Linux

Ubuntu. Now on Linux Mint XFCE

Ubuntu sometime around 2008 or 2009 after there was an install disk in a PC magazine. I didn't use it for long and went back to windows, but I experimented again with Debian a few years later and these days I daily Manjaro.

Mandrake 9 around 2004

Ubuntu 4.10. Soon will be my 20th anniversary with Linux.

DiLinux. You drop a bunch of files in a fat16 folder, and run a chainloader that chestbursts out of DOS. It used the umsdos filesystem, which was a short-lived thing that lived on FAT and scribed all of the other needed fs features into bonus hidden files.

Slackware

Lubuntu was the first distro I remember installing on a low-end netbook.

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.

Ubuntu back in 2013 (I think?) to get the exclusive TF2 item. Good times! :D

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).

ETA over Christmas of 2023 I installed Mint w/ Xfce on my mom’s new (used) laptop and themed it to look and feel like OS X. She knows it’s not a Mac, and I had to teach her some new workflows, but more than a year later she’s getting along well with it. Saved her a grand in the process.

I started with Crunchbang in its final years. It was a great introduction to Linux, to be honest. It was also a very solid distro, as it was Debian-based.

But, sadly, it eventually folded. It still has a spiritual sequel in BunsenLabs but, in the meantime, I'd moved to Arch (btw).

my first time installing linux was ubuntu, because it was what i'd seen a friend using. i meant to install it to dual boot with windows, but instead ended up wiping everything from the family PC, which was very distressing, and my dad quickly reinstalled windows. this was back around '06 i think.
in '08, i first installed linux on my own system and actually got to use it. i'm not sure what i installed first, cause i did a fair bit of distrohopping, but i settled on ubuntu mate for a while.

Pop!_OS in mid 2021. Switched to Fedora GNOME in mid 2022, haven't looked back, but am looking forward to Fedora COSMIC.

Ubuntu back when it was decent lol. I picked it because everyone said that was a beginner-friendly distro, and I had already used it anyway as my parents had an Ubuntu ASUS laptop when I was little (though atp I didn't really remember much from using that laptop).

Deepin since I heard good words about it.

It wasn't good.

My first non-family PC was a Acer netbook with Linpus [Lite] Linux. I was 12, so my first priority was trying to get Rollercoaster Tycoon to work. Eventually I realized how silly that prospect was and instead managed to install Windows XP via a bootable USB. I used XP for a while until Vista came out, and then I gave Linux Mint a try and really liked it. These days I'm using NixOS and Fedora.

Slackware 1.2. It was easier to install than Debian at the time.

Arch was the only thing I could get working on my E200AH when I started. It's a weird SoC x86_64, with some non-free drivers. Now I can run anything, but the default with arch was figuring out what to do... Debian installer didn't have a mouse and the keyboard didn't work right and I just got stuck. Arch installer dropped me into a TTY and made me figure it out

The first I tried was Ubuntu 10.10 but for reasons I don’t remember anymore I‘ve decided to rather install Linux Mint 10.

Used Mint for quit a while, then I had my distrohopping phase before finally setteling on plain Debian a couple of years back.

Slackware. 3.x. I was studying computer science and wanted to have a similar system at home as in the lab.

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.

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.

My first distro was PopOS! I choose it because I heard it had Nvidia drivers pre-installed into the image which sounded nice, also having the support from a bigger company that know Linux. However, I've distrohopped a lot since then, probably 2 years ago now. These days I'm finding myself liking Tumbleweed the most, and I have tried a lot of different distributions..

Debian Sarge which was testing back then. Woody was stable.

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

I think the first one I installed was Debian back in '97 when I was 12. I think my dad helped a bunch, but I can't really remember stuff from back then very well.

My initial thought was that it was gentoo which I used as my principal OS for close to ten years. I don't know how many times I reinstalled, but enough that I basically had it by memory. Taught me to keep my home dir on a separate partition.

These days I mostly live in windows because AutoCAD is a part of my professional life, but I dual boot popos on weekends. Unless kernel updates break my displaylink docking station...

My first was Mandriva, it was around 2008.

I'm fairly sure it was Scientific Linux because that was the distro used in the labs of my first programming course.

messed around some with slack 0.99.

but first one to actually see some regular usage was buzz, which progressed over time through to potato.

and the first to get its own dedicated box long-term was woody.

Knoppix 3.2 Live CD 2003

I ordered a laptop (five years ago) that had Ubuntu/Gnome preinstalled, but soon replaced it with Debian/Mate, mainly because of what I read about it on Distrowatch. My new laptop (one year old) shipped bare metal and runs Fedora/Cinnamon.

Fedora 6 back in 2007-8 as a part of my CompTIA A+ training. It wasn't required but my instructor wanted some of us more advanced students to experience a life outside of Windows.

fedora 38 KDE Plasma. still using it today

I started with trying distros in live mode out of general curiosity. My machine had a ton of data and didn't support dualbooting so I didn't want to install something. Then my Windows license broke and I decided that pirating is not great so I wanted to install a distro. I liked Manjaro the most(I know I know but hey back then I didn't know about its issues) but couldn't install it because of a wrong boot device mode (lol I was an absolute noob then). So I flashed KDE Neon and installed it after finally figuring out the BIOS/UEFI stuff (was too lazy to reflash Manjaro lol). It wasn't much of a conscious choice. I just installed one of the KDE distros I liked pretty much the same after I couldn't install Manjaro but that probably saved me a few hours of troubleshooting so that's good. KDE was a requirement though. I did want a Windows-looking distro so my older family members could use it. After that I tried many distros. Now I'm on Cachy just because of the significantly smoother experience (optimization rules!). It's unstable though so I don't recommend it