Linux

Debian 🥔

Mandrake Linux

Andromeda Linux around 2009. It had cool astronomy based theme and animation.

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.

My first was Ubuntu in a VM because everyone recommended it, I distro hopped in VMs until I just ended up using Mint in a VM almost exclusively. It was when I complained to someone about the issues with the VM when locking the laptop and they asked me “Why not just run that system as-is?” that I installed it for real.

I've also used Manjaro for half a year, a very minimal Arch+i3 install (without the install script because I wanted the “real experience”) for about 1.5 year, and dual booted Bazzite and Mint on my gaming PC for a year (it's just Mint now), all the while trying out other distros big and small on older hardware or in VMs.

I don't feel I've found “the one”, but somehow I keep coming back to Mint... Although, perhaps NixOS is it... Who knows?

Some random shitty distribution for netbooks.

Then Ubuntu 11.04 and I have very fond memories of it. But now Ubuntu sucks.

Using Debian 13 with KDE currently.

I actually wanted Arch but everyone was saying that you HAD to do a manual install first and I had been miserably failing at doing it in a WM for a few weeks. I had finally decided to try it directly on hardware so that I had no choice but to complete it if I wanted to use my laptop, and just as was about to burn the ISO on a USB stick the power went out and my hard drive died 😑 On a saturday evening, obviously...

All I had was a Haiku USB I had made to check it out, and a Linux Mint USB a friend lent me that I hadn't tried because I assumed I would hate it. So I used Haiku for about 30 minutes (let's say it had a few bugs), and Mint for the rest of the weekend and did, in fact, absolutely hate it (Windows PTSD 😭 ).

So until the computer store opened on Monday, I spend 48 hours browsing the web to find a better distro and when I got my new SSD I installed AntiX, because it was very light and likely to run well on my potato-grade laptop, it came without a DE and 7 different window managers to try (which seemed cool at the time, but I didn't actually try any of them except the default one IceWM and after a few weeks I installed i3 😅 ) and also because YouTube had convinced me that systemd was the Antechrist (thanks YouTube 😑 ).

After two months I decided to try Manjaro on my other laptop... it didn't go well : incompatible dependencies preventing updates, Nvidia + Wayland making games not display correctly, and if I had to fix all that manually what's the point I just might as well use regular Arch. So I gave up after 48 hours and decided to install Arch, and just as I booted from the Arch ISO the laptop died (fan malfunction) and I had to send it back 😑.

After three months, the third laptop, bought with the refund from the second one, did actually allow me to install Arch without throwing a fit 🥳 using archinstall to preserve my mental health this time.

Arch has been really great but I need to switch to a bigger SSD and I am probably going to try Nix because it seems really cool 🤩

I first tried Mandrake for a couple days in the late 9ps because I heard it was easy. It was definitely easy to brick my system and have no idea why!

So I switched to Slackware and never looked back. I'm still daily driving Slackware all these years later.

redhat 4.1 or maybe 5.2 back around 1996-1998 (plus a freebsd release around the same time). I got a pile of probably 15 discs from walnut creek and they were the only two I could get running. I didn't have internet access at the time.

I started with mint because of ppl recommending it. Absolutely hated it. Luckly I watched a YouTube video about installing arch. So then I tried it and loved it. Then manjaro for about 2 years. Then back to arch. Then finally Nixos, and I dont plan on ever switching again. I have Nixos on every system I own now, and a few friends machines. Those are just the main ones. I tried all the other popular ones out on my laptop. Except gentoo.

TLDR: Mint🙁>Arch😄>manjaro🙂>arch😄>NixOs😁

Mandrake

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn.

My first linux distribution was Linux From Scratch (LFS). I printed like 300 pages at the school library so I could run it at home. My first real distribution was Gentoo or Damn Small Linux.

It started with Red Hat 6.1 in 1999 and ended up with NixOS.

Manjaro -> openSuse tumbleweed -> Fedora (Desktop) and tuxedoOS (Laptop)

My first steps were with Debian 2.0 and a Suse Version from about the same time. But that was not very successful so I went back to Windows for about a year and then really got into Linux with Gentoo. I had a year of not much to do, had to wait a year to get into University, and I decided to install the complicated Linux Distribution that I could find.

