I loaded Slackware 8.1 in Nov 2002. I chose it because it was a Friday afternoon at work and I just had my first always on internet connection installed at home and I wanted a Linux server for home. My plan was to install Linux that evening and Slackware was the fastest to download distro that afternoon. It is still my distro of choice for my home workstation.

I recall Redhat 5 being the first nix distro I ever played with. I struggled a lot with that and gave it up for a while. Mostly use Debian these days.

It was an early versión of Debian before Windows 98.

I started with Redhat 7, right around 2000 when I was in high school.

Red Hat in 1996, version number might have been 3.0.0.3 or something like. It was a bit conservative - only recognizing ide0 and ide1. Since for some reason my Pentium Pro could only boot from ide2, which held Windows, I had to install on ide0 and chainload from DOS. Switching to Mandrake 7.2 solved that one. RedHat presented an experimental version of KDE which I took a look at and dropped like a hot potato. In those days it was aimed at making refugee Windows users feel comfortable and since I never felt comfortable with Windows it was a definite no-no. Long live UNIX!

A friend gave me a multi-floppy disc set of Mandrake back in 2001 or so. I never installed them, though. The first time I actually logged into my own GNU/Linux operating system on one of my own machines was in the summer of 2006. It was Ubuntu 6.06 "Dapper Drake". I even still have a screenie of it...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...apperDrake.png

I experimented heavily with numerous distributions from that point on. At one time, I had 18 distributions installed on my main system and 11 on my shop system. I quickly settled on Slackware (by October of '06) and have used nothing else as my main OS since then. I still keep other distributions on my systems, though. I do not use virtual applications. My tester distributions are installed on their own partitions and booted using GRUB in Slackware on my main system, and LILO from Slackware on my shop system. I boot with GRUB on my main system because I've had issues in the past trying to boot multiple operating systems across multiple drives with LILO.

Anyway, it's been a lot of fun. I don't miss that other operating system at all. ;)

Later...

~Eric

Lycoris, because I never got good at re-installing Windows. ;)
Then Mandrake, then Slackware - IIRC it was 9.0. Never looked back.

Red Hat 3.x

Osborne Linux 3RD Edition book 1996 which had Caldara open linux2.2 AND, redhat 6.. .have disc , do not remember getting it working..
2003 RED HAT 9. my friend and I took their on line course [ had to buy real modems [not cheap winmodem]] got it working and learning when RH went to a yearly 125 a year fee byby RH.
. ubunutu 7.04 ,7.1 64 bit no go ,, noticed some one else mentioned PC Linux[64 bit worked ] but did not know what to add to make it usable...
. during my rebuilding day's I ran out of free 98 copies so tried . yellow dog , damn small , and 10 other small linux's , but know one wanted a free rebuilt comp with linux ..
have been trying Ubuntu every year unsuccessfully UNTIL , 12.04.1 LTS .. yes . a winner .. I know Unity is not liked by others , but , It works for me , ran on it's first load , i Have gotten sound and dvd's , internet , zip , PDF , all working and usable by dumb me . I am happy , it is a Long Term Solution so will be supported four more years .

You remind me I still have a copy of the 4TH edition in my bookcase -- it has Red Hat© Linux 7 and Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4 discs included -- I don't think I ever tried them though and I have lost them now.

It's fun to see the results here. You know just by looking at some of them -- like Redhat, not Fedora: and SUSE, not openSuSE, that some of us have been doing this for a while! :D
I started in April, 2001 -- and no I didn't know this was actually Linux's birthday month -- and kept on going. Now I'm on openSuSE 12.3; started with SUSE 7.1.

First Linux Distribution
 

The first distro I used was Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, beginning in June 2006. Currently using Linux Mint 13 Maya (MATE DE) on my desktop computer (P4 2.80 GHz, 1GB RAM, runs very fast on this 9-year-old machine) and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on my notebook (Intel Celeron 847 1.1 GHz x 2, 2GB RAM)

Although I did put Red Hat (I believe it was 4, still have the discs somewhere, and it came with a book, too) - the distro I actually stuck with and used productively was Edgy-Eft (Ubuntu). I defected (sort-of) away from Ubuntu when Unity came out - and there were stability issues, too - to Mint... still very enamoured of that distro!

My first Linux distro was Freespire, but it wasn't right for me and I moved to Ubuntu within a month.

Slackware. It was a pretty early version. I got it sometime around the mid-90's. The floppies were included in a book I bought. Over the years I tried other distros but always came back to slackware. When Patrick Volkerding dropped gnome and went kde only, I switched to Fedora core (I hate KDE). Lately I've succumbed to the dark side and started using Xubuntu. It's fast, simple and easy to use.

