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
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.
BeOS ;)
I know, not Linux. But it was my first OS other than the one that came pre-installed.
Can’t remember exactly which was my very first Linux distro but probably Knoppix or another early live one.
My first “wipe Windows and install on bare metal” was PC-BSD. I know, again, not Linux.
And again, can’t remember exactly the very first “wipe Windows and install on bare metal” Linux, probably Puppy or Ubuntu.
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
Mandrake 9.2 (before the Mandriva rebranding)
Same with Mandrake, though I can’t remember what version number.
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…
deleted by creator
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?
Linux Mint
… or maybe it was Ubuntu, but it didn’t last long so I don’t really count it. Linux Mint stuck for a number of years.
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.
Suse 5 or 6. I think. Throw some Debian in there around that same time frame.
Slackware. In 1993.
You beat me by 1 year. I switched to slackware when windows 95 came out because I liked cli from ms dos 6.22
It was Ubuntu. Can’t remember which version but at the time they would mail you a cd if you requested one.
Same for me.
A friend in high school gave me one of these CD, I think it was 7.04.
Same here, though I remember it was 08.04 Hardy Heron for me. I still recall the default background too:
Debian. They mailed me the install media.
Slackware, to get away from the pink boys! Also there were only two or three distributions at the time.
Too many to remember since then.(Hail Eris!)
Tried ubunto with mint about 10 years back. My first actual daily driver was endeavoros about 1.5 years ago and it has stuck!
Using Hyprland as the DE
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 had 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.
