For me it was:

Windows (for many years) -> Ubuntu (for a year) -> Arch Linux (for half a year) -> Void Linux (literally 2 days) -> Artix Linux with runit (a month) -> Gentoo Linux (another month) -> Debian (finally, I don’t plan on changing it).

Also, when trying to switch from Gentoo to Debian, I fucked up all my data with no backup.

What was your journey?

EDIT: Added Windows

  •  ssm   ( @ssm@lemmy.sdf.org ) 
    15•23 days ago

    Copying this from another thread that was basically the same question, but didn’t get much attention

    Started on Arch Linux for some reason back in 2016, I just decided to throw out my Windows and install it (Don’t really remember what was going through my head, or why I wanted to install Linux, other than I was reading the r/linux subreddit wiki at the time). I was trapped in a TTY trying to install the thing for maybe a week, and after 9 reinstallations, I got Arch working and got a Weston compositor session running under Wayland. After realizing Weston was more a tech-demo than something I was actually supposed to use, I installed X11 and Gnome, which was cool for approximately 3 minutes before I decided to replace it with some minimal window manager instead. Can’t remember if it was i3wm or something else, but i3wm sounds right; and later I messed around with some tilers like StumpWM, ratpoison, and HerbstluftWM.

    After about 3 months, something in Arch broke (systemd was not reaping processes properly was what I concluded at the time, no idea what the actual problem was but I ended up with a bunch of zombie processes), and I decided to install Gentoo as my second Linux distribution. After installing Gentoo, I entered a stage which is colloquially know as “config hell” where I overconfigured everything to the point of breaking something, and could never figure out what I actually broke because everything was so overconfigured. After recompiling the whole system, everything was still broken, so I reinstalled Gentoo, this time less overconfigured, but still somewhat overconfigured (It didn’t help I was also running a full self-made custom kernel config with 3 months of Linux experience, I surprised the thing booted at all).

    I lived in Gentoo for around a year using HerbstluftWM, but eventually I grew tired of how much maintenance Gentoo required and just wanted some sane defaults. This led me to installing OpenBSD, which I guess was the right decision for me because I’m still using it to this day (7 years!), and is where I gained the majority of my knowledge about using Unix thanks to the wonderful documentation. Initially I didn’t like the ports system because it didn’t have as many knobs as Gentoo’s portage did (Gentoo’s portage is more modeled after FreeBSD’s ports than OpenBSD’s ports it seems), but I came around to enjoying hacking ports with my own patches instead of using preconfigured knobs. Eventually my porting skills got good enough that I now officially mantain a couple OpenBSD ports (games/stone-soup, www/pipe-viewer), and that list is likely to grow. I switched between some other window managers (ratpoison, JWM, FVWM2) before settling on OpenBSD’s in-house cwm. I purchased a VPS also running OpenBSD, and self host various things like email, git, ZNC, web/http, and IPsec/VPN. Eventually, I grew tired of not having games to play (OpenBSD doesn’t support WINE), so I bought a Steam Deck that I use as both my gaming desktop and handheld. I also bought a Pinephone from Pine64 which currently uses PostmarketOS (I hope to run OpenBSD on it some day though).

    tl;dr Use Arch as your first Linux distribution and you’ll end up as an OpenBSD ports maintainer I guess

  •  tuna   ( @tuna@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
    13•22 days ago
    o Windows 10
|
o Linux Mint
|
|\__
|   \
|    o Manjaro KDE
|    |
o Fedora KDE
|    |\__
|    |   \
x    |    o Windows 11
     |    o Windows 11 + Arch Linux
     |    |
     o Arch Linux
     |    |
     |    |
     |    o Windows 11 + Debian KDE
     |    |

    hopefully it renders well on your client :D

  •  lichtmetzger   ( @lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
    7•22 days ago

    Windows 95

    Suse Linux

    Yoper Linux

    Windows XP

    Slackware

    Windows 10/11

    Fedora Linux

    “Relapsed” to Windows for a while because I became a graphic designer and running a somewhat current Adobe suite on wine was impossible (it works now).