Mine was LinuxPPC 2000. It ran like shit on my scsi-based Mac, but I was fascinated. Had to make it work somehow. Linux is a habit not easily abandoned.

my first distro was centos

The last version of Mandrake, I was the hero of the desktop crowd. I had tried Red Hat earlier that I borrowed from our server guys, but I never could get Red Hat to work on our desktop machines. It's never been anything but Linux on my machines. From Mandrake/Gnome I went to Mandriva/KDE and finally Slackware/KDE. I panicked when Mandriva went broke and I tried many distros but finally decided upon Slackware. I'm basically lazy, so I don't like change. I'm an old school computer user, that's why I like KDE, it just flat works out of the box. I'm 58 years old so that puts me at a small lead over the Windows and Mac whiz kids. The whiz kids keep asking me how I do so and so and I tell them that it's all so simple with Linux.

Mandrake 9.2

My first Linux experience was Red Hat 6.0. A friend had recommended it to me. I had no problems getting it installed, but never was able to get it on the Internet, or get the mouse working. Experimented with newer Red Hat releases, and other distributions such as Turbo Linux, SOT Linux and Knoppix, even tried FreeBSD. Eventually I came to Debian. Sarge (3.1) was just released as stable. Only used Sarge for a short time though before quickly moving to Etch (was still in testing) as it had better hardware support. Around this time I was no longer using Windows as my primary OS. I had used Debian Etch (testing) for months before eventually moving on to Sid. I still use Debian Sid as my primary OS.

I still have the copy my friend made for me of Red Hat 6.0
http://replica9000.bizland.com/linux...42_400x300.jpg

Apart from a shoer stint in wubi, LFS was my learning experience, but it wouldn't count I guess, because to build LFS you need another distribution :D

I'm very interested in what this poll implies. It seems more users started off with more hardcore versions, with Slackware leading, and Mint not even making it into the picture! I guess that's because the majority of this community are power-users and not the usual everyday user. Or perhaps that's because the Ubuntu and Mint users are more geared to getting support from the forums in the distribution's site...

Re hat linux. All went much more smoothly than we aticipated. We installed it on our firts laptop (a dell inspiron 7500).
We had heard horror stories about instalation, but i was wonderfull. We still have that laptop, dunno what to do with
it.

Mandriva's getting a bad rap
 

I'd just like to say that although TurboLinux WAS my very first distribution, I had quickly switched to Mandrake (which became Mandriva). I learned a lot about the command line and how linux does things with turbolinux, but I spent a great deal more time USING mandrake/mandriva

Not listed in the poll above, but I started with Linpus Lite! Which I replaced with Ubuntu Netbook Remix after a very short time. :p
Linpus Lite was the Acer branded version that came pre-installed on Acer netbooks. Hopelessly out of date and stripped to the bone! :p

when i first read about linux back in 2008 i tried almost every distro. as a noob i only felt comfy with mandriva, very noob friendly despite its lack of some important packages and difficulty getting things to be built on it. i soon realized its good only for getting your feet wet, more than that you need to switch. i switched to pclinuxos after that and kept using it for about 2 years, now using fedora as i do lots of development. i still recommend it for newly comers to this world and tell them when they hit the wall you ll be able to pick a distro of your own.

Slackware from V3 and I am still using Slackware.
It would be of great interest to know if the initial distro used is the distro used today.
So for example, if not, is the first used distro a "learning" distro? What is the reason of the change?

I ticked SUSE, since I started at a time (about SuSE 6.3), when there was no openSuSE. That was then a consumer version like openSuSE is today and one paid for the boxed version about 60 D-Marks (must have been around the year 2000). It had a set of very good printed and bound manuals of really good quality. I'm still with openSuSE...

Ubuntu was the first...
 

Mandriva, OpenSuse, VectorLinux, Sabayon, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, BhodiLinux, Lubuntu, Mepis, PclinuxOS, Fedora, Peppermint, LinuxMint, Antix... And a few other Linux distro's for tsting.
NOW Bhodi is running on my computer.
Before i can now what's the most stable and best Linux for me, i have to buy a new computer with more power, like 1TB.
Greetings,
Mefisto

There's Slackware missing ;)
Well, the most stable is Slackware and after you once tried it out you will stay with it (like most of us) :)

Markus

First Linux Distro
 

I voted for Fedora 'cos it was the first full distro I used, but first linux contact was CentOS which came packaged with Digium's Asterisk VoIP PBX free download.
Now using Ubuntu

Slackware 4.0, I think it was in 1999.

