MX Linux Forum

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 3:31 pm**

just a thought i had the other day. after reading numerous posts here i noticed a vast difference in backgrounds and expertise etc and was wondering where we all started. i bought my daughters the first pc back about 98-99 and all i could do was turn it on and off again. if any problems arose i had a good mate at work that would come and sort it out. the pc had windows me installed and i bought a heap load of magazines to learn about computers. one such magazine did a 4 page topic on something called linux and i read it with great interest. anyway we moved to another town and my mate could no longer fix my pc so i learnt the general workings of the insides but still wanted linux. i saw linux magazines in the shop and one had redhat 9 as a freebie. it took me nearly a year n half to get it installed as i didnt know what i was doing but once installed i was hooked. so now i have linux on 3 laptops but still have a windows pc for the family

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 3:53 pm**

I think it was SuSE 7.0.
I bought the boxed set with 6 or 7 CDs.
A colleague told me about linux, and got me interested.
It must have been 2001 or 2002.
I played with that and BeOS before that.

Then around 2007 I read about Mepis, and have been here ever since.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 4:19 pm**

For me it started when I got an old 286 computer from my dad which he had no more use for. Ms dos and win 3.0. Still in the days dos was the main os, win was just a fancy interface. Never liked it. Norton commander quickly became my prime interface. Sadly microsoft windows (lowercase m & w to highlight the dishinour) ate up the business interface became the industry standard. Within my company we use win7, no choice to use anything else, expecting win10 to ship as soon as IT dep approves it...not really looking forwards to it. Now, working mainly with iot and macineconnectivity , sarted playing around with linux which provides all the tools needed more or less by default. Discovered mx linux just a few months back and running it inside virtualbox. What a wonderful distro! Fast, stable, full featured. Did I mention fast? I find myself spending about 98% of my time using MX. By far the best os I’ve ever used. Everrything just works. Was it not for the heavy restrictions and my companies choice of apps ( still mainly windows) I would not hesitate to switch to full time MX! I am so impressed. I am still a Linux newbie in every sense but I am so looking forward to learn more about the system. Never before have I felt to be more in control of the system. Keep up the good work. Midnight commander rings all sorts of nostalgia bells an is definately my main choice for getting work done efficiently. Installed MX on my home pc an never switching back. It is so good there is no reason not to use it.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 4:34 pm**

Xandros in 2001.

Chris

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 4:38 pm**

Xandros sometime in the late 1990's or early 2000's. Then Mepis in 2003.

But the first foray into personal computing was with a Heathkit H89 and CPM in 80's. And before that an IBM mainframe and punch cards in college around 1968.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 4:45 pm**

Mandrake, in 2002 I think (still have the box of disks).

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 4:47 pm**

yes i tried a few suse early ones. think the last one was 13 or something. tried quite a few different distros. i actually bought the xandros box set and the mandrake gaming edition which came with the sims game.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 4:48 pm**

I first started with Mandrake back in 2000 or 2001, but I couldn't really figure out how things worked linux-wise, so went back to Win98SE.

A year or two later I decided to give Linux another try, first with Lindows and then a 2003 version of MEPIS. Have stayed with MEPIS and MX since then.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 5:05 pm**

MuLinux in 1998 on 720K floppies for learning.
Tried Redhat & Debian but couldn't install either.
Bought SuSE-7.2 in early 2001 which was my first usable distro. Began dual booting with Win98.

But my first real distro was Mandrake-7.2 Ran Mandrake for several years on a 286 Dell Latitude.

A friend from Maracaibo LUG gave me a copy of Mepis in 2003. Started to hop when Warren switched to Ubuntu base: Kanotix, sidux, Debian testing, Peppermint, OpenSuse, Xubuntu, others, SalineOS, Manjaro, MX a couple of days after release of MX-14. Thanks.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 5:35 pm**

SuSe 6.2 from a boxed set - installation was a nightmare, but I did manage eventually, and it worked reasonably well.
For me, desktop Linux really took off when Warren Woodford published (on two CDs) the first distro which could be tried
out live and then installed to hard drive. Been using Mepis ever since - yes it still works well, especially M12.
I liked M8 best of all, but it is now lacking necessary updates.

MX is now my main OS. It continues the spirit of Mepis with many huge improvements.

