What distros have you used? How long have you used Linux, and do you use it exclusively? How did you first get into it?
Share your Linux and FOSS story. :)
>>53239910
>inb4 I used (crap distro) and it sucks and i haven't tried any other ones and i base my opinions that the one distro represents linux as a whole, and thus sucks. end of story
I started with Slackware 2.0 from a magazine.
I tested various distros in VMs, including FreeBSD, Haiku and shit like that.
Today I use Debian 8.2.0 but I intend to upgrade.
I choose to use Linux when I checked Wireshark and saw that in Windows Microsoft have my arse at any time.
>>53239927
This. I used live Ubuntu and it was shit, so Linux sucks at all
>>53239910
for me
> be a matlab fag in 2006
> matlab is life, matlab is love - it has all the packages i need
> some gnu teeth health organization comes to my college
> talk about some thing about GNU not being UNIX - and that's somehow related to linux
> linux is somehow related to debian
> debian is somehow related to ubuntu
> ubuntu is somehow related to canonical
> didn't understand shit
> opens a text editor (emacs) and writes python code
> literally jizzed at the beauty of python in front of everyone like a sperg lord
> install a "lizard" based OS that they gave us free of cost
>> python
>> print "i love you python, i love you floss"
never looked back since then
>>53239910
Started using ubuntu in company. Worked for year and a half with it, learning all I could about linux meanwhile.
Using cloud service, started using CentOS. Moved my pc to CentOS, installed minimal iso and added DE by hand.
After that, tried using Arch. Installed and learned a lot with it. But was going to install Xen, and after hours, some link was broken and couldn't. left Arch after that.
At home, used same linux as the ones at work, but then started using Kali Linux, just for fun.
Disconnected a few devices from their wifi, got passwords for fun, and some other stuff. Still using Kali at home, it's Debian-based anyways...
>>53239964
>I choose to use Linux when I checked Wireshark and saw that in Windows Microsoft have my arse at any time.
nice :)
>>53239964
Which Windows? All of them?
>>53240060
Nowadays all of them, yes. But at that time I was using Windows 7.
Since High School I had an ancient POS from Gateway was like 8 years old at that point. Super weak shit, tried to make it last long enough so I switched to Fedora, Core 3 I think.
>>53239910
Fedora core 4/5
Ubuntu 6.06
I use linux on my laptops for the most part
Just ubuntu now since they have the binary blobs i need
i've tried a few distros I realized there's not enough difference to have holy wars over it.
just got a new laptop.
>sound doesn't work
>mouse is too slow and gui controls are max sensitivity.
>brightness changer doesn't work
>terminal doesn't render correctly
on the flip side i can customize anything I want to easily. developing with windows is like wearing handcuffs. i fixed some of these issues with a kernel update but overall it's a lot of work to figure it out.
Do you expect to see more in this thread than you saw a year ago?
>>53239910
>What distros have you used?
All the popular ones.
>How long have you used Linux
Almost 15 years.
>do you use it exclusively?
Yes, both at home and at work.
>How did you first get into it?
I got a hand-me-down computer from a family member as a youth and started tinkering around with it. My uncle suggested that I take a look at Linux. Parents bought me a copy of RedHat 7.0 for Christmas 2000.
Dual booted Windows 98 and Linux for a few months, but ditched Windows because it crashed all the time.
2001-2002: RedHat 7.0, 7.1
2002-2003: Experimented with Mandrake, Debian, Slackware. Ended up on Slackware.
2003-2009: Gentoo
2009-present: Ubuntu
>>53240309
why did you switch from gentoo to ubuntu?
people normally make the opposite switch
>>53240548
There are more packages for Ubuntu, and it requires much less effort on my part to maintain functional Ubuntu systems. I always go for the LTS releases these days.
When I install a new package or upgrade an old package, it's very unlikely that something unrelated or semi-related will break, stop working, or somehow need attention.
With Gentoo, there was always something that I was fixing or messing around with.
I know, Ubuntu is too popular to be cool.
Gentoo was great for learning the ins and outs of Linux. I have fond memories of farting around with Linux as a teenager. Definitely wasn't wasted time. I just don't have the same kind of free time that I used to.
My professor required it for a class I took so I installed Ubuntu
He's one of the main coreutils maintainers
never
/thread
I tried out
Mint and backtrack for a day.
Ubuntu for less than a week.
Never. Again. That's when I wanted to be a cool hacker. Now I just stick to electrical engineering
>>53240680
I had Eggert too
first introduced to it in 2004 by a family friend who was running slax with kde across the road (14 at the time), i asked about it and he gave me a simplymepis cd
i ran that on my laptop for a while
played around with linux but still mainly used windows until around 2009/2010, when i started using it about as much as windows
by 2011 i was mainly using linux
been using arch exclusively since 2012
>Windows crashes
>All is lost
>Outdated backup
>Oh well
>Install Linux
>And they lived happily ever after
Besides live booting Ubuntu on my laptop from time to time, my first real distro was crunchbang. Tried a couple of distros over time but none felt quite as comfortable as plain Debian in the end.
a friend of mine introduced me to GNU/Linux in 1999. No graphical installer, i didn't have a clue. Later, as ms-products were too expensive for me, a switched to suse, didn't like it, then found kanotix and landed with kubuntu, using it more and more. Now, i use windows only once in a while for a gaming session. For work i still had to use it, but found out that gnu/linux offers way better tools for my needs (i worked as webmaster and also cared for the company's network) so i installed some vm. As by now, i fell for the arch meme and installed it successfully. nevertheless, next time i'll install debian and try to configure other DE, WM an DM as i only had half success with arch on that. Win10 is no option for me. I'll stick to GNU/Linux and try out other distros on my spare thinkpad ( maybe gentoo?)
>>53240985
>GNU/Linux
I started out with Ubuntu 10.04, I liked it but jumped ship when 11.x came around. I distrohopped for a while, then picked up an iMac G3 at a rummage sale. Prior to that I'd been fueled with blind Apple hatred, turned out OS X 10.0 was great, even compared to modern operating systems, for the next few years I almost exclusively used PowerPC OS X, picked up an Intel iMac for the Mavericks DP, and started running OpenBSD on my PowerBook. I've been putting off switching my server from OS X Server 10.5 Leopard to NetBSD, still run OS X on my iMac, and last year started running Debian on an SBC and my VPS