When did you start working around with Linux?

I think my very first exposure to Linux was when I got a Pi 3 for Christmas when I was 10; by next year, I was trying out Ubuntu 16.04 in a VM.

However, it took several years before I began daily-driving; I had thrown it on an old laptop during my sophomore year of high school that I mostly used from the couch.

I then did a “test install” of Debian Testing on my main desktop pater that year, which just became what I used every day and quickly just became my main operating system.

I soon installed it on everything else I owned and haven’t looked back.

Around '99 or '00. A friend of mine was gifted a Linux Magazine subscription and made me a copy of the CD. It was noteworthy at the time because it didn't have any copy protection and we were neck deep in piracy, keeping our friend group supplied with copies of games that we pulled off of IRC.

Getting a CD full of software that made no effort to prevent copying was intriguing enough that we sacrificed a spare machine one weekend (giving up the ability to play LAN StarCraft!) to see what another operating system looked like.

We tinkered on and off for a year, once we could get dual boot working (thanks to the IRC crowd) we used it a bit more often. Mostly ricing, though that wasn't a term at the time, and playing with the hacking tools (for educational purposes only, of course).

I think there was some copy protection mode that was annoying to write on Windows but trivially easy on Linux, which was the first time that I can remember where it was just better than Windows. That, and ARP poisoning our LAN parties to packet capture and read people's AIM and ICQ conversations because we were little shits.

Also early 2000s here, but I was in my late 20s by then. Started out on Debian not that long before Woody came out, then before too long I tried Mandrake alongside it.

Exciting stuff for someone who first set hands (and started into BASIC) on a TRS-80, and then ran GEOS on a C64 for years. I was drawn to the opportunities for more tinkering, among other things.

2002, I was 11. My dad had bunch of Linux install CDs that came with Dr. Dobbs. I fucked up my XP MBR and asked him to bring home a XP install disk cause i lost all mine.

By the time he got home I had installed Mandrake Dolphin Linux on my PC.

I messed around with Linspire in the early 2000s after seeing a segment about it on The Screen Savers (on TechTV). It was about Microsoft suing them for originally calling the OS "Lindows", so called because it was among the first OSes designed to attract people who are used to Windows.

I believe that it was among the first distros to induce the concept of app stores to Linux, and since I couldn't figure out how tar.gz files worked at the time, it sounded like a good idea to me. Used it for about a year or three, before moving onto Ubuntu for many years then eventually Arch.

And now I'm back on Windows again because I bought an HDR display and learned the hard way that Linux has terrible support for it. Can't get the HDR intensity slider to work properly in KDE, and there's no SDR-to-HDR conversion at all in Linux, which means no AutoHDR and no RTX HDR. So in the meantime I'm dual booting Win11 and Arch, but I find myself using Windows more and more because it's HDR support keeps getting better and better, especially if you have an nVidia GPU.

I started using Linux before you were born, but i also was 20, so you win😄

Built my first PC in High School from scraps. Decided to try Ubuntu 10.04 (current at the time).

I was very impressed with how much performance a free OS could get out of my awful hardware. Have been using Linux in some form as my OS ever since.

I’ve started with lubuntu 11.10 on a Pentium 4. I was 11. Time flies!

I think I tried DamnSmallLinux in a VM around like 2008 or something which I thought was really cool, then I tried Fedora which I didn't really like, then I tried Ubuntu which I really liked and still do, although I'm going to switch to Mint at some point because I prefer the idea of having a community-owned distro.

Just to put you all on notice: I started my kids on Linux from day 1 of their computing lives. I'm playing the long game here. In another 80 years they're going to be in the longest living users category.

They mostly use Linux as their daily drivers. Any time they have to use windows for school work they also rage at the terrible UI and lack of ease of use.

<Insert evil laughter here>

a month ago, never goin back...so much power, so much free ram. im in love

I have a physical CD of Ubuntu 6.10, back then they were distributing those over the mail and a friend of mine ordered some and gave me. I still keep it.