Thanks, all of you MX and Antix developers

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 5:41 pm**

Circa 1998 I had a Walnut Creek Linux CD set which IIRC had Slackware, Red Hat, Debian, & Turbo Linux. I got Slackware & TurboLinux to run CLI but never got X to work properly due to inadequate hardware.
Started using Mandrake in 2001, continued with it until I got tired of rpm dependency h3ll (I was building drivers & applications not from the repos) and started looking around at apt-based distros. Didn't like Ubuntu but MEPIS 3.4-3RC1 in Jan 2006 was as perfect as Linux got in those days. Stayed with it to the end, then joined the MX team.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 5:54 pm**

Mepis Pro 2005 beta if I recall correctly. :)

I had fiddled with knoppix before that, but only on the cd, nothing else. Mepis was the first one I truly used, dual booting still at the time. My brother who was a Mandrake kid at the time installed it for me, I never understood what he did with all the partitioning. I am SO glad I learned how to easily do things myself and now that I have removable hard drives it's even better. If I am totally unsure I just take the good install out of the system and slide a different drive in to fiddle with.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 6:44 pm**

Xandros was the first Linux I used as my daily driver until they self-destructed. Before that Knoppix a bit. Then Mandrake until they had their problems, finally Mepis and here. First computing experiences were IBM1620, 1130, pdp-8.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 6:48 pm**

I guess I am a latecomer to linux. My first distro was Zorin in 2016 when I was looking for a way of keeping my pc alive beyond the end of life of Vista which was the OS it came with. No way was I going to use W10 and I knew the computer was a good machine so didnt want to scrap it. So I had a go with Zorin but very soon wiped the drive and installed Mint 17.3, then 18x. Found 17.3 fine but had trouble with 18.2 which was how I found my way to MX 16.1. A guy on the Mint forum had mentioned he uses both MX or Mint XFCE on older machines so I decided to try MX as I was a bit annoyed with Mint by then.

So far so good. Initial troubles with graphics and the like were quickly resolved with help from the good folk on here. No plans to switch anytime soon but might dual boot with Mint when 19 comes out......or maybe Ubuntu Mate. I like the idea of having two distros.

I can use my floppy drive (yes I know its 2018) with MX but couldnt with Mint. Bluetooth was less problematic too, particularly importing photos from my phone and tablet which was a hassle on Mint. So I rate MX very highly indeed.

Oh and my first computing experience was a BBC Micro in 1984 then nothing until my first Windows machine in 2004.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 7:45 pm**

Linspire, in 2005.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 7:53 pm**

First Linux experience was with Debian my second time around in College circa 2001-2003. Debian was what the small regional College was using to teach with, as opposed to Red Hat, primarily because it was free. Even though my major was Information Systems, I never used it at a place of employment, for various reasons, so I continued to stick with Windows 2000 until my desktop IDE HDD crashed in 2011. By that time I had acquired a 1st gen Atom based netbook from Walmart for $200 with Win7 Starter (which I converted unofficially to Professional). In 2013 I had a friend who was an IT guy (who turned out to not know much more about the nuts and bolts of Linux than I did) install Easy Peasy 1.6 onto a 4 GB Partition, which turned out to be disastrously too small. Ended up deleting the partition. While recovering from emergency gall bladder surgery and the effects leading up to it in January 2016, I decided to give Linux another go. Ordered a Manjaro Xfce USB drive. Didn't like it. Did a bit of distro hopping after discovering Easy2Boot to create multiple booting USB sticks, ended up adopting 32bit MX15. Pretty much stuck with MX ever since, along with Win7SP1 Home Premium.
My first computing experience was in 1977 on a PDP-8 (I think) maintained by the University of Idaho Physics lab. The assignment was to listen to the hour long cassette on the fundamentals of programming it, then write a physics related program--your choice--to produce some verifiable output (to a printer). I chose to write a radioactive decay program for some isotope of Thorium. Wasn't too hard--once I acquired the decay equation from a helpful physics grad student.
My next foray was a disastrous punch card digital drafting assignment from a metal machining class that I stupidly signed up for.
My first personally owned computer was an Atari 800XL that I acquired in October 1984 from Walmart for $100 as I was mustering out of the Army--"leaving Louisiana in the broad daylight" as it were (Fort Polk to be exact). Used SynCalc to maintain my family budget on it-- never used it seriously to play games though. It just wasn't my thing.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 8:22 pm**

First successful install was one of the first Ubuntus, either 4.10 or 5.04. Installed as a dual boot alongside my mainstay W2K. Once I got a handle on disk partitioning and editing grub, I loaded up a bunch of distros and played with them all -- Xandros, PCLOS, and MEPIS all come to mind, but there were many more. I ended up gravitating toward MEPIS. (MEPIS 3.4-3 was the first one I got to connect wirelessly on the antique laptop I had back then.) But they were always secondary to my W2K daily driver. When M6.5 was released and I got it set up the way I wanted, I gritted my teeth, made it my default boot, and made it my primary daily driver. Soon, I found I nearly felt the need to boot Windows. I haven't looked back since.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 8:54 pm**

Lots of old timers here :) You guys make me feel young. SimplyMEPIS 11. I was a bit nervous about installing it even though I had read the documentation several times over. Was so pleased to see it boot up. What a beautiful OS and it did not break no matter how hard I tried to screw it up as I was learning about Linux. It ruined me though. I expected everything Linux to be so reliable and after distro-hopping just about everything, nothing compared to MEPIS back then.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 9:01 pm**

KBD wrote:Lots of old timers here :) You guys make me feel young. SimplyMEPIS 11. I was a bit nervous about installing it even though I had read the documentation several times over. Was so pleased to see it boot up. What a beautiful OS and it did not break no matter how hard I tried to screw it up as I was learning about Linux. It ruined me though. I expected everything Linux to be so reliable and after distro-hopping just about everything, nothing compared to MEPIS back then.

