Where, and when, did you start using Linux? Where are you now?

jjhanger , 5 months ago

4-5 years ago. Started because my one machine won’t get security updates from Microsoft and my main machine isn’t eligible for the Windows 11 update.

Started on Ubuntu and then did some heavy distro hopping. I’ve ended up preferring only 2 distros; Debian and Arch. There’s plenty of others that I like but those are my top 2.

hellvolution , 5 months ago

Started in Brazil, at home, in 1998, using Conectiva Linux (a Brazilian version of Red Hat on steroids); migrated to Slackware in 2000-2001, and then to Debian, in early 2003. Still using Debian in 2024! 🧡🫶🍺 I use Linux for everything, from desktops/multimedia/blender/daw/games (I used to play WoW on Linux back in 2004-2005; hahaha; was a pain to tune it + wine) to routers, to servers… I loved my old Linux mobiles too (Nokia N900 & Nokia N9)! My N9 is still working (but I don’t use it anymore)! 🧡

SandbagTiara2816 , 5 months ago

I started around 2018, using crouton to run Ubuntu on a Chromebook so I could have better functionality. I went back to Windows for a while, then I started using Pop!OS as my daily driver last year. I still don’t know if I love it, but I’m sticking with Linux of some flavor going forward.

chitak166 , 5 months ago

Freshman year of college, about 11 years ago.

Been using Manjaro exclusively for about 3 years.

Jakeroxs , 5 months ago

I was about 13, parents were getting divorced, house was being shortsaled, mom had moved out already and took the main computer with her, dad got a really old Windows XP Dell laptop (had a red nubbin) from a friend to use, it ran so extremely slow on XP already (literally would take minutes to load a video and it was choppy doing just that) I knew Vista or 7 couldn’t run on it so I looked online for other OSes that might work.

Landed on Linux mint, got that bad boy set up in my little sisters (now empty) room as it was in the corner where I could reach my neighbor friend’s wifi. I watched so much Bleach/Naruto that summer lol

Luckily I had setup that neighbor friends wifi with DDWRT so I knew the pw :P

MasterNerd , 5 months ago

I started messing around with Linux when I was ~15. I was trying to install it on an old laptop so I could actually use it. I started with Debian before moving to Linux mint. Eventually I bought a raspberry pi and started to tinker with that and made my own website for shits and giggles. Eventually, I kinda stopped tinkering with Linux for a while

Flash forward a few years and my job has a piece of software that boots into a live gentoo environment in order to perform hard drive wiping, and I got a lot more familiar with the Linux command line (bash in this case) as I had to do a lot of troubleshooting as well as testing as I was in technical support and then later QA. This was also my first experience with VI, as I had to edit configuration files while inside of the live environment.

At that point, I started to experiment with Linux again, and even managed to install arch on my laptop. I did end up switching to Manjaro as my daily driver, as I couldn’t be assed to spend enough time to get arch working how I needed. I also now have an Ubuntu server (I know) that I use as a media and game server, and continue to daily drive manjaro though I’m planning on switching to EndeavorOS soon.

mutter9355 , 5 months ago

Around late 2017 I think. I was a first year university student. I bought a new laptop with Windows 10 when I started uni, but Windows would break with just about every other update. Eventually I was fed up with it and I wanted to try an alternative OS, so I installed Linux Mint next to my Windows installation.

I quickly found myself using it more than Windows, especially since a lot of software I had to use for university was significantly easier to install on Linux (think LaTeX). Quickly, it got to the point where I only used Windows as a gaming OS.

About half a year into this “experiment”, my Windows 10 decided to nuke itself, again. This time the network driver wasn’t working, which is annoying af to fix, so I didn’t for a long time. Also in 2018 gaming on Linux got a lot better, with Proton becoming a thing around that time. Even when I eventually got around to fixing my Windows installation, I found myself not really using it.

Eventually got into a distrohopping phase, used Fedora for quite a while, but right now I settled on Debian with Gnome as my DE. It’s not the most “exciting” setup, but I found that to be a good thing actually, because it allows me to get the most work done.

Evotech , 5 months ago

Fucking still at home

bigkahuna1986 , 5 months ago

2005-ish I took an intro to UNIX course at my college (which was just Linux obv). Around 2007 I made the switch full time to Ubuntu.

pbjamm , 5 months ago

Slackware on floppy disks back in 19-dickity-three. A friend at university introduced me to it and I installed it on my 386sx. Was a hell of a chore, but once I got it all all working it felt amazing. Been using it off and on both personally and professionally ever since. Sadly most of my professional work in recent times is MS based but c’est la vie.

LemonLord , 5 months ago

I start with Ubuntu 3 years ago and now I am Emacs. That’s all I want and all you can get. For me it’s better to have an easy linux. But I think Ubuntu, now I have Kubuntu, is too slow on my laptop. So next time I am planing to do mint linux xfce. I only need a fast booting linux to start Emacs. And few programs more. Arch Linux is too elite for me. 🤓

61ennepi , 5 months ago

@LemonLord @hai

Linux is easy. If you want a lean Ubuntu distro try Ubuntu Mate (or Ubuntu XFCE).

I abandoned KDE many years ago and moved to gnome, and then when gnome started mimicking cellphones I stayed with Gnome-old-school MATE.

fratermus , 5 months ago

In the early 90s I was running a BBS on DesqView over DOS and was annoyed by the limitations. My older hardware didn’t have grunt or RAM (SIPP at $50/MB) to run OS/2 like the big dogs. I also had nearly no money (grad student).

I started experimenting with MINIX, and from there to linux. IIRC I started with Slackware, flirted with Red Hat, then found Debian and it was true lurve. Since that time I’ve generally run servers on Debian stable and workstations on Debian testing.

Diplomjodler3 , 5 months ago

I used Unix for the first time 1989 in university. Windows was hardly even a thing then and Linux certainly wasn’t. Then I used both Windows and various Unix flavors throughout my working life. In the late nineties we first started using SUSE Linux in a project so that was my first direct hand-on experience with it. I wasn’t terribly impressed. In my last job before my current one we had AIX so I had to use that. Then I exclusively used Windows for a couple of years after changing jobs. But I’ve been growing increasingly frustrated with the enshittification so about two years ago I finally made the jump and all my private systems are on Linux Mint now. I’m never going back, unless they open source the whole thing or something.

I_Am_Jacks_____ , 5 months ago

In 1993, a guy I knew had a Linux server running in his dorm room. I think it was a 0.9x kernel. He dialed into the University network and I was able to telnet in through my own dial up connection to the University. He was running Slackware.

Within a couple months, I downloaded all 30+ 1.44 diskette images and built my own Slackware server. In that time I used Slackware and Red Hat (which then became Fedora before RHEL became a thing). Now I’ve pretty much settled on Debian for servers and Arch for desktop/laptop systems.

Eldritch , 5 months ago

Yep. Came across it in college in 94. Early slack as well. Went through the rite of passage of installing over the pre existing OS accidentally. Bye bye windows 3.11 lol. But got it all figured out and learned a lot in the process. Distro hopped a lot over the years but eventually settled on Debian on my servers and arch distros for my workstations.

the16bitgamer , 5 months ago

2009 computer class in school. Buddy of mine was showing off these computers you could put together yourself, then showing me this cool operating system that has desktops with a 3d cube to change the workspace.

2024 laptop has Linux on it for the last 2 years, and I am waiting for the right excuse to migrate my desktop too.