What was the first ever distro you installed and used? For me, it was Mint as I seemed like the closest thing to Windows minus all the forced updates and chappy changes.
Currently on Fedora GNOME now but what about you? What made you choose your first distro diving into the world of Linux?
I wanna hear your thoughts!
Knoppix 3.3, then Mandrake 10.1.
Ubuntu Late 2000’s. I wanted it because of the CUBE. But left because the only game which worked was TF2.
I’m on a similar path to you: Started with Ubuntu because a friend of mine had also dabbled in it, plus it has a large online community. Switched to Mint shortly thereafter, where I stayed for a while (more than a year). Currently on Fedora for the more recent packages, but sometimes I miss the familiar look & feel of the Cinnamon desktop environment (came from Windows and still use Windows for work).
On my gaming PC, I’ve gone from Windows to Pop_OS! to currently on Nobara (again, for the more recent packages).
Fedora 38, one year ago. I am on 39 now and had to do a reinstall. It has its problems, a lot of problems actually, but is still miles better than windows in my opinion
The first distro I tried was Red Hat 5 back in the late 1990s but I never got a GUI working so I guess the first one I used properly would have been Mandrake iirc. These days it’s Tumbleweed.
Tumbleweed ftw 😍🙌🏻
I used Ubuntu until PAE became required and then switched to either Puppy or DSL (tried them both, honestly don’t remember which I stuck with). Eventually got a new computer and used Fedora and Arch (btw) for years. I’ve recently switched to Debian on a machine I just don’t wanna be arsed with worrying about breaking.
Gentoo. I figured I could learn much more that way. It was true. The Wiki was excellent. Still is as far as I know.
Gentoo as a first distro is scary as fuck as a common person. How did you manage?
Any distro that’s well-documented is not a big deal to install and use. Never understood the big deal people used to make (still do sometimes? though I think it’s mostly ironic now) about Arch. I did my first install Arch when I was kinda a dumbass but I just read the wiki (very thorough, btw, still use that wiki nearly daily) and followed the instructions. Especially with Arch, the wiki is so informative it explains the things you don’t know so you understand what you’re doing even though when I first installed Arch I didn’t know what an fstab file was, what the initramfs was, etc. I’ll disclaim that I’ve not installed Gentoo myself, but I hear from people who have installed it that it’s very well documented, so makes sense that newcomers could install and use it if they’re willing to read and learn.
What would you say is a distro that is badly documented? Genuinely curious.
Tbh, as a current Artix user, I think the Artix documentation is lacking. Their full disk encryption installation guide doesn’t have any UEFI instructions and while they have a wiki, it definitely doesn’t cover a lot of the things that differ from systemd, which is the purpose of the Artix Wiki, ie to cover everything from Arch Wiki which needs to be changed without systemd. I get most of my info from the Artix forums. I even used the Arch wiki installation guide for installing Artix instead of Artix Wiki’s installation guide (it’s only like 3 commands that are different, they use basestrap instead of pacstrap and you install a different init system with basestrap, they use fstabgen instead of genfstab, and artix-chroot instead of arch-chroot (that last one should be obvious though)). I still like the distro ofc, otherwise I wouldn’t use it, but I think it’s lacking in good documentation. Maybe that’s just my perspective after being spoiled by the Arch Wiki for so long though lol. I can’t really speak for many distros though, I’ve not daily-driven many
Great. The Wiki explained everything I needed to do to get a working system.
Gentoo is on my to-do list to try out, going to set of a whole weekend to just sit down and enjoy the process of installing it. Have never touched it before, but always heard good things about it, as well as the things you learn along the way. Glad to hear you think so too!
it wasn’t my first distro but i did the full bootstrap install so it must have been pre 2005. ran it as my daily driver for years
Arch wiki has entered the chat
For me it was Ubuntu on a laptop in early 2000 my family was going to trash because it had viruses on it.
I started with Pop!_OS, because it was pretty and I was told that it was made for programmers. I was overwhelmed with the options and couldn’t get Twitch to work properly (because of missing codecs), so I switched over to ZorinOS, which helped me to familiarize myself with Linux. Later I returned to Pop!_OS.
Someday I got fed up with the major version updates, so I switched to Manjaro and later to Arch btw.
Slackware. About 1994 or so.
Same! With the stack of disks!
Luckily we could FTP
Look at fancy pants over here with ftp and internet access!
Slackware2 or maybe 3 in 95.
RHL4.x from 1998 . Looked at debian, but a local snob convinced me halfway through explaining “the debian way” to steer clear. Didn’t even learn of the validation glitch in the .deb format by then.
Now it’s Rocky. But if PCLinuxOS had a better installer (like a good kickstart) I’d be there in an instant. Its massive versatility in having so many versions of apps available without the appstream bullshit - it’s just Alternatives and proper naming - really makes it stand out.
Now let me packer some templates and I’m SO done with ELs and the shit RH has done to their crown jewels.
Sounds like me. I ordered it from a magazine and installed it from 3.5 floppy disks also. After that it was Debian and i used that for years.
My very first linux distro is Zorin OS since it is Windows like and heard it is more light weight. After using it for a while, it didn’t feel like more light weight to me so I switched back to Windows.
After some years later, I decided to ditch Windows completely and used Ubuntu 20.04 for about a year. When I broke Ubuntu after using about a year, I switched to Arch and still on Arch to this day.
Linux Mandrake in 1999. It was a bit rough and featured a very ugly KDE. I didn’t use KDE again until about 18 months ago, and it is now my desktop environment of choice.
Deepin since I heard good words about it.
It wasn’t good.
Ubuntu back in 2013 (I think?) to get the exclusive TF2 item. Good times! :D
Void. I was so excited when I booted into TTY. A blank canvas like never before.
