My first distro was Slackware. After getting exposed to Dynix (on a Sequent Symmetry), SunOS (on Sun SPARCstation) and HP-UX (on HP Apollo) at my University I got interested in Linux to try out on a PC I had at home. Trouble is it was a first edition 486/DX which caused (at that time for me) unexplainable kernel panics

It took a week to download Red Hat on dial up, I tried that out for a bit and then ended up buying Mandrake from Best Buy in 1997/98 and attempted to run that one for a while after. I eventually got sick of the mess that is the rpm world and had been eyeing Slackware and ended up downloading that and running it for the next 20+ years. Loved how it works and loved to learn using it. Not so much with the RH world. Glad I found Slackware, I likely would not use Linux in this day and age if I didn’t find it.

I started with the first Caldera OpenLinux PreView.
For production with Caldera OpenLinux 1.0.

Before i worked with Minix and then BSD.

Most of them are probably unknown for most people.

Later i tried Mandrake, (open)Suse, Fedora.

Now i work with arch, MX, Zorin and Ubuntu.

My Servers are CentOS, firewall OpenBSD, pfSense and OPNsense.

First steps at uni (1997) in Debian, I believe. At home Ubuntu.

~12 years ago I started with Red Hat Linux & CentOS to study for RHCE. I neither understood it nor could use it. I think the problem was, I focused on server when I did not know how to browse files.

~10 years ago, I was studying for CCNA. Then I thought, why not give Red Hat another shot. The teacher who helped me go through CCNA studies failed with Red Hat Linux.

After a long long time (~2 years ago), I was very frustrated with Windows, and decided I have to go with Linux.

I started testing different distro and desktop environments. I literally checked all the DE ubuntu came with at that time. Looking for a DE that closely resembles Windows.

After the checking DE phrase came distro hopping phrase.

During my distro hopping phrase I tested:


1. Ubuntu Mate (~10-15days)
2. Kubuntu
3. Linux Mint

I flip-flop between Kubuntu & Linux Mint for some times and finally settled for Linux Mint ~1 year ago.

it is very interesting that Slackware very among the leaders.
I always thought that Slackware not simple.

1 members found this post helpful.

Slackware is very simple - using tar files for installation, simple configuration control (very much like BSD).

Granted, not necessarily a point-and-click administration.

1 members found this post helpful.

Slackware is amongst if not the oldest of distros still maintained so to be fair it's had the potential for more exposure to the public than most/all other distros too.

Can you tell us what that is/was?


It just looks that way because LQ is where all the slackware users lurk - they don't have their own forums!
(ducks and runs)

It is the oldest continuing distribution.

There were only three that were older... The first was an MCC interim release in November 1991, TAMU in May 1992, SLS also in May 1992, with Slackware as a fork in July 1993, and followed by Debian as another fork in August 1993.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi,

The LQ Slackware forum is the official Slackware forum. Yes, a lot of Slackware users do participate here on LQ to help other Gnu/Linux users.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy Slackware!

I notice it says that, for currently 9 people, Gentoo was their first distro.

I'd like to know your story.

Both MCC and TAMU are missing from the voting options.

I started using GNU/Linux in 1993, and I am sure that my first installation to a hard disk was with the one from the Texas A&M University (I preferred 5¼" floppy disk images), soon followed by SLS and Slackware. I switched to Debian in 1995 or 1996 and have not switched distributions since. Some years after that, I stopped compiling my own kernels, and some more years afterwards, I gave up with twm and fvwm2, and went with the GNOME (then version 2) desktop.

Before the TAMU distribution, I shortly used something that was called 'bootdisk' and 'rootdisk' floppies. That could have been what would nowadays be classified as a 'live' distro (running from a RAM disk). Maybe that was the MCC interim release; I cannot remember.

Before I use Linux Slacware, I can remember i was using Unix Coherent at home and SCO Unix at the office... Great Time!

I knew Linux for the first time from the Knoppix live cd, probably in 2005. My computer at home (as well as at work) was perhaps a Pentium 4.
I learned about Knoppix from a (music related) forum where I was member. In fact, the forum was mostly music related, however it worked on servers belonging to another technology-related site. I managed to download the iso image and burn the cd. I was impressed by the fact that an entire operating system with desktop and lots of software included could boot and run from just a cd without installation.

Some time later, perhaps in 2006, I discovered Ubuntu live cd too and its brother Kubuntu. I have to notice that both Knoppix and Ubuntu were very stable: I could have the system running all day long with no problem.