    Slackware has been amazing, but having to built so much stuff from scratch takes too much time nowadays.

    And those first Suse years were too rough to keep using it as a daily driver.

  •  Ardor von Heersburg   ( @ardorhb@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
    7•24 days ago

    Ubuntu (in VM, a few months) -> Linux Mint (1 year) -> Archlinux (2 years) -> Ubuntu (1 year) -> Fedora (2 years) -> Linux Mint Debian (3 years) -> Debian (5+ years for now)

    I have had a desktop PC and a laptop for a few years now. The laptop had Mint (DE) for 2 years longer.

    That should be more or less it, makes about 14 years on GNU/Linux now.

  •  dallen   ( @dallen@programming.dev ) 
    5•24 days ago

    Desktop: Macintosh ( Windows (XP-10) w/occasional Ubuntu dual-boot (various DEs) -> Debian + Gnome

    Server: Ubuntu LTS -> Debian

    I’ve also had a number of used thinkpads over the years where I mostly ran Xubuntu and crunchbang.

    I still boot into Windows every month or so if I need to model something in Rhino (CAD). Couldn’t get it working in Wine and my 12 YO computer isn’t performant enough to run it in a VM. The last thread remaining and waiting to be cut…

  •  erwan   ( @erwan@lemmy.ml ) 
    5•23 days ago

    • In the 90’s: Slackware, then RedHat, then Debian, then Progeny (Debian based), then shortly Mandrake (RedHat based)

    • Early 2000’s: RedHat Japanese edition, TurboLinux (because I was in Japan and Japanese IME was almost impossible to get working on non-Japanese distributions)

    • Then I had fun with Gentoo looking at my terminal compiling stuff everyday and fixing broken package because I followed advices to activate crazy compilation flags

    • 2004: Ubuntu, that I used for nearly 20 years

    • Last year: switched to Fedora

      •  erwan   ( @erwan@lemmy.ml ) 
        3•23 days ago

        It just works, just like Ubuntu before they started pushing snap down everyone’s throat (which is what made me switch eventually.)

        I had a bad image of RedHat/Fedora’s package management from the time deb was much superior, but no they caught up and are on the same level (I know, it’s probably been a while).

        I also like how they mostly package upstream without too many changes. When Ubuntu started upstream was a bit lacking so making changes was necessary to get something that looks like a consistent OS rather than a patchwork of packages, but now it’s no longer needed. Ubuntu is no longer the only distribution with that level of polish.

  •  jeremyparker   ( @jeremyparker@programming.dev ) 
    4•23 days ago

    My journey was Windows-> Ubuntu -> Mint -> Fedora -> Arch.

    (Infuriatingly i still use windows for gaming, but nothing else.)

    Did i mention that i use arch?

    More importantly:

    fucked up all my data with no backup.

    One time i messed up a script and accidentally copied 40,000 mp3s to the same filename. 20 years of music collecting, literally going back to Napster, all gone.

    Well, not completely gone. I’ve got everything uploaded to iBroadcast, and I’m pretty sure i can download my library. But I’m not sure i deserve to.

  •  pbjamm   ( @pbjamm@beehaw.org ) English
    4•22 days ago

    Slackware(1995?), Yggdrasil, Redhat/Fedora/Mandrake, SuSE, Debian/Ubuntu/Mint

    Probably some others I have forgotten, and there was a lot of back and forth at various times but I settled on Debian based because at the time APT was the best package manager. I mostly use Mint or straight Debian now because familiarity makes it the simplest for me after all these years.

    not Linux but also Solaris, SunOS, & AIX

  •  pukeko   ( @pukeko@lemm.ee ) English
    4•21 days ago

    Apple IIc > Windows 3.1 > Windows 95 > Windows 98 > Windows XP > Brief experiment with Ubuntu in the REALLY purple and brown era > OS X > Elementary > Fedora > Endeavour > Fedora > Silverblue > ublue > NixOS

    (not counting numerous VMs with everything from Debian to Linux From Scratch)