What Was Your First Linux Distribution?

[danielnez1]

Red Hat 9 was my first distro, I really liked the Bluecurve theme for GNOME 2.

[JX8p]

Well, this is going back a bit. Hmm. I'm not actually sure. Was it Mandrake? I definitely remember installing Mandrake back in 2004-2005 or so. I am sure I remember trying Knoppix once as well...

Eventually, I tried Ubuntu in 2007, and felt it somewhat overrated. Wireless drivers were a particular nightmare. I moved to Fedora 9 in late 2008 and that was where I actually settled down and started learning.

[doom_Oo7]

Red Hat 5.2, I had found it in my local supermarket, only time in my life there was a Linux there. Sadly it never worked with my computer because it has a Geforce 2 and at the time RH was incompatible with graphical accleration. I was 9 years old, so I ditched it.
Then, Mandrake Linux, but it sucked so much. I was about 11.

Then, when I was 15 and I wanted to try again, Ubuntu. I stayed for a year of two, and then I decided to go Debian, because it pissed me off. I'm now deeply in love with Debian ^^

[pythoner]

My Math Teacher bought SuSE 7.0 back in the day. I asked him to copy the Installations CDs because he had a CD Burner (So Hardcore). He was overly concerned with the fact that linux is free because he wanted a bit for Burning the CDs. Basically he thought it was illegal to charge me money for the CDs because SuSE was free
I then installed it in Textmode (not enough ram. Just 16 MB) and i needed several attempts but then i got it. I configured X and so much more without the Help of the Internet and without a Manual. I was so proud . I still remeber the Red Backround with the Bombs when you logged in as root. I loved KDE 1
Second proudest moment was finding some Memory on the Junkyard to get enough Ram to get the Graphical Yast install. Heaven.

And to be clear: When my Classmates got like Pentium 2 Machines i was Stuck with a 166Mhz Intel P1. My father refused to buy me something new. Money wasnt the Issue, but for him my Obsession with Computers is the worst thing (it even Tops Alcohol) ever Happened. So my only way to get new Stuff was to search the Junkyard (and use my very small allowance to buy some stuff).

Since then Linux never left my Side.

[xeekei]

My first Linux distro was OpenSUSE 10.2 KDE in early 2007. So I'm a youngling. ;D But I fell in love quickly. I also realised that dual-booting was a better solution. At first I completely erased my Windows install.

I switched to Ubuntu-based distros around 2010, and a year later Arch Linux. Been there ever since.

[leonmaxx]

My first linux distros was Red Hat 5 and Corel Linux in late 90s.

[BreezeDM]

Corel Linux, then SuSE Linux. I stopped using Linux for a while until I started writing software for Linux as the target. I used Fedora for a while because it was our main target and then switched to Ubuntu when that was the target system. I think I will switch to Debian Testing because of all the Ubuntu BS lately.

[moilami]

Corel Linux, then SuSE Linux. I stopped using Linux for a while until I started writing software for Linux as the target. I used Fedora for a while because it was our main target and then switched to Ubuntu when that was the target system. I think I will switch to Debian Testing because of all the Ubuntu BS lately.

A good choise.

Debian is better than the reputation it holds novadays. Software maybe in general has matured and feature bloated so much so that I don't have "outdated software" issues except with the kernel because of the new hardware. The kernel I upgraded from backports.

Debian is also as good as the reputation says. Things just work, no need to fix and hack anything.


Edit: Forgot to say I am using the STABLE Debian...and yes! That is for the desktops :O

[MartinN]

Slackware.

[belal1]

Knoppix!

My very first linux distro was Knoppix. I still remember the day...

I had gone to a relative's house who would sell burnt copies of linux distro's. He had a bunch of different linux distro's lying around his room with the famous sharpie hand written labels. So I picked up a CD that had the label "KNOPPIX" and thought it was some ethnic music cd to which he laughed and said "take it home and put it in your PC and restart to CD". I did just that and fell in love with the console screen that had colorful text scrolling and the little penguin.


...those were the good ol' days


and just to give a bit more background: I did try linux twice before that. The first one was a distro that was included with a Mac Addict magazine (can't remember the name) and the second time was I believe Linux 2000 or something like that which would boot from within windows. But at that time, I was eager to try a Linux software and was dumbfounded by the hierarchy of linux "folders" to which I could find absolutely no programs other than some text files and some files that were .bin's. So KNOPPIX was really a game changer for me and showed me the real power of Linux, it's ease of use and it's many programs that "just worked".