Reasoning was: It will break a lot if it is so complicated, due to this I am forced to learn while repairing it.

Linux Mint XFCE, it was easy to setup and could run on my really old laptop.

Corel Linux.

Sadly, Ubuntu. I quickly moved on to debian...and ultimately landed with Arch, my true love for many years. I use Arch, btw.

Oof. I am pretty sure it was Mandrake in 97. I bounced around trying what was around before settling on Gentoo for a decade plus. Then both my laptop and desktop got too long in the tooth to make distcc even worthwhile and migrated to Arch. I figured it was the closest distro to Gentoo that I wouldn't have too many problems. I don't know howong it's been now, but I'm an Arch fangirl. I've installed it many times since on work computers as well. For remote systems though, it's always Debian stable.

Whatever Ubuntu was available in 2015. I only dabbled in Linux over the past 10 years. More seriously switching over in the last year or so.

I have Unraid as a server OS (Debian based, running a lot of docker containers and a couple VMs). Debian on my laptop. And Bazzite (fedora based) on my Lenovo Legion Go.

Still need to swap my gaming PC from windows. May try Bazzite on that as well. I've also tried Mint, Manjaro, and Zorin

I used slackware, btw

All the old timers are coming out. In the summer of ‘98 I switched to Red Hat Linux.

OpenSuse with compiz going hard on an old laptop

I came in just about as Debian Woody was coming out, in 2002. (Main reason I can even date it beyond "Idk, about 20 years ago?").

Tried Mandrake a while after that, often recommended as pretty much the equivalent of Linux Mint at the time in terms of noob friendliness. I did enjoy that but stuck with Debian for my main system for years, though.

The first one I saw was Debian 3.1 (Sarge). I was in school and our objective this time was installing debian + getting a working Xorg session. Never heard of Linux before, didn't get a working Xorg session, but wow man, there's something other than Windows and MacOS. I couldn't have imagined.

The first one I actually used on a desktop (laptop for school, in that case) was Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake).

I've tried oh so many different linux distributions over the years, I probably forgot most of them. Maybe some don't even exist anymore. My goal was always Arch Linux, having seen it on a schoolmates laptop. I really fell for the "here's a pretty minimum base, do whatever" thing.

In the end, I exclusively used Arch from 2020 until this year. Actually using Arch and reading the ArchWiki were probably what taught me most of what I know about linux in general and how things work.

I've been searching for a less DIY-solution which is still up-to-date (especially with kernels and mesa) and I landed on Fedora Workstation, which is what I'm currently using on my work latpop and desktop at home. I do miss some things from Arch, but Fedora has been pretty good to me and I, for the meantime, intend to stay here.

The first was about 1995-ish Redhat on school computers, after that was Suse on a 2000s laptop, and currently Mint+Mx on a self-built pc. Hardware support and ease of use has come a long way since then.

I bought one of those Guide to Linux books back in like 2008 that came with an Ubuntu install disc. Installed it on an old family PC but I didn't really know what I was doing so I didn't get far.

Then in college I used Mint on my desktop and Peppermint on my Acer Aspire netbook. Around graduation I bought a Chromebook and ran Xubuntu in Crouton.

Went a few years without Linux and recently dual-booted with Pop OS on my gaming PC. Feels good.

Ubunutu for a server in ~2019.

Arch for my workstation Jan 2025

Debian 3.1, but was not successful in getting X to work, but didn’t put a lot of effort into it. Then I got Mandrake running with X, but went back to Windows. On a small computer, I got FreeBSD running as a server but never used it, so that went away again. Knoppix a couple of times to recover data from failed Windows installations.

Yeah, it’s not until recently that I installed Debian 12 on a old work laptop and was very impressed. Now I’m on the fence of having a stable distribution or sumthin with newer packages. I love the philosophy of Debian and the wide usage on servers but Arch is personally also up my alley, however I have not used it at all.

Corel Linux in the late 90s, but didn't actually go full time until Ubuntu in 05,followed by arch for a few years, now on mint.

Ubuntu 8.10 in late 2008. while I didn't use Linux for that long due to a lack of understanding I did come back to it in in a few years to check out I think Ubuntu 10.04 in 2010 or and then Fedora 36 a few years ago and never plan to leave