As a kid in 1998, I installed Slackware to one of the two family computers. My parents were less proud than you might possibly think.

Debian 3.0 for me in 96. I used the boot floppies version as my PC didn’t have a CD-ROM in it. I think there was like 20-something floppies.

I also still have my CDs from that era for Slackware and Redhat 5.0 somewhere…

Red Hat Linux 6.2. I, too, got it out of a book, but I don’t remember which one.

Slackware here, and I still use it! Tried several alternatives but I just keep going back.

Mandrake Linux 6.5. At the time I was drawn to it because they had a version that worked with the sims game.

Ubuntu 09.04… on my highschool days. :)
I’m still remember that I ends up quitting right away because I have no internet on my house to install codecs and other necessary software, thus made the ubuntu installation useless. lol

Mandrake Linux 6.5. At the time I was drawn to it because they had a version that worked with the sims game.

Gentoo, fall 2004, first a stage 3, then a stage 1. Learned SO MUCH from doing that!

RedHat here in the late 90s, back when you could still find yourself writing a “modeline.”

Then Debian in the early 00s when apt was still a major discriminator. Finally, Ubuntu around 2008 just so I was running the same thing I was recommending to family members for ease of use. (At the time, Ubuntu sported the same ease of installation and hardware detection I’d found with Knoppix.)

Now on Xubuntu, but seriously eyeing a return to Debian.

A PowerPC version of Ubuntu (I forget now the exact version or year but it was sometime around 2005ish) that I ran from a live CD on my G4 Mac Mini.

First I actually installed and used seriously was Ubuntu 12.04 on an old PC.

Slackware, installed with floppies on a 486.I tried debian red hat suse coral linux but always came back to Slackware.There was a bunch more, that I cant remember the names of, one I do remember was Stampede linux, Daniel Robbins put it out, he then dumped it and made Gentoo, I used Gentoo for a year or so, on an original AMD Athlon, it was night and day different from un optimised Slackware. I saw an announcement for a new distro on the gentoo forums for Arch, 686 optimisations, no need to compile!. I installed that and used it for about 9 years. I got sick of all the breakages, the systemd adoption drama, briefly went back to Gentoo( or Funtoo, actually), then discovered Void. I have been using Void since 2010, I also use Openbsd, reminds me of the ‘old days’ of linux before the tech bros and corporations.

RedHat Linux, Straight outta magazine. Bought the boxed version shortly thereafter. hmm i wonder if i still have the box???

SLS in ‘94

My first I used was Slackware back in 2002 on a 486 with a 250MB disk. Wasn’t easy when you have to compile half the software and there’s basically nor enough room for the build environment. This was on a small test and development PC I used whilst at uni.

When I went all in on my desktop and waved Windows goodbye I used Ubuntu as that’s what I’d had good experience with on my headless VMs.

Now running EndeavourOS and love it.

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