M11 is still my daily driver. Haven't found anything I like better. And I've tried.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 9:12 pm**

First Linux was the disk coming with "Point-and-Click Mepis" by Roblimo. I think it was 3.4? Completely new to me in those days and would have gotten nowhere without the help of my old friend Jon DuQuesne, who used to be a pretty active moderator on the old Mepis forum. When antiX came out after Warren moved on to other things, I tried it and haven't jumped to anything else. I rarely post because I rarely have trouble. I just keep updating to whatever the newest version is...

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 9:26 pm**

Like Uncle Mark, I started with Ubuntu, vsn 6 from memory. Joined the local LUG a few years later and was converted to Mepis by m-pav. Never regretted that
change and logically moved on to MX. Years before this, I had a crash introduction to IT when in 1963 (working as a Tech Instructor) was told to prepare a training course on basic digital techniques and solid state devices for staff who would soon be maintaining a very new transistorized weather balloon tracking radar in NZ and the South Pacific. The job developed into setting up a small video production unit which made training videos for Gov't staff on subjects varying from programming in Cobol and Fortran to the design of highway systems using a application package from MIT. A change of job a few years before retirement into the film and video industry with computerized control of processing linked to Apple II's.
Personally, I started programming 50 odd years ago, in machine language using a small board computer based around an Intel 8085. Progressed to a Sanyo PC running DOS, spending most time programming in Turbo Pascal. Upgraded to a 286 then 386 and worked through the MS Windows variations as far as XP working in Delphi developing databases. These days, MX is 95% of my IT time.

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 9:29 pm**

My first Linux was Caldera's Open Linux eDesktop 2.4. It came with Star Office, a Netscape browser, Flash and KDE. It also came with an excellent book.

I think that's how I wound up with Mepis. I liked a polished KDE distro and Warren's came as close to what I was used to than anybody else.

Now I'm really liking MX Linux and how it runs on my aging hardware.

Thanks,

The Tramp

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 9:48 pm**

uncle mark wrote:M11 is still my daily driver. Haven't found anything I like better. And I've tried.

Can't say I blame you. M11 was just about perfect :)

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 9:51 pm**

Gordon Cooper wrote:Personally, I started programming 50 odd years ago, in machine language using a small board computer based around an Intel 8085. Progressed to a Sanyo PC running DOS, spending most time programming in Turbo Pascal.

Ah, memories. I started programming 45 years ago - Basic on PDP8 at high school, then Fortran Cobol & assembler on IBM 1130.
The first program I got paid for was in Turbo Pascal. It converted a proprietary property management program output into Symbolic Link format so it could be loaded as a Lotus Symphony spreadsheet on a Tandy 2000 (that was the PC-XT clone that was designed before the XT was released and so wasn't quite compatible, but it was nearly 50% faster). Good times!

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 10:16 pm**

I played around with Mandrake with limited success before I found Mepis 3.4. Here was a Linux that booted live, everything actually worked without spending hours searching for drivers, had all the software preinstalled that I needed to be productive at work(including Planner, which I still use). Been using Mepis ever since.I probably used Pro Mepis longer than any. I skipped the Ubuntu-based version(6.0 I think), 8.0 was my all-time favorite. Am currently using M12, Wheezy-based on this machine, Jessie-based on my others. No windows except w7 starter on a eeepc 1025c that triple boots with M12 and MX-17 January edition. I'm a KDE fan, so MX didn't really interest me too much at first. I have used the MX16 KDE respin by some community members and like it, installing it on other machines for owners that prefer KDE. MX keeps getting better, though, and MX17 really excites me!

Posted: **Sat Mar 10, 2018 11:34 pm**

hello frenzy67 and hello everyone
debian, xandros, mepis
my first persistent live usb was slackware(kde) , xubuntu persistent ,then mx-14 live... ... ... ...

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 12:02 am**

Slightly OT.

