Mine was Knoppix because back in the day Libraries used to let you borrow all sorts of computer software and games and that’s what they had and I was stuck on dialup lol
Ubuntu, I was drawn in with the 3D cube and the ability to play games. The only game I had compatible then was TF2. So I left.
Back to it full time now, almost all games work, and on Mint
Damn, how long did you stick with Knoppix?
I had two firsts—I messed around with Ubuntu around high school or so, but I don’t count that because I was only curious and hand no intention to actually try and use it for any decent stretch of time.
Second, which I consider the “true first”, was Fedora, and man was it dope. It’s the distro that made me realize Linux is a lot more accessible than I had thought.
Debian because that was the one I had read most about. Then I tried many other distros, some for years, until now when I am once again a Debian user…
I don’t really remember, I think Ubuntu? My girlfriend installed it for me in 2010 but I went back to Windows after a year or two. I think I started messing with Linux again around 2013 and have been on (K)Ubuntu for a while before eventually trying Arch. I’m on Endeavor now.
Most of my servers are Debian
Slackware on a whole lot of lettered floppy disks.
Slackware was my first linux distro, but would Solaris or SunOS count?
No, but bonus credit. I went Vax VMS, DEC Alpha Dux, Slackware, slowaris (x86 Solaris), Redhat, then LFS, Gentoo, RHEl Solaris 9, and then eventually a little of everything else.
Yea very similar progression, I ended on Debian (so far), and Bazzite for gaming.
Damn Small Linux (Knoppix-based) which was the gateway drug to Fedora Core 4 on an old Pentium III that was lying arouind.
Red Hat for a few years and then Debian. Never had any reason to move from Debian.
I still have a 9" netbook with Debian 12 Bookworm on it. Sadly, it’s 32 bit so won’t be getting Debian 13 Trixie. Maybe Void?
ubuntu because it was marketed as the distro newcomers should choose.
Nowadays you can’t go wrong with one of the big ones but fedora with ublue has the first mover advantage
Tried Ubuntu 8.04 when it was still new. Said egh, that’s cool, and moved on, until around 2015 I’ve installed Mint on more permanent basis, got frustrated with it a week later, and figured out Arch instead
It was Fedora. Most of the recommendations for beginners at the time were for Ubuntu or derivatives and I was being contrary just because I could.
Corel Linux. It didn’t last long because it didn’t play my games.
My first “test” was Conectiva. I lasted a few days with it, then ditched it. (I think this was in 2002? Conectiva would eventually merge with Mandrake.)
Then a few years later I went for Kurumin. It was a local Knoppix derivative, focusing on ease of use. Eventually Ubuntu became popular enough that Kurumin’s maintainer saw no reason to continue the project.
Xandros baby! But I was too young to understand what I was doing. I had one single mp3 file that I played over and over, and chatting with my friends on MSN via Pidgin. It didn’t last long, but I remember it fondly
I dipped my toe with Fedora, but that didn’t last. My real commitment with Linux started with Ubuntu.
Red Hat Linux 7.3 (2002)
Tried it to install a few months ago on 86Box and couldn’t figure it out to setup network card.
Today everything is mostly plug & play, back then was a pain to setup graphical server, network