My son's first computer was Linux. ;) He was still toddling but wanted to hit my computer, so I set up an old one for him.

I was 14 in 1991 I should add. I switched from minix not long after I could get Linux to boot. I think that was actually 1992. Both the computer and Linux weren't very good back then ..

14. Slackware from like 40 3.5 floppy disks.

Slackware. 1993.

I'm old lol.

Been through:

Slackware

Mandrake

Debian

Ubuntu

Redhat , old and new

Fedora

Arch

Knoppix

Pop!

CentOS

Enlightenment

Etc etc..

Right now I'm living on KDE Neon.

About the time that Windows 10 came out. I was just messing around and ended up liking it.

I started using linux Slackware in 1996. First time I was paid to install linux on a server in 1998. It was Red Hat 5.2 way before they switch to Enterprise Linux.

Been my desktop daily driver since 1999.

Yes, I'm old.

I first dipped my toes in when I was probably around 14, messed with Ubuntu and damn small Linux but that was about it. I stuck with Mac as I didn’t enjoy windows and needed something “mainstream” back then. It wasn’t until apple made hackintosh’s somewhat obsolete and Microsoft started cramming AI into windows that I made the switch. I now run NixOS on my gaming rig and personal laptop

Debian and Mandrake in the late 1990s. And I was already almost three times as old as you were when you started. These days I'm happy with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for daily use. I tried NixOS but it threatened to break my old brain.

I first experimented with Linux in 1999, but didn't stay with it for long as I never got X11 working. I started using it more seriously in 2001 / 2002 and by the time Windows XP was established, I was a full time Linux user. I was a lot older than you though being in my mid-thirties.

My first laptop was an Ubuntu machine with no battery when I was 4. I had no idea what Linux was, I just played the games my uncle had pre-loaded onto it.

In 2006 my university used Ubuntu, I thought 'Wow, this is different!' Tried it out on my own computer but I was a heavy gamer so windows was the best option (hey, Win7 pretty alright anyway!)

Fast forward to about 2022, I try it again but it's not getting incorporated well with my program usage in school (as a teacher).

Fast forward to 2024, worked out that Tencent software is on AUR (teacher in Mainland China) and I figure I'm doing another dive. So far, so good. Little itty bitty glitches especially with Libreoffice but I'm getting by without touching Win10.

I was in 8th grade so 13-14 years old right?

In University. In the 90s we used commercial un*x (HP-UX, IRIX, AIX, Solaris/SunOS, SCO) and some others like SVR4, BSD, Minix. Then a guy on usenet talked about making is own kernel running on a 386. My first real full linux install was kernel 0.99 on a 486DX50, around 1993, came in multiple floppies, then to install X11 that was like 10 more floppies! Configuring things was a bit nighmarish.

Fedora 2. It's been a while.

My dad had a Knoppix boot CD in a case with all the games, of course I messed with it as a curious child, I have no idea how old I was, but it was my first foray into the wonderful world of not Windows.

Back at the university, sometime around 1995 when I needed a Unix for the exams. Downloaded on 1.4 Mb floppies

Yggdrasil somewhere around ‘93… maybe ‘94. Recompiling a kernel took a VERY long time.

I’ve been doing this a while.

I think it was about year 2000 +/- I was about 23 yrs old... I've tried a most of the big distros, and was using Ubuntu for the longest time. Now it's Mint I use...

about 20 years ago. Early 2000s I started messing around with Redhat and was suprised that a full OS that did most of the windows things was available for free. when Ubuntu gained traction I jumped on that and tried distro hopping a bit before landing aolidly on Debian derivatives as my linux of choice. I remember catching a ban in WoW because WINE was detected by their anti cheat for a while.

i thought i was old for lemmy till i saw the dates in these comments.

I messed around trying to get Redhat 7.2 or 7.3 working but gave up (Q1 or Q2 2002). I later experimented with SuSe (or however it was stylised in Q1 2005), messed about with Knoppix and a few other distros, before properly going all-in on Ubuntu 5.04 when I was 18.

