Mine was Knoppix because back in the day Libraries used to let you borrow all sorts of computer software and games and that’s what they had and I was stuck on dialup lol

      • higgsboson@piefed.socialEnglish
        3·
        10 days ago

        No, but bonus credit. I went Vax VMS, DEC Alpha DUX, Slackware, slowaris (x86 Solaris), Redhat, then LFS, Gentoo, RHEL, Solaris 9, and then eventually a little of everything else.

  • klu9@piefed.socialEnglish
    8·
    11 days ago

    BeOS ;)

    I know, not Linux. But it was my first OS other than the one that came pre-installed.

    Can’t remember exactly which was my very first Linux distro but probably Knoppix or another early live one.

    My first “wipe Windows and install on bare metal” was PC-BSD. I know, again, not Linux.

    And again, can’t remember exactly the very first “wipe Windows and install on bare metal” Linux, probably Puppy or Ubuntu.

  • dinckel@lemmy.world
    81·
    11 days ago

    Tried Ubuntu 8.04 when it was still new. Said egh, that’s cool, and moved on, until around 2015 I’ve installed Mint on more permanent basis, got frustrated with it a week later, and figured out Arch instead

  • walden@wetshav.ingEnglish
    61·
    11 days ago

    Linux Mint

    … or maybe it was Ubuntu, but it didn’t last long so I don’t really count it. Linux Mint stuck for a number of years.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
    61·
    11 days ago

    Debian because that was the one I had read most about. Then I tried many other distros, some for years, until now when I am once again a Debian user…

    • Gobo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      9 days ago

      You beat me by 1 year. I switched to slackware when windows 95 came out because I liked cli from ms dos 6.22

  • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
    51·
    11 days ago

    My first “test” was Conectiva. I lasted a few days with it, then ditched it. (I think this was in 2002? Conectiva would eventually merge with Mandrake.)

    Then a few years later I went for Kurumin. It was a local Knoppix derivative, focusing on ease of use. Eventually Ubuntu became popular enough that Kurumin’s maintainer saw no reason to continue the project.

    • christopher@programming.dev
      2·
      11 days ago

      I still have a 9" netbook with Debian 12 Bookworm on it. Sadly, it’s 32 bit so won’t be getting Debian 13 Trixie. Maybe Void?

  • mustbe3to20signs@feddit.org
    41·
    11 days ago

    Ubuntu 12.04 was my starting point. Made my laptop feel like a brand new device compared to Windows 7…

    EDIT: Who downvotes every single comment on this thread? I mean it’s perfectly okay to dislike Linux but that’s petty and dumb.

  • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
    3·
    10 days ago

    Slackware, to get away from the pink boys! Also there were only two or three distributions at the time.
    Too many to remember since then.

    (Hail Eris!)

  • kinetic_donor@lemmy.zip
    41·
    11 days ago

    SuSE 1992 (1995?) (don’t remember the exact number, but the year was on the accompanying paper manual), on some 1.3.xx Kernel, I think. Good times.

  • Zangoose@lemmy.world
    3·
    11 days ago

    Ubuntu 18.04 (2018) -> Manjaro (2019-2021)-> Arch (2021-2022) ->EndeavourOS (2022-present on my desktop) ->NixOS (2024-present on my laptop)