didn't use it that much because it didn't recognize half of my PC's hardware.

Would be a long time before I started using Linux again. When it got a bit more user friendly. Grew up using Windows, so yeah all that command typing was never (and still isn't) my cup of tea :)

Sadly, my first Linux distro was Mint. Wish I'd known about this sooner. Now running the MATE desktop as it is friendlier for the old XP machines that I am re-birthing.

PJ

mine was pardus. it is dead now.
voted slackware because it was my second.

Mine was BOB

Mandrake or Red Hat back in 2000 (can't remember which was first, I tried both in a short period). Got 'em both from the book store with a couple "Users Guide To..." manuals that came with discs of each.

Patient.

Linux Mint 9>>>actually i use manjaro xfce

first linux distribution
 

I started with SuSe 12 years ago, then went to Red Hat, then Fedora and now with Ubuntu.

I started with Slackware 8.0 and have tested other distros during the years, but mainly stayed with Slackware until Mint 8.0 was launched. I have used Mint since then.

Mine was the 'gNewSense' Ubuntu fork, I was NOT happy with gNewSense and within days migrated to Ubuntu 8.04

... currently using Ubuntu Studio 14.04

slackware x.x early 2000ish.

Back then Mandrake was awesome!

which distro
 

Actually, my first distro was Knoppix on a CD inside a pc magazine, well, it registered, but was soon forgotten. Xandros was next. Since I paid for it(!!!!) I took it seriously. (well maybe that is what it comes down to, as soon as you shell out bucks, your attention span changes). Still, did not last. And Then There Was Linux MInt Katya! Everything changed, hey this is usable!! Never went back to Windows after that. Today I have Debian wheezy and LMDE. Great functionality in both. Start from SSD with the HDD being the home directory, I am not pursuing any great changes at this point.

Slackware 3.x sometime back in the mid 90's. I never got online with it though. That didn't happen until Caldera in about 2000. Kernel was 2.2.x and you could play tetris during the install. Connecting to the internet was still a problem though. For installs, it never got better than Ubuntu for getting online fast but I still miss Caldera. Too bad they got involved with SCO (then everybody went insane) and here we are. Tons of buggy, bloated code and a never ending stream of updates. Sound familiar?

Started playing with Slackware in the mid 90's off of all the floppy disks.
stayed with windows for a while until the early 2000's and XP drove me away from windows. played with a couple distros such as redhat but came back to slackware.

I began with Red Hat Linux 7.0 back in trade school.

First Linux: Borrowed Linux Universe 2nd edition [1] from a friend of a friend in 1996. It is basically an English translation of Unifix [2], which uses a layered filesystem similar to what Puppy Linux does. Gradually replaced all installed software with newer versions compiled from sources, which was quite a rabbit hole to go down, for someone coming from DOS and Windows. It is still possible to install Linux Universe in VirtualBox [3], but kind of pointless. For example, it includes a beta version of lynx that is incompatible with most of the web because it doesn't understand HTTP 1.1.

[1]
http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Universe.../dp/0387946004

[2]
http://cd.textfiles.com/infomagic/im...O-5.html#ss5.3

[3]
http://blog.krisk.org/2012/07/my-linux-story.html

Suse forever?
 

First Suse (9?) back in middle school, someone gave the CD-set to me and told me to try this instead of Microsoft.
Got acquainted with Fedora in high school. In that time Ubuntu CD's could be ordered in bulk to distribute in your personal network (do not know if they still do that?), but never really tried it. I am sure I still have those original Suse and Ubuntu CD's somewhere :-)
Changed jobs and came from a complete Microsoft box into a mixed Win-Solaris environment. Refreshing for me. At the point where we would deploy a new environment and virtualize all systems I pushed for RedHat based on multiple arguments. 5 years later and some upgrades + version further I am still convinced about the made choice.
Now I should know better, but over the time the major constant is Suse after Suse version at home (in a basic workstation but still...). I did try to move to CentOS for my home use 3 years ago but to my surprise hardware support was worse, and ended up again with OpenSuse.

Redhat 4.1 in 1997

Evolution (to Debian 7.6)
 

That was a long time ago, but I believe it was Corel, around 1999. I had bought some sets of Linux disks at various computer shows before then but hadn't made much effort to install them or get them to work.

Shortly after installing Corel, I joined a LUG, started collecting and trying the Linuxes they made available--typically put the disk in, if it booted, I tried installing, if it installed, I spent maybe an hour trying a few things.

Very shortly I settled on Mandrake. Part of the decision was based on KDE--when I looked at GNOME screens, they seemed dark and fuzzy, kde was clear, bright, and easy to see.

I often wished for Debian, but back in those days the install seemed intimidating, asking (iirc) for things like the model number of your disk controller.

Sometime during the Debian 5.x era, I tried Debian again, the installer seemed much easier (maybe it had sane defaults?), it installed, and I used it for a long time.

Only recently (when a drive failed) I started making the switch to Debian 7.6. Fairly disappointed so far.

