Redhat.
Stuck with redhat on the server, had another server with Gentoo, and then Mepis and Debian for desktop.
Now days its arch and fedora.
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Redhat.
Stuck with redhat on the server, had another server with Gentoo, and then Mepis and Debian for desktop.
Now days its arch and fedora.
Knoppix on live cd which I installed later on hdd but a few days later switched to Mandrake, I think it was... 2001? Good times, good times. There has been a lot of distrohopping since then.
Debian 💖
Ubuntu, before Unity and eventually Gnome desktop 🫢
Yggdrasil in 1998 or so.
Deepin in 2019 or so. Yeah don't ask...
Mandrake -> Whatever came on the Linux Magazine CD -> Backtrack -> Arch
My first Linux install was Slackware sometime in the late 90's. I didn't really use it though, as I never managed to get it working with my dial-up Internet. Stupid winmodems.
The first distribution I actually used was Mandrake. Others I've used since then include Suse, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Manjaro, and EndeavourOS. I've landed on using Manjaro on both my main desktop and laptop, though I have secondary machines running Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, and EndeavourOS.
Yellow Dog Linux ~2004 or so
I inherited a Sony Vaio in 2009 which was really slow with windows, but unsurprisingly was ok once I swapped that out for Ubuntu 9.04. Took me a while to get the brightness up as the buttons didn't respond, but I kept that machine running for 7 years, the HDD controller died in the end so it stopped detecting any HDD.
Mandriva. Yes, old and no longer exist. Forst distro i started to to use permantly on desktop is Fedora. The server has always been Ubuntu since the Mandriva time when I first learned about Linux. I think 2005. CS server etc. Desktop was 2024 when MS screwed up Windows too much
Turbo Linux in the late 90s. It didn't go well.
Later I gave Redhat a shot - 5.0 or 5.1, I forget. Stayed with RH and now Fedora.
Red Hat Linux, about 2002 from a CD I got from somewhere.
CentOS
Slackware in the early mid-nineties. But of course there was other Unix variants before that. And what was it called, OS/2 or something like that?
Red Hat, back when that was a distro. It was a long time ago now and my toying with it didn't last long; and began an obsession with hardware RAID…
Slackware in 1996(?), then SuSE when they came up.
I then tried a bit every once in a while, but really never got fully comfortable with it on a desktop.
A few weeks ago I bought a new Desktop PC, which is now running with the Arch-fork #endeavouros and I really love it.
Pop!_OS in early 2023, I used it for about 3 weeks before my bootloader broke so bad even Pops own recovery tool couldn't fix it. I went back to Windows 10 for another month before trying again with EndeavourOS and haven't had to use Windows since.
Funnily the thing that triggered me to install Linux on a spare SSD was I couldn't play Battlefield 4 on my Windows install anymore because the EA app randomly stopped working even after reinstalling the whole thing, Got the EA app and BF4 working on Pop within an hour.
Mandrake! It was a fucking disaster! Fortunately, I came back later using Kubuntu and had a much better experience.
The first I used for any extended period of time was fedora.
Mklinux on my powermac G3
openSUSE
It was Ubuntu 14.10 (still had Unity) installed on a Mac mini to run a Plex server. I actually really liked Ubuntu then, it was all new and very different to Windows. I had it hooked up to a TV and used the DE to maintain it I.e console, update app etc.
There was this really annoying error that would occur every time it would boot which drove me to look elsewhere. Ended up trying Arch and didn't put a DE on there because I started to get comfortable with the terminal and SSHing in.
I eventually installed Arch on my desktop and dual booted for a couple years using XFCE. Once I discovered KDE there was no going back.
I haven't used Windows on any of devices for years, all running Fedora and KDE.
I guess it was suse or red hat somewhen end of 90s or beginning of 2000. Anyhow I didn't like KDE back in the days and haven't touched it since. Although the screenshots I've seen of the latest kde looked kind of good. But I'm mostly running arch or manjaro today and prefer gnome or some tiling manager like herbstluftwm.
Linux Mint. I made a dumb decision to install it right away thinking it's just like Windows. Boy was i wrong. Took me years until I felt ready to switch to Linux.
I use Arch BTW
genderfluid fetch spotted!!!! also im not sure which was first but i use arch and openbsd ;3
Ye, gender-fluid human living life over here! 😁 ❤️
In the fall of 2006 my friend in high school (shout-out to treyx.net) donated to the Ubuntu people and they sent him a stack of Ubuntu live CDs, must have been 5.10 or 6.06. I remember being so excited when I got it up and running on my computer
Ubuntu, installed on a 256 gb flash drive as an experiment back in 2020. My first daily driver distro was Mint last year, then KDE Neon, and finally Kubuntu today
Distro doesn't matter to me anymore, I just like the Plasma DE and will use anything that uses it. Eventually I'm gonna have to try Arch with it and make my own Steam machine
redhat 5.5
debian
Ubuntu. For Work purpose in 2020 as a development VM.
Since then i moved privately to Zorin and now to Nobara. At Work it still is Ubuntu for me, but hopefully i will soon change positions and can shelve that stuff.
My parents had some of the ancient ubuntu (or ubuntu based?) distros that they let me play with, I myself tried Manjaro in 2017 for a month (very scuffed back then), and then full Arch Linux since March or Apr 2021
Haven't bothered switching since, but if I did, I'm lightly curious on the NixOS hype. Why yes, I just installed Arch Linux for the archbtw, but also it feels like it just works for me at this point (yknow, till the next fuckup akin to the grub2 fiasco)
Ubuntu 16.04, dual booted on my laptop before I knew how much of a hassle that could be! Fortunately, never had any of the infamous issues.
I grew up a windows user, as was my father before me. I first started with Linux in my teens, initially on Raspbian as I was gifted a raspberry pi 2b with a camera, and I wanted to try goofing around with python and computer vision (which was the style at the time.) Once I entered university, I dual booted Windows 7 and Linux Mint, since my professor suggested moving to Linux for C++ homework to make things simpler. I was scared of jumping to a new desktop OS due to my upbringing, so I couldn't abandon Windows, not yet anyway. Following that I had a cheap Summer fling with Kali as it was a requirement for a cyber security course I took. This replaced my Mint install. After college I got into self-hosting, and my server ran Debian for stability (and still does to this day), however I was still scared of leaving the safety of my littlr Windows garden I called home. But then Windows betrayed me by putting ads on my taskbar, and I got fed up. I installed EndeavorOS on my main machine which was a laptop. I immediately fell head over heels for the AUR, and not needing a deep understanding of linux during the install was a plus. I got comfy with the ins and outs of linux over the next year and a half or so, and when I finally went to build myself a new desktop PC, I made the switch to Arch. It's been great, and I felt like I understood all the decisions I made during the install. That was 6 months ago. If Arch ever fails me catastrophically,(which would be pretty hard as I am using an os snapshot manager, and backing those snapshots up to my server) I will move to either Debian or Mint for stability, as I am kind of tired of hopping around at this point.