what was the first linux distro you used

[rich]

Ubuntu 9.10 onward until Unity appeared > SalineOS (Debian+xfce distro) until developer packed it in > Crunchbang until developer packed it in (although Bunsen Labs Helium is now back on an old laptop) > MX14 onward.

I was a big Crunchbang fan back in the day, that's the distro that made me feel comfortable with Debian. Loved it. Sad news, "The end." Glad Bunsen Labs came out of it.

[Coastie]

Back in the dark ages of about 2002 before cable internet, I tried MEPIS (Point & Click Linux) on my own for a little while. Then a guy I met at a LUG installed Fedora on my computer. I got scared off by updating by phone internet, the Terminal, and Synaptic Package Manager. I gave up and updated to XP.

[Redacted]

Red Hat, shortly before it went Enterprise.
I messed everything up so bad that I didn't try Linux again until Ubuntu 4.10.

[oops]

... I have done a first and fast try with Suse in around 1999 (not user friendly and too difficult to learn without forums before 2000), I was into Windows 98 at this time (the best Windows version of my point of view) ... and now into MX17.1 (triple boot with Ubuntu 16.04LTS as optional distrib. now and Win7) , it's a bit funny because I feel some similarities with Win98 into MX ;-) ... I was into Ubuntu since 8.04 with WinXP (dual boot) then U10.04 (the best Ubuntu version for me) and after Gnome2 an hard steep with Unity and Systemd (probably too hard).

[baldyeti]

I think the first distribution i tried must have been a pile of slackware diskettes at work, circa 1994.I immediately liked how much smother XFree86 performed than the commercial X11 server bundled with SCO Unix (on the same HW).

At home I started with debian 1.2 in 1996. I checked redhat and variants every now and then, but debian has remained my goto distro. Knoppix, ubuntu, mepis, kanotix aptosid ... they're all nice. Erh, MX too, naturally.

I've always somewhat preferred KDE as a DE. I had played with XFCE very occasionnally on the BSD's until MX made me try it again on linux. For a while ubuntu seemed like a distro that could get some mainstream visibility. They had done a nice job of polishing gnome2, and the previsibility of the LTS release was a plus compared to debian stable. And then gnome3 happened. Oh well. It looked like Steam could have been the torch-bearer for a while (i hear gaming is huge, i wouldn't know), but their effort seems to have flopped.

Nowadays i feel we have an embarrassment of riches. Too many distros and graphical environments, most of them rather usable but without hugely distinguishing feature. Dedoimedo put it in more detail than i ever could, recently.

[Richard]

Well, @baldyetti, that sure put a clod in the churn of discussión. :)

That is an interesting opinion piece by Dedoimedo, that points out the problem.
The problem is there is no consensus for resolution of the problem he describes.
And I'm sure he knows it.

On the other hand, I see Linux as a sort of open proving ground.
Lots of people invest mountains of time to develop things they want to use.
Profit is not the motive of most of these people he speaks of.
If it was, I'm sure most of them would have quit already. Many do.

SalineOS dev left to find work outside the supermarket where he worked.
Crunchbang dev quit for reasons unknown to me.
Mepis dev quit to go back to much more remunerative work.
All of them left some new ideas that have been picked up by others.

Will any of these new people be successful? Depends on the definition of success.

In my mind, MX is successful because of the following:
1. They are responsive to user reports of errors from those who push the envelope.
2. MX does what I need and want pretty much out of the box, the rest I can config till my heart's content.
3. MX develops pretty much like most software development --make it work, put it out, fix the reported bugs;
and that iterative process results in a much more stable process than many big software houses.

In the Linux world, Redhat, SuSE maybe Canonical are successful in the market because they seek cash generators.
I'm sure there are others; but the fact remains, most distros seem to value survival more than getting rich.

We, Linux users are all testers of the distros we use. Some distros are more stable than others.
Some users push them much harder than others, creating problems to solve that benefit all of us.

And that makes it interesting and fun to those of us who participate in non-developmental modes.
And we get software that works, and timely correcions when necessary.

I have seen lots of distros since 1998.
Like you said many filled the bill, but for some reason, I left them all until MX was released.
I expect to be here for the duration.

[KBD]

I'll take Linux fragmentation any day over being forced into what MS or Apple decides for me :)
Sometimes things just work and you get a Mint, or MX, or more recently Kubuntu getting its act together.
I've not been doing this as long as some of you guys but I have seen rising and falling of lots of small distros, and I watch with interest to see if Ubuntu implodes when it releases an IPO and investors drive its decisions. Yet if it does implode I know the community will either go back to Debian, fork a different kind of Ubuntu, or something else interesting will happen.
I remember when MEPIS looked down for the count, and now we have MX out of the ashes. All this fragmentation just means I need more popcorn because it is always interesting to see what comes next :)

[uncle mark]

I remember when MEPIS looked down for the count, and now we have MX out of the ashes. All this fragmentation just means I need more popcorn because it is always interesting to see what comes next :)

MEPIS is down for the count? Could have fool me.

[KBD]

MEPIS is down for the count? Could have fool me.

It looked like it for awhile there

[Gerson]

Good topic. I started in 1997 with a NEC and Windows 95 laptop with 8MB of RAM and 1.5 GB hard drive. I did not know anything! I bought it basically to learn, but it was my daughters who practically used it. Every time I made a disaster I had a friend who studied Systems Engineering and helped me put it together again and that's where I met GNU/Linux; he gave me a CD with Ubuntu and as soon as I installed it I ran out to uninstall it, it was horrible, ugly! and he also asked me for a key to everything and I did not fit in, so I left him for a while. Then around 2007 I bought a magazine that brought a CD of Kubuntu and as I had more knowledge and experience I installed it on a laptop and started to try it, I liked it because of its graphic similarity to Windows and I started working with dual boot, from there I took the madness to try how much distribution was, until I landed in Linux Mint KDE not without being a time with Mageia and Chakra that I liked but there were things that were difficult for me so I stayed with Mint for a while until I decided try OpenSUSE and so I could meet and work other things, but deep down I was not satisfied and in November of 2017 I came across very positive comments about MX and downloaded the beta version of MX 17 and I loved it. So much is that now is the distribution that I use for everything and I recommend, my 2 laptops use it and my wife's with dual boot while getting used to the change.