Simple question. Which distribution was your introduction?
For me, it was SLS Linux in '92-93, followed relatively naturally by Slackware, which was followed by Redhat.
Mandrake Linux 6.5. At the time I was drawn to it because they had a version that worked with the sims game.
Slackware here, and I still use it! Tried several alternatives but I just keep going back.
Slackware and then SuSE 7.2, I think it was.
Red hat Linux which was followed by slack sometime back in the 90s.
My first I used was Slackware back in 2002 on a 486 with a 250MB disk. Wasn’t easy when you have to compile half the software and there’s basically nor enough room for the build environment. This was on a small test and development PC I used whilst at uni.
When I went all in on my desktop and waved Windows goodbye I used Ubuntu as that’s what I’d had good experience with on my headless VMs.
Now running EndeavourOS and love it.
I just flashed back to running my first Linux box and struggling to get X Windows working with a miniscule amount of RAM and a swap partition.
I’m thinking I had 1 MB RAM on that machine. I can’t wrap my head around that. It just seems impossible. I do remember my wife bought me 16MB RAM as an anniversary present after that, and I was excited by how much easier everything was with so much memory.
I think the 16MB was around $1000.00 at the time.
Ubuntu around 2006-2007, not sure the exact one I used.
Mandrake Linux 6.5. At the time I was drawn to it because they had a version that worked with the sims game.
It was around 2001 and I started by dual booting Windows with Red Hat, don’t remember which version. Eventually I dropped Windows and dropped the dual boot and switched from Red Hat to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu and Kali almost at the same time
As a daily driver, Manjaro. It was a lot more stable than people would have you believe.
When I was still dual-booting with Windows, I used Ubuntu Server 14.04 for university stuff - I SSH’d into my home PC for programming classes. Needless to say, I was the stereotypical Linux dickhead (and didn’t even use Arch at the time, btw).
Linux Mint in like 2018. Now i use Debian.
Slackware 3.0, so must have been late 1995 to early/mid 1996. It was included with the book Linux Unleashed, I believe.
I recall having to rebuild the kernel to get sound drivers working (voxware, if I recall). I can’t remember if they were included with the kernel, or if I had to patch it. I followed the directions in the book, presumably including updating LILO, and it actually worked. I think that if I broke the kernel, there’s a good chance I’d’ve given up on Linux at that point, so good thing it worked first try!
My first distro was Manjaro. It was really cool, but also I remember having some trouble getting things to work on it without super extensive troubleshooting.
OpenBSD on the Amiga in 95-96 or so.
Mandrake Linux 6.5. At the time I was drawn to it because they had a version that worked with the sims game.