@Tim. 50 years ago I was studying standard Pascal by correspondence but using Turbo Pascal for my own interests. Much preferred Turbo and now still still would rather use it than continue my hassle to properly understand the Free Pascal/Lazarus package. Delphi was OK but became too danged expensive for hobbyists.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 1:00 am**

In 2003, I found a Linux-focused magazine in a local bookshop that had a complimentary CD of something called "Simply Mepis 3.4.3". I had heard of Debian by then. But I had no idea of how to obtain it. The CD booted to...OMG...a live system! I thought that was magic! Then I slowly learned about "dual booting", and much later I took the complete plunge and did a clean install. For my personal use I've never looked back.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 3:31 am**

I build a new system for MS Vista, could not keep it running, new install of vista every 2 weeks. Was on a forum called "702" someone suggested I should try Linux.

They gave me several distro's to download. I burned live cd media, and only Mepis 6 booted and recognise my video card. I had no sound and and that was solved by a helpful Mepis user on the forum. With Mepis 6 installed and working I have basically stayed with both AntiX, and MX after Mepis. I have ventured out occasionally trying a few other distros, on several occasions, once seriously when Mepis was not being finalised,

There are many that helped me in the early days, and when I tried Antix and found it a difficult switch from Mepis. I went to MX after that was released, and then recently returned to AntiX on a new Ryzen 1500X build. I have 4 computer systems in living room, with no TV set. 2 run MX, 1 runs the Ryzen with Antix-17, and I have a Mepis beta that has not been connected to the internet for years. The Mepis computer is connected to an older 720 flat screen TV that seldom gets used. Mepis system is turned on when company is visiting and wants to watch a DVD movie on the large 40 inch screen.

My lady watches Japanese Video and the News on her MX system. She plays with facebook games @ other times. MX and AntiX systems provide us with the News, and entertainment, and information and we survive without a $150 Cable TV connection.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 9:03 am**

Caldera, followed by RedHat, then Mepis in its various manifestations.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 9:42 am**

Mepis 6.5, the one based on Ubuntu.

It was the first and for a while, the only, distro able to boot up graphically on my Dell Pentium 4 at that time (probably around 2006 or 2007). I'd burnt a few CDs with other distros before that, including Ubuntu, but they failed that first hurdle. My PC had 2 hard drives, the first contained WinXP and the Data partition, while the whole second drive was specifically there for Linux trials and experiments.

Mepis 6.5 ran really well, and I kept it for a long time on my hard drive, while also starting to enjoy the fun of multibooting. I found 2 other distros some time later that worked well on the machine, ie PCLinuxOS (KDE) and crunchbang 9 (also by coincidence the one crunchbang release based on Ubuntu - I didn't go looking for Ubuntu variants, honest!). I didn't really like Mepis 7 but Mepis 8 and 11 were good. Mepis 12 beta just refused to work on my machine, which was getting older by that time, so I found myself looking for distros with lighter DEs. I continued to use Mepis 11 but also installed WattOS (LXDE), crunchbang 10, and the last 3 really nice Gnome 2 distros - Fuduntu, Parsix (debian testing) and the original SolusOS.

And then, XFCE got much prettier and really nice to use with SolydX and Manjaro. By this time I hardly booted into Mepis 11 anymore.

But what do you know, the 3 Gnome 2 distros all went defunct around the same time (Parsix continued as a Debian Stable distro running Gnome 3, which was too much for my graphics card to handle). So SolydX and Manjaro XFCE became my mainstays (although I was still multibooting).

Until whispers of MX14 began to be bandied around in 2014....

Now my reliable workhorses are MX and Manjaro. SolydX is gone from my (new) machine now. The official edition moved back to a Debian Stable base, and because it sticks really close to vanilla Stable, you don't have the fresh and interesting packages that MX has in its own repo. There's no packaging team. If you want newer stuff you would probably have to get it yourself from Debian Backports or compile it or add the MX repo (I'm guessing it won't cause too many issues). It's a fine distro, but to me it lacks the spark that MX has.

I still multiboot though.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 11:43 am**

mepis-8 was the first one I stayed with for any amount of time. Starting off, I also tried knoppix, openSuse & PCLinuxOS. At some point back then I burned a CD/DVD for every distro @ distrowatch and gave them a try. Lot's of coffee cup coasters. - mike

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 1:17 pm**

Mandrake 10, around 2004 or 2005.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 2:07 pm**

hello frenzy67
Anxiously awaiting here word from the lead developers; esp. anticapitalista, of course. and all. seen a bit of puppy mentioned in the forum; wondering when it will hit this list. worth mention that slackopuppy or precise always let me know if linux would run on a machine. kept it aside the mepis cd for looking into machines [that means deleting malware on ms.w..._...] seems we are mostly older than puppy.
curious. good topic frenzy67.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 2:13 pm**

thanks guys some interesting stuff here,some distros i know and tried some i dont know
anyway thanks for all the replies

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 4:15 pm**

My first distro was, I don't remember very well, Mandriva or Mandrake.
Then thanks to videoguides of Prof. Antonio Cantaro http://www.istitutomajorana.it/forum2/ I learned a lot about PC world and found a link to Mepis 14 that I used as secondary O.S.
Finally is my first distro from last year.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 4:45 pm**

Me

Me again

Finally after I got a Pentium 2. Did I graduate to AntiX.
http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2009/07/fix ... -gear.html

By then. Running old gear. I was comfy cosy buying motorcycle parts off of ebay and installing linux to do that.
Been a team member for MacPup Puppy Linux. A moderator at the eeepc forums. Not to shabby for a dude that got into linux because of motorcycle parts.

