I guess redhat 5.0 / 5.1, which came with most of the books that I bought in that era. The first one I bought and actually used was SuSE 6.1. ICQ, DB2, and other things for linux. Then 7.0 came out and it wouldn't install to my laptop, I tried mandrake as well and it failed to install as well. So off to debian land and sometimes I get distracted, but always come back to debian.

I liked the package bundle of SuSE 6.1. But it was a pain to use as it was so scripted / admin tools like that nothing in the TLDP applied to it. Making what would have been trivial tasks somewhat of a hunt for red october to find out the "SuSE" way. Debian is just a lot simpler to me and so easy to maintain over a long haul. Plus I don't have to worry about things defaulting to german if I rush through the install process.

I've tried knoppix, ubuntu, gentoo, and others along the way. And sometimes I'll install one of those if I'm doing a linux install for someone elses machine. Otherwise I'm running debian these days.

Who ever said Arch and Gentoo, congrats on that, (assuming you got it to work and you had no prier *nix experience). I can and have installed Arch now (never tried Gentoo), but if it had have been my first distro, i wouldn't have had a clue what i was doing; hell, my first distro was Ubuntu, and i had no idea what i was doing most of the time, like when i'd 'sudo gedit /etc/default/grub' and enter in details instructed on the Ubuntu wiki. It wasn't until i tried Slackware that i actually learnt what i was doing (a little).

I started in 1993 (possibly earlier) with a floppy distro direct from Linus.
Unfortunatly I cant find them but I recal you had to install Minix first and then compile the Linux Kernel from source.

the earliest marked Linux I can find is a CD from 'InfoMagic' dated Dec 1993.
It has the Garbo repository with some files going back as far as June 93 which include the 0.99.10 Kernel direct from Linus.
I also have a 'walnut Creek' CD with the garbo repositry from May 1992 but I have not found any stuff from Linus on that
But there a lot of files to look through.

I also have a number of Yggdrasil CDs from '93 '94 & '95.

Also Slackware 2.3 and 3.0 from 1995.

I notice some have mentioned Unix flavours that are not Linux branches - perhaps these should be annotated by a Moderator.

I feel young now, my first was Slackware 7.1 I believe.

Mandrake 8.2, I think. on a pentium 166 in 2002. It was recommend by a long-time linux user as a good beginner's distro (he used Slackware at the time). It loaded forever. I could be on the desktop for 20 minutes and the HDD was still buzzing away so I abandoned it since even Windows XP ran better. I got a RedHat book shortly after which I think has 8.0 in. That ran much better.

My first try at linux was Corel Linux. I had it running for about 5 minutes and it would not accept any keyboard input. I formatted the machine and went back to windows 98. It would be another 3 years before I tried a linux distribution again.

I have installed many Linux distributions over the years, from Ubuntu, Mandriva, Opensuse, pclos, Mepis, Sabayon, Elive, Bhodi linux, Elementary linux, VectorLinux, Kanotix... And so further, i think i tried over 25 different. And never i got problems with the keyboard. Now i installed Mageia 3 on me HP Paviljon, with nvidia Gforce, and i must say it works. its a workstation that i become from me son, me other computers are Hewlett Packard, and another computer just with intel, and one SIS integrated system. All of them work without great problems. I worked as independent and if i received me first Linux iso, Linux was me operating system. Love Linux and Apple.
Greetings,
Mefisto

Well, I would guess either:
1. You're lucky, I had it in one distro or another (though don't recall which).
2. The distro's you list are all recent or, at least, have recent versions suggesting to me you weren't trying to install these in 1999.
I don't recall whether Caldera had problems recognising my keyboard or not but I know it had some problem or another with virtually everything else in my PC at the time and I think Corel was similar.

Ok, your right. And yes, i try on one of me computers the most recent distro's.
in me case i have not very much trubbles. So, sorry i dont mean it bad. Working with Linux is great for me, and believe me, i speak here from me own expirience with Linux. You work longer than me with this system.
Greetings,
Mefisto

It's OK, I as just pointing out that things have changed since the bad old days and nowadays you can generally just install Linux and go for it. Well, OK, for some people it was the good old days because just installing Linux was more fun.
Either way, what matters is we're using Linux now.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread I tried Unix and Linux in the 1990's (just as far as Linux goes) but I haven't been using it all that long as a main OS.

I think your wright ! The older Linux systems are more fun, take KDE3, was very good and the Gnome in general was lighter and more compatible with much hardware. For example Mandriva 2010.2 was great to work with, also the older Ubuntu releases. We got everything we want, even on a computer with 512MB... Me personal opinion is that everithing goes to fast. Much Linux systems works on older computers and thats good, we dont buy every year a new computer, no euros to much !!!!!

That's exactly what I did a few years back. Now I have a desktop with 13 OS's (Ubuntu, LinuxMint, Fedora,Opensuse,Sabayon,Centos,Pclinus,Mepis etc)and yes,I must admit still WinXP just in case. Now do I use all those Os's? No, of course not. I use maybe 3 or 4 on a regular basis. But it was great fun to install them one after the other and see them working allright. Maybe a few problems here and there (mostly my mistake). I even installed PCBSD and...Solaris(that's a hard one-not a Linux). But is was great fun even if it drove me up to the walls one time or the other but finally it came good. Currently I am using Ubuntu on my desktop as well as on my laptop. Upgrading to a new version of the OS always has to be a complete save,a complete wipeout of the partition for me since upgrading over the internet always ended up in disaster.

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If someone starts taking about Distros, and what works where, I keep on saying: Linux is Linux is Linux, as long as it's not SuSE

Well.... I love my Slackware still. (0.93 -> 13.37)

EDIT: Checking Slackware's history - must've been Slackware 1.1.10 running some 0.99 Kernel ?! My brains says it came on 40 floppies, and I remember everyone around me thought I went nuts...

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I like SuSE particularly the installer as it gives you so much choice.

And it does not get patronising about 'root'

That prejudice is sooo old it should be zombified long since. Try 12.3 and then come back with your honest impression. I'd be surprised if it is still the same ... .