What Was Your First Linux Distribution?

[Jeffo]

I tried some version of Slax firstly....then others like Ubuntu, OpenSuSe, and so on..

[Huenengrab]

My first time with Linux was SUSE 7.something, on KDE. But I wasn't ready yet and couldn't handle it. Also I was gaming a lot more than nowadays.

A few years later I installed Debian Sarge on my laptop and thanks to Google it remained there. Later, there was Ubuntu Dapper, which I upgraded to Edgy and Feisty, until I switched to Fedora 7, after it's release.

I'm happy so far and can't complain.

[hdas]

hop stop

started with red hat 8 in 2003. (i was such a n00b that i had struggled with my first cli experience to install the nvidia drivers for my onboard geforce2. but that was a bit hard for a n00b - doing a text mode install, all to get into a console, and learn 'rpm -ivh' and 'vi /etc/X11/XF86Config' to see even my first linux desktop!). then red hat 9 and fedora core 1. shifted over to mandrake 9.1 for quite sometime in 2004. slackware 9 for late 2004. then debian testing/unstable for almost first half of 2005. late 2005 - slackware 10.1/10.2. very late in 2005, went for the kill - gentoo 2005.1-r1. thereafter, no looking back - no hopping. gentoo all along. an absolute workhorse os . i feel so much nirvana at the moment (2007.0), that i am planning not to ever even upgrade my gentoo , let alone distro hopping . install and forget. time for work. to share some of my nirvana :

http://137.110.115.18/gentoo/neon-iso/

[Thetargos]

My very first run with Linux was with Slackware 3, way back. I was able to get X running, with a barebones X WM session. Then moved to Red Hat 5, and since I couldn't have Internet on Linux (damned win-modems), it suited me just fine.

[Throwing Strikes]

I first discovered Linux when a substitute teacher came to my summer HTML class I was taking. I saw he was using a OS on his laptop I've never seen before. I asked about it and he said it was Slackware Linux. After class I had my mother drove me to the book store and I picked up Redhat Linux 7.3 for Dummies and I installed it on my laptop that night. After that I was hooked. Alittle bit later I got Suse Linux 9.3 pro as a surprise birthday gift from my mom and I've been using Suse ever since. Right now I'm running OpenSuse 10.3.

Its just so crazy how if I never had that substitute teacher I probably would of never discovered Linux way back in 2001.

[Mota_boy]

Hmm it was red hat what i use little bit after my fater was get it, i didn`t know what to do and basicly dad told me everything what and how to do , well now years later i start to use after several distro experimentations, suse 10.0 -> and i`m also running right now openSUSE 10.3
And thanks to dad to push me and helping me,(since he is guide guru) i learning all time new great thinks about linux and other thinks about computer and os on.

Ps. sorry my possible rusty english

[Draco-LVNH]

Mine was also Mandrake, the version 9.0, i still remember... it took me 3 days to install it because i didn't know about Linux and my hard drive on those times was about to die, i used it for about 3 days and downloaded Mandrake 9.2, ohh those times, only remembering make me feel younger now i have been with Gentoo since April 1st 2005, well, i also think that since Ubuntu exist most of the users use it or has been their first distro, so welcome to the Linux world all new users, let all of us be a big family and do not start distro/desktop/editor/shell/etc wars

[elcasey]

The first GNU/Linux distro I ever used was probably Red Hat 4 around the end of 1998. I got hold of some old first-gen Pentiums and enjoyed running Linux on them. Unfortunately in those days if you didn't have an external serial modem you probably weren't getting online from Linux...and I never managed to.

I got broadband in 1999, but it still soured me for awhile. I tried some other distros over the years, including Mandrake in 2001 and Debian about the same time, but never stuck with them. As another user mentioned, I was also gaming a lot more in those days.

After I moved back to the US from Russia in 2006 I decided to give this "new" distro I'd heard about called Ubuntu a try and it's been my primary OS since. I used a G4 iBook I purchased in mid-2005 as my only PC while I lived in Russia in 2005-2006 and I was happy with it and happy that I wasn't using Windows...and then I discovered the free software movement.

I have to keep XP on my desktop for gaming (I had a lot of Wine issues until Gutsy and most of my favorite games still won't run), but my server and laptop are both Ubuntu-only.

I won't be switching back...

[MU_Engineer]

The first Linux I ever used was Knoppix and the first one I'd ever installed was a 2.2-kernel Debian. It was not a good choice and I installed SUSE 9.1 over it some time later.

[Gottxxc]

The first distributions I tried were Suse and Red Hat.

Now I'm using (K)Ubuntu