I just figure things out as I go. Poke and hope is my methodology. Nice thing was. The internet was still friendly to older kit's like I learned on.
Took me awhile to get a newer laptop to try Mepis. I found out I was KDE dyslexic.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 4:48 pm**

rokytnji.1 wrote:. ....................

A moderator at the eeepc forums. Not to shabby for a dude that got into linux because of motorcycle parts.

...........................................

And a moderator on this Forum.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 7:41 pm**

Mandrake in 2000/2001 and the Knoppix live cd. Would have kept on using Knoppix but I kept stumbling with the language as it had both English and German once installed to HDD, then in 2003, I found Mepis 300.1 if I recall the version correctly.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 8:13 pm**

I believe it was Mepis 2003.10, an October release. There may have been an earlier 2003 release. But I think the October release was the first really usable version. That is when I switched from Xandros to Mepis.

EDIT: There was a release in May 2003.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 8:27 pm**

richb wrote:I believe it was Mepis 2003.10, an October release.

I think that was the first Mepis version I tried too. I first read or heard about it in early 2004. It was the one I started getting an understanding about how things linux related worked. The Mepislovers forum that CBlue (Donna?) set up around that time also helped me learn a lot about linux.

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 8:36 pm**

The first distro I used was Coral Linux. It did nothing useful for me so I played around for a while and then dropped it. One day wandering through Barnes and Nobel I found a new book "Point and Click Linux" by Robin Miller (SimplyMepis). It even had a live bootable CD. So, I booted it a few times )and then installed it as a dual boot with Windows.

Pretty soon I found I was using it more and Windows less so I eventually deleted all the MS software and even continued for a while to write my Windows monthly column for User Groups on it. No MS tax.

Since then I have stayed with Mepis and then MX, I have a completely Updated MX 17.1 and my wife has MX 16. Never really seriously tried other distros as my needs were always met by Mepis. AND it JUST WORKS.

Siles

Posted: **Sun Mar 11, 2018 9:12 pm**

My first time was Mepis 6. Windows was all I knew. We had purchased a computer from a acquaintance who turned out to be a shyster and had put pirated software on the system. We were unaware of this and didn't find out for a few years. The system was slowing down and I ran C cleaner on the system. It removed whatever bypass he had put on the system and I started getting pop ups from Windows. Apparently he had done this to several others and they too started having issues. Not feeling like buying something I figured we thought we had, I started looking for alternatives.

Found Mepis and had a heck of a time learning a new system but, I am so glad I stuck it out and that Warren and the folks on here were so patient. I have played with a coupe other distros (Puppy, DSL and Mint) but this distro just fits.

I remember the 1st computer we had was an old 8088 (IBM or Intel)? Had an 80 MB hard drive and everything was DOS.

Posted: **Mon Mar 12, 2018 1:32 am**

I tried a few late last century, notably Red Hat and Debian. In 2001 I installed Libranet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libranet When that folded (RIP) I came to MEPIS in 2003. I always have a few different distros installed, but I'm always using this one.

Posted: **Mon Mar 12, 2018 3:39 am**

Started with Ubuntu in the mid-2000s and looked at just about everything. I've spent a lot of time with Buntu 16.04 (a heavily modified Lubuntu with XFCE), PCLinuxOS, Manjaro, and of course MX. Linux was just a hobby and a toy until Win 10 - then it became a necessity to find a distro that meets my and my families needs. I still dual boot with Win 7 as there are a few things I need Windows for (Turbotax is the biggie). Right now MX is my daily driver but I will continue to look at others...

Posted: **Mon Mar 12, 2018 12:39 pm**

My first linux was the Knopix liveCD back in the 2000's. I got it running well enough to discover Frozen Bubble but then set it aside. It wasn't until 3 years ago, that I installed Ubuntu 15, which lasted about 6 weeks until I upgraded to Mint. At the time I didn't realize that Mint was ubuntu 14 based! This time I was hooked (thanks Windows 8.1) Eventually, I got tired of stale packages, so ...

