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
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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.
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.
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…
It was probably Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog, though it didn’t stick. I tried other versions of Ubuntu and even gentoo again over the following years, but none of them would stick. I would eventually tinker with something I couldn’t repair, and rather than re-installing and starting again, I’d just return to windows.
Linux finally stuck for me last year, and Linux (Arch and then CachyOS) has been my full time OS for about the last 18 months
The Ubuntu story is exactly what happened to me.
OpenSUSE Table weed is what got Linux to stick for me though. Once I learnt enough with that to get started and my OS needed a reinstall, I ended up going with CachyOS too eventually.
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
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.
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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?
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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:
Slackware. In 1993.
Corel Linux. It didn’t last long because it didn’t play my games.
SuSE 1992 (1995?) (don’t remember the exact number, but the year was on the accompanying paper manual), on some 1.3.xx Kernel, I think. Good times.
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 still have an EeePC 900A that came with Xandros. I kept Xandros on it until Ubuntu 10.04 Network Edition came out.
Damn Small Linux (Knoppix-based) which was the gateway drug to Fedora Core 4 on an old Pentium III that was lying arouind.