My First Linux
 

I first installed Linux on an older HP desktop. Windows had bombed out on it, and I'd just received my first copy of Linux Format with the DVD of Ubuntu 11.10. After installing it on the older PC, I was over the moon with the results, and the computer no longer ran slow. Oh, I know I could probably have improved it with a bit of effort, but it all came down to the operating system, which Ubuntu solved admirably for me. I've updated it several times up to 13.04. I now run Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon on my lapt-top. Why is it SO difficult to convince other PC users to switch to Linux? They seem to be cemented in a concrete block with 'Windows' on it, and there's no freeing them from it! Very sad!

I was in my college and the Unix lab assistant provided me with one cd of Ubuntu and one of RHEL 4. I decided to go with RHEL as I was planning to undergo RCHE.
Later on I stuck to Fedora until Slackware 13.37. Never looked back since.

Regards.

Mine, too. Used it for two years on an Amstrad PC. Eventually retired in favour of Red Hat.

I bought a CD of Yggdrasil in 1995. I had been using both SCO Unix and SCO Xenix for some years, but the Yggdrasil made me an instant convert. I think that Slackware and Red Hat were the next ones I used.

Slackware seems to be leading the poll at the moment. A lot of the others on the list weren't around when I started with Slackware. Would be interesting to know when people started using Linux for the first time - I'll suggest that at https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ns-4175467185/.

First Distro Poll
 

Voters: 244. You may not vote on this poll

WHY???

I started with Ubuntu 8.04. We now use Ubuntu 12.04 on my 8 year old desktop and my wife's 5 year old laptop. The 4 year old netbook runs Linux/Mint Mate 13. My plan will be to migrate all three systems to Mate in due course. I am less interested in state of the art Linux than stability for the applications we need LibreOffice, Shotwell, Gimp, Gramps, Thunderbird and Firefox.

Red Hat 5.2 in 2001. It was on an old magazine coverdisc, and I installed it on the PC I was building from secondhand parts, to see if Linux would work for me. Installed and ran first time, and I was mightily impressed. Everything loaded and ran fast and looked good, and it was nothing like Windows (but I repeat myself :)). I remember liking the choice of WMs (especially Windowmaker), and the way the three mouse buttons all had different effects when I clicked them on a scroll bar.

For the finished system I wanted an up-to-date version, and decided to try out Mandrake 8.0. That was, shall we say, more educational - but I got there in the end. :)

SuSe 9.1 in August of 2004.

Slackware, ca. 1993. I picked up a copy from the local computer club, packed onto a couple boxfuls of 5.25" floppies.

Took me three days just to get the bootloader installed and booting, and another week to get to the CLI (there was no GUI). That was on a 66mhz Pentium with 64mb of ram.

Today the whole process takes about fifteen minutes -- 12 or 13 minutes to download the ISO via broadband, and two more to boot it up in VBox on my 3.2ghz hexcore with 16GB ram and 8TB of hard drive.

Can't wait to see what the next twenty years brings.

Slax running live off a cd was the first linux I used around September 2003.
The first installed distro was MEPIS 2003-10.

You need at least one forum post to vote in any LQ poll. Note that a small amount of time may need to pass after your first post until your usergroup is updated.

--jeremy

Red Hat and Ubuntu where the 1st I tried after finding out that my winodow's os died and needed to recover some information off my harddrive.

For the survey I answered Red Hat Linux. In particular it was Red Hat Linux 6.2 Standard Edition. I still have the retail box with original docs and discs in the shrink wrap (opened) with a Best Buy price sticker for $29.99 (SKU 3895556).

I had forgot about my original Linux use on the Amiga many years before. I do not remember what distribution this was (if it even was a distro). It was very early in the development of Linux. Command line only and no graphics support as I remember. Even the ported tools was limited. For my purpose, which was shell scripting practice, it worked out great.

It was Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon
 

Hi. My really first GNU OS was Mandriva but I counldn´t make it work to its full capacities. As a windows user with no technical experience but as a plain user. I left Linux but some time later, a friend of mine gave me Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and I tried it. Since that time I've been in Ubuntu. Perhaps there are better distros but for me, as a plain user, Ubuntu makes the work.

Best Regard to everyone in this community

The first one that I was able to use was Ubuntu 9.04. A friend of mine nagged me into trying it out. I was very pleasantly surprised. I had tried others that I got from PC magazine discs, during the eighties and nineties, but I could never get the graphics to work. So my screen was always blank.

SLS 1.2.

Then 1.3. - but had to reuse the floppies from 1.2. Repeat for 1.4.

After that Slackware, also on floppies.

Also used RH and later Fedora... Though now that Fedora has gone into the toilet, I'll be going back to Slackware.

Fedora, via Linux for Non-Geeks from No Starch Press.

Mandrake Linux 8.2 was my introduction to the fabulous world of Linux and open source. Been hooked ever since.