Posted: **Mon Mar 12, 2018 2:36 pm**

Started with Red Hat in 1996 but it wasn’t stable enough on my rig to be usable. Moved to Calera in 97-98 and it worked fairly well, but updates became few and far between and then non-existant. I then alternated between Mandrake and Suse between 1999 and 2006. Mid 2006 I switched to Ubuntu for about a year but back then something was always broken and then never fixed in the next release (or replaced with another ‘cutting edge’ application). In 2007 I switched to Mepis and I have been here ever since.

Posted: **Mon Mar 12, 2018 3:12 pm**

The very first GNU/Linux system i've seen was a Slackware circa 1995 in Sophia Antipolis (University of Sciences in Nice) ;
the first i've used (mainly as a tool to recover data from Microsoft partitions, beside UBCD and CG's testdisk) was Knoppix in 2002 (my fist personal computer ^^) then its defunct french version (Kaella) that's the way i've discovered the delicious anxiety of messing with consoles & parted - booting from a CD was a kind of magic ! I remember people being afraid of a alleged disparition of their beloved M$ OS (me included, at first);
the first i've installed was Ubuntu in 2005 (i was working in a theater and well... among other stuff, i was in charge of the easy technical maintenance which included OS (re)installation, the theater had no money to buy M$ licences so i had to look for Windows XP's best "unofficially modified" editions... I was fed up with installing this warez so i tried Linux propaganda there but no success, especially because of - loafers best argument - the "differences of ergonomy between OpenOffice's Calc & Writer and M$'s Excel & Word").

Posted: **Mon Mar 12, 2018 4:48 pm**

For me, it was SimplyMepis from the point&click linux book.

But I had crappy dial-up, and the debian repos were all messed up at the time, so I would wait hours for updates that broke my system.

It's a wonder I didn't give up on Linux.

Ubuntu would mail you free disks at that time, so I gave it a try. It was a completely different experience using the ubuntu repos.

I came back to Mepis when Warren switched to the unbuntu repos, and have been with Mepis/MX/Antix ever since.

Posted: **Sat Mar 17, 2018 7:49 pm**

For a summer job in 1998 I had to learn to telnet into a Linux server and edit homepages with vim. I don't know what distro it was. I think it was shortly after that that I tried out Red Hat on my own computer. It wasn't very easy at that point (and I was young enough to be impatient about it). I think it was in 2009 that I tried Ubuntu, and that got me into Linux full-time ever since then, and I've distro-hopped several times (openSUSE, Debian, Arch, Gentoo, Slackware, and now MX).

Posted: **Sat Mar 17, 2018 8:22 pm**

Hi

I am new here and I had made a comment in the Hello thread. My first Linux distribution was purchased as 30+ floppies from Linux System Laboratories in Michigan. It was based on Yggdrasil and the kernel was 0.99 (I think). After that, I went to a few local Linux user groups and had install parties because 1) it would take so long 2) it was good to have an experienced installer 3) with many Linuxers we would have extra copies of the floppies to help with the inevitable bad floppy (or two).

In some ways, I miss those days. With MX, it is so easy to install!!

- Deadface

Posted: **Sat Mar 17, 2018 10:36 pm**

My first Linux distro was Fedora Core 1. I had not been using computers very long at that time. I stayed with that thru Fedora Core 4 but was never fully satisfied with it. I was using Open Office but had problems with printing things correctly at first. Then one day I came upon the Point and Click Linux book by Roblimo. Warren's Mepis OS just worked better for me and I stuck with that until it ended.
I have tried other distros of and on but always come back to this forum. MX has matured a lot since that first version. I still use a few KDE apps but MX is my main distro although I occasionally use Antix and Debian. Keep up the good work guys and gals!

Posted: **Sat Mar 17, 2018 11:06 pm**

My first experience with a Linux distro was with a store bought RedHat release back in the ‘90s but it wouldn’t install. I still have it. Unused. I need to dig it out to find the version number but while I was messing with this OS2 was released and I was so happy with an OS that actually worked! But then IBM removed all their base talent for that project and it fell so fast I had to go back to M$. Suse had a powerful ad campaign going for awhile but none of their distros would work for me. XP Pro SP2 is the only stable OS M$ ever released and I have $5 to bet they will never do that again. Then Ubuntu wheezy appeared and I thought I was in heaven until I got into heavy usage and it wouldn’t hold up. Then I read about SimplyMepis 11 and that “it just works”. NOW I’m in heaven! Had to retire that PC last week and suffered a month of installs in a new Dell to find a replacement. MX 17.1 is the best. No joke. I’m not even looking forward to Ubuntu’s April release because MX 17.1 “works”! (there are some tweaks that need to be smoothed out) Luv you guys lots!!!

