I’m new to #Lemmy and making myself feel at home by posting a bit!
My first Linux distribution was elementary OS in early March 2020. Since then, I’ve tried Manjaro, Arch Linux, Fedora, went back to Manjaro, and since early January 2023, I’ve landed on Debian as my home in the #Linux world.
What was your first Linux distro?
Ubuntu
Mint cinnamon
Slackware 3.1.
Fedora
Yggdrasil In the mid 90s.
I tried to set up arch, realized I didn’t want that kind of work for a gaming setup and swapped to debian, and i’ve used that since lol
Ubuntu, as they used to send free CD packs to distribute. Was fun booting into live CD on computers.
I used slackware, btw
Oh yeah well I still boot Bell Labs Unix that I load off of punch cards
^^^That’s ^^^awesome ^^^that ^^^you ^^^used ^^^Slackware, ^^^I’m ^^^just ^^^joking
Slackware was the shit in the 90’s. I bounced around slack, Debian, and a bunch of other floppy based distros. My first install was onto my Amiga, before I got a new pc. Good times
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.
Fedora is a pretty damn solid distro, I like it a lot
Yes it is. Though after using arch for a few years, I miss the abundance of packages.
If a package wasn’t in the official arch repos, it was probably in the AUR. If you use arch, you don’t need other package managers like homebrew on linux.
Probably Knoppix on some Laptop my dad brought home at around 2001-2002. Still remember tinkering with it and having no idea what I am doing haha. Good times.
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
Chrome OS, obviously. jk
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.
OpenSuse with compiz going hard on an old laptop