With a much more powerful machine (4 core, 3.0 GHz., 64 bit, 16 GB RAM, solid state disk), it is outrageously slow in certain things (things that seem ridiculous to me--10 seconds to close a konqueror tab, 10 seconds to deactivate the screen saver, ...). I've switched to Iceweasel as my main browser.

I tried to install 4 different printers before I got a (my old faithful BJC-3000) printer to work.

Even though I went to the trouble of setting fixed locations for the windows of the various apps I use regularly, fairly often that information seems to get lost and the windows scatter everywhere.

I have thoughts of trying one of the simpler desktops--I know there are some, but I don't have their names at my finger tips. One reason I stuck with kde (well, I liked 3.x under Debian 5.0) was because of the macro capability--can't think of what they call it, but, in the end, I don't use it much, and, iiuc, there is now a generic replacement for it that I assume (I know) works with any desktop.

I 've settled on a few distros for various bpxes.
Mint Debian and 17 Qiana, PCLOS LXDE/E18 for desktops and Xubuntu 14.04 Tahr for laptops.
All of which find and install my HP printers (Laserjet, 2 deskjet AiOs and a Photosmart AiO, and my old Samsung laser.
For maximum compatibility, HP printers every time.

My first distro was fedora 16.

Although Fedora was the first distro I 'tried' (ugly and buggy as sin), Mepis was n00b friendly at the time (middle 2000s), I installed and ran it for a while until I discovered PCLinuxOS, my hardware outgrew PCLinuxOS (no Raid 0 support, 64-bit, etc) so from there were a few Ubuntu derivatives (Mint, Kubuntu), then the best and mother of all distros, Debian, so done with 'training wheels', long ago.

Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10.

Although I experimented with plenty of Distros between 2001 and 2007, it was in 2008 that I first used Linux fully on my computer and tossed M$ out completely. It was Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) with Gnome. Unfortunately, because of Unity and Gnome 3, I've passed over Ubuntu for Debian.

I believe that settling on Debian was the better choice, even though it is a little more difficult to administer than Ubuntu. But I'm very happy.

After being highly frustrated with Win98 I picked up a Linux Handbook that came with a Red Hat 2.0 CD. Used Red Hat up to 7.x and switched to Slackware 3.x and stayed. Now using Slackware64-current for several years.

I used MKS toolkit in DOS. It's not listed.

We can add one more, my son is now a new Slackware user. We built him a new PC because his laptop was too slow for the games he wanted to play. So far its windows free.

My first linux distro was "Winlinux" a redhat base distro that runs entirely on Windows, until I bought my own PC and since this PC wasn,t the whole family PC I was able to install Linux on the main hard drive, so I install Mandrake 8.2 it was buggy as hell, but it was cute and friendly for a newbie like me :) . After Mandrake I tried Red Hat, Suse, Debian, BSD flavours and finally fall in love with Slackware, using Slack since 2004, at work I use *untu flavours and Fedora, but the only 2 distros I had found stable and worth the use are Slackware and RedHat Enterprise.

I believe I might have bought the same thing. Registered at the LinuxCounter.net the same year (december 1999) which means I have a 15yr aniversary coming up ;)
After a few months with redhat, I tried Suse Linux, and ended up on Debian for several years, although the past 6-7 years I've mainly used Gentoo. On my desktop I have switched to Sabayon though, as I love Gentoo, but it's too time-consuming for a desktop (the last time I tried a combined Xorg/Gnome install in Gentoo, was before they became modular, and it would take days to compile).

But, damn, time flies when you're having fun with linux...

LinuxCounter.net/user/158780

I actually believe I registered @ lico in 96, but due to inactivity my (VERY low) linux counter number got deleted :(
And I cannot remember what Linux Distro I tried the first time, but if memory serves me right, it could have been RedHat 4.0 "Colgate", or possibly S.u.S.E Linux 4.2 or 4.3 (Remember my father bought me a huge SuSE Linux book with 8 CD's, but that could have been later).

Debian Wheezy. I wanted to start with a base such as red hats, slackware, debian and there was 1 more which I forgot the name of.

Slackware 3.4

slackware 11, and it wasn't difficult to install and to use which were floating around the net as being difficult.

My first distro was "Best Linux 2000", similar to Redhat.

First Linux Distro
 

Yggdrasil

Red Hat 5.0 (I still have the manual, floppies and CDs). I even give it a try two years ago on a very old PC.

When it comes to first distro I selected the first successful Linux distro which was openSUSE 13.2 back in Sept. 2015. My actual first distro was back in 2000 which didn't work which was Corel, no sound and no internet connection. Then Mandrake, no sound, no internet connection, video driver issues that would cause a crash into a black screen. Then Redhat couldn't connect to the Internet. Back in 2000 Linux was a big failure for me. Thankfully the Linux community fixed those issues because there is no way I can agree to Microsoft's Windows 10 E.U.L.A.

Slackware since 1997 or 1998 (I think it was Slackware 3.XXX) on an old PC 386.