Posted: **Sat Mar 17, 2018 11:13 pm**

My first Linux distro was Corel back in 2000, couldn't get the sound to work and couldn't get it to connect to the Internet, then I tried Mandrake couldn't get the sound to work and couldn't get it to connect to the Internet along with loosing video. Then I tried RedHat which I couldn't get the sound to work and couldn't get it to connect to the Internet. Gave up on Linux and when back to Windows 98se. :( Fast forward to Sept. 2015, after seeing Windows 10 I gave Linux an other try. I tried openSUSE 13.2 and everything worked. :) I left Windows for good. Tried an other Linux distro after openSUSE which I can't talk about without violating forum rules. Then came across MX-15 which turn out to be what I was looking for and have no interest in trying any other distros as I am sticking with MX Linux.

Posted: **Thu Mar 22, 2018 6:17 pm**

My first linux was "the great Puppy Linux" (words of Dolphin Oracle): 431, Wheezy, Saluki and, for the last 5 years, Fatdog. At one time I said I'd never use a distro whose iso was over 100M. But as sizes gradually crept up, the jump from Puppy to a medium-sized distro became less extreme--and I finally got a faster laptop. After several live flash drive and VM trials, I settled on MX-17. That clean desktop made a great first impression, followed by the searchable menu, terrific user manual, well-designed guis, the convenience and selection of synaptic, and the speed.

As a long-time Puppy user, I had some things to get used to, such as using a full install (can't reboot w/o save when I screw up), not being able to load and unload sfs files into a layered file system, and not being root all the time. In many cases, MX has binaries where Puppy has modifiable scripts, but everything can be customized after a little poking around (All Settings

). Almost everything works the first time !!

Thanks, developers.

Posted: **Thu Mar 22, 2018 8:24 pm**

I still use Puppy, on a disk and use it sort out problems with Grub - and prefer Puppy's Grub screen, easier on old eyes than that from MX.

Posted: **Thu Mar 22, 2018 8:31 pm**

Suse Linux 7.3

Posted: **Sun Apr 01, 2018 9:34 am**

My first Linux was Ubuntu, but updates kept messing it up. I had heard that Linux Mint was safer with updates, so I switched to it (Xfce desktop, easiest for kids IMO). It was safer, but only because they had an updater tool that lets users filter out dangerous stuff. Ubuntu had experimental Beta stuff included in their updates! Unforgivable in a distro aimed at newbies. So Mint was cool, but a resource hog! To lighten it up I switched to Linux Lite (modified with the Mint updater to keep it kinda safe), but I was still pretty scared of the Ubuntu base that makes a "safe updater" necessary to begin with! Plus LL had a whole bunch of PPAs added, which is equally scary.

When I heard about MX, based on Debian Stable (and it just doesn't get any more stable than Debian Stable), I was really happy to find something that didn't need to be "made safe" from stupid experimental updates, and was still kid-friendly (newbie friendly, user-friendly, whatever). So I've been using it Live for awhile and finally got brave enough to install it yesterday. I have customized it a bit, swapping the panel location and putting launchers that I like in.

The tools are GREAT! I don't think it's quite as "newbie-friendly" yet as Linux Lite was, but my gosh - what good is a super-easy kid-friendly tool set if a single update can cripple the whole thing?! Rawr!

For grins and giggles I play with other distros sometimes, but MX is the only one I have installed.

Posted: **Mon Apr 02, 2018 5:13 pm**

Kanotix.

Posted: **Mon Apr 02, 2018 5:41 pm**

Ubuntu, 2011 or so. I was interested in web development and was reading HTML for Dummies or something and they were talking about different IDE's and editors and mentioned vim and emacs. For some reason I wanted to try them on the original platform so I installed Ubuntu to try them out and I never really got anywhere with web devel but I have been using Linux full time since then so that worked out.

Posted: **Mon Apr 02, 2018 6:22 pm**

yellow dog, knoppix, dsl, puppy, mepis, simplymepis, mepis-lite, and finally stuck with anitx. I tried a bunch of them at one time or another, mint, debian, suse, slack, Mandriva, sidux, buntu flavors. Every once and while I'll boot into Windows 7 for a laugh and reminder.

cheers,
ohh

Posted: **Tue Apr 03, 2018 8:02 am**

My first was Linux Mint Debian with XFCE. When the XFCE version was dropped, I switched to SolydXK which I used until fairly recently. A lot of the SolydXK-specific tools started not working on my (rather old) system, so I was looking for other distributions. I read a positive review of MX Linux on DistroWatch. It sounded good, and I really liked the documentation. I've been using it a couple of weeks now, and no regrets!

Posted: **Tue Apr 03, 2018 10:03 am**

RH 5.2, Winter break 1997/98. A Word macro virus ate a 20+ page lab report and I was angry. I was also very enamored with the Suns, NeXTs, and AIX machines I worked with at school (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo). Installed RedHat, joined the LUG, became a student sysadmin, got my first IT job out of school (ended up at Sun) from a recruiter who showed up to the LUG. So much for that engineering career.

Distros since then... there was a RH phase, a Mandrake phase, Slackware, Ubuntu/Kubuntu, Fedora, Vector, Debian, CrunchBang, Arch, Mint Debian Edition, OpenSUSE, back to Arch, Ubuntu, and Debian, BunsenLabs, and currently MX, Raspbian, and BunsenLabs with one Ubuntu MATE machine with iffy hardware.

Posted: **Tue Apr 03, 2018 1:30 pm**

Wow! ancient linux users here.

In 2005 my family had a powerful PC (an AMD 1.8GHz with 1Gb if I remember well) and my young brother usually messed Windows XP up. I got tired of formatting each 2-3 moths, then I decided to try Ubuntu 5.04. It survived for a year! but he finally destroyed it.

However, after that I bought my PC and moved to many other distros.

Posted: **Wed Apr 25, 2018 5:52 pm**

An Ubuntu, 1997, for interests' sake. Hopped through quite a few, settled on Xubuntu with DockbarX for several years. Moved to MX17-1 recently, happy so far.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 4:03 am**

My first was suse 6 if I remember correctly, in the early 2000's. Got the cd's from a friend. Used that and broke it a few times. Never had internet so I had no reference. Then win xp for a year or so until I got a copy of Ubuntu, I think it was 5.10. stayed with Ubuntu (mostly ultimate edition) for a long time, but since I had no internet I seldom updated, and when I did, bad things happened. I have internet now and installed Ubuntu mate 17.10 in the beginning of the year. Some patches and workarounds and all was good for a while. I had a bit of issues with systemD and was looking for something more stable. I downloaded centOS and arch, both in virtual box to get a feel for them. I guess Debian packages was what convinced me to stay on the Debian route. Haven't used anything other than apt for years, never really used rpm's as I hadn't had internet. So while looking for Debian download I somehow saw good things about MX. Read up on MX and decided to give it a go. My first MX is my current 17.1. I am yet to see an issue, and the window manager is somehow growing on me(although I placed everything in the same spot it was on gnome2). So I'm 2months on MX and not seeing a reason to try something else.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 4:28 am**

Started with Red Hat 4.2 in 1997. Then Caldera OpenLinux, Madrake, Mepis... For a while I used also Best Linux, LBA-Linux and SOT linux. They were the only Finnish distributions .

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 9:14 am**

MarcM wrote: Wed Apr 25, 2018 5:52 pm An Ubuntu, 1997, for interests' sake. Hopped through quite a few, settled on Xubuntu with DockbarX for several years. Moved to MX17-1 recently, happy so far.

Maybe 2007? Or maybe it was Redhat or Suse that you used back then. I think Shuttleworth created his foundation in 2001, and Ubuntu was first released in 2004. The X,K,L variants came later.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 9:28 am**

It was Edubuntu in 2005 or 2006 in my primary school. After that some short testings with Ubuntu and Fedora. Now I've been using Ubuntu and Debian, but I will replace Ubuntu with MX soon.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 1:02 pm**

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.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 1:06 pm**

PondLife wrote: Sun May 27, 2018 1:02 pm 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.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 1:24 pm**

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.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 3:20 pm**

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

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 5:09 pm**

... 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).

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 5:56 pm**

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.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 9:03 pm**

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.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 10:13 pm**

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 :)

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 10:22 pm**

KBD wrote: Sun May 27, 2018 10:13 pmI 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.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 10:42 pm**

uncle mark wrote: Sun May 27, 2018 10:22 pm MEPIS is down for the count? Could have fool me.

It looked like it for awhile there

Posted: **Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:49 am**

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.

Posted: **Sat Jun 09, 2018 12:16 pm**

Long ago Corel linux :) then mandrake as the stopped ubuntu then MXlinux.

Posted: **Sat Jun 09, 2018 1:03 pm**

Technically, Knoppix....at the advice of a Geek Squad dude to recover my stuff from a Windows 98 home desktop that had crashed. First one I installed right after that was Mandrake from the box set I bought from Best Buy. I don't remember the exact year, but it was a long time ago.

Posted: **Sat Jun 09, 2018 1:07 pm**

Slax - around about 2003 and then a beta of Mepis a week or so later.

Posted: **Sat Jun 09, 2018 1:46 pm**

piperdan wrote: Sat Jun 09, 2018 1:03 pm Knoppix..... I don't remember the exact year, but it was a long time ago.

First time I started it way back then and heard: "Initiating startup sequence", I knew that Linux was cool.

Posted: **Sat Jun 09, 2018 2:18 pm**

Suse Linux 7.3

Posted: **Sat Jun 09, 2018 2:42 pm**

CentOS back in 2006-07? Out of the back of a Linux magazine. Suse a week or two later.

MX Linux Forum

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