Only since last July. It's Arch btw. I love it, but wifey doesn't understand it and therefore I still have windows. ☹️

I had a Linux beginners class at my HS in 10th grade but I've forgot about Linux, until 12th grade when 2 of my really nerdie friends started shilling Linux to me, especially pointing out that now you can play windows games on Linux, and not too long after I eventually did the jump when starting my comp sci uni (19 years old) with Manjaro as a first, but I have found happiness in EndevaorOS due to Manjaro being unstable.

Started with Ubuntu at 12. Did a LAN boot to my mom’s laptop somehow, I couldn’t explain it if I tried. It was supposed to be on my PC. Didn’t work in the end and got grounded for “hacking” went back to it though a few years later at 16 and dived around Ubuntu and Gentoo. Never installed gentoo but I certainly kept trying.

I tried xubuntu when I was 14 on a live cd to get students admin access on our school laptops. Once I got my own machine, I kept it on windows 10 until it became unstable so I moved to Bunsenlabs, then Pop OS due to it's dgpu. (Intel igpu, amd dgpu)

about a decade ago i used to mess around with some debian based distros on dual boot, mostly as a toy
then used xenialpup for a bit when my drives got toasted
then used mint for a year ish as my daily driver before moving to arch which i've been on ever since

I first tried Linux Mint when I was 12, eventually changed to Ubuntu when I was 13 or 14 because I saw the Windows 11 copilot button, installed

Can totally relate, lol. Except I first tried Ubuntu at around 12 (at the time it was considered the best for beginners), then nearly 20 years passed until I saw the same copilot button pop up, uninvited, in my task bar. That was the last straw for me.

Now I run OpenSUSE as a daily driver.

1997, it was a wonderous year 🥰 i was 16 at the time.

Linux came in big boxes with a large book and CD's!

when I first heard about MS recall

I initially tried linux mint and ubuntu when i was like 13 on my laptop, which is almost 15 years ago now. At the time it wasn't because i hated windows, but my monkey brain was just interested in it because it looked so much different. After i realized that i couldn't just use all my windows programs like usual (and especially gaming wasn't nearly as good back then), i quickly went back to windows. Fast forward to 2020, at this point i had started disliking windows mainly because all of it's creepy questions when you install it, like wanting your handwriting information and all that, but at the same time i thought "well what can you do about it?". Then i saw the LinusTechTips video about trying linux instead of windows 11. This was the first time i had actually thought of linux again in all those years. The video convinced me to give it a try and i started with PopOS. After a few months i moved to arch cause i liked the idea of customizing my distro more from the ground up. Stayed with arch for 2 years, then i got the distro hop virus. Tried a lot of them, fedora, opensuse, ended up staying on Void linux for over a year in total. Now i'm using NixOS and very happy with it, and i think i'm finally settling down on a distro. I know LTT gets a lot of flack for how they handled the linux challenge, but if it wasn't for that initial video back in 2020, i would have probably never given linux another try. And with valve investing so much into improving wine and dxvk and all that, it was viable for me to switch as a gamer.

Mandrake 6, not quite twice as long since you were born?

I first started Ubuntu as a minecraft server, then last year I actually started using it as a desktop.

I was always curious about this linux thing, from when I was in 7th grade, I only knew Kali linux then, and I thought one could hack anything if you had kali linux :), But I seriously started using linux in 10th grade, fell into the rabbit hole of ricing, and to this day still cant get over it although it has become more stable and I know what I am doing.

My college buddy first told me about Linux at around the start of 1998. After some research I decided I would make the switch at the end of the semester. For a couple years I had mac but I’ve always had a Linux box running.

I'd say I was around that age. Maybe earlier, 10? But only because my dad was into linux. This was back in 1998 to 2000 though. I wasn't actually allowed access to a computer's hardware (and therefore the ability to install an OS, given my extremely restricted access) until I started uni with an old computer that didn't even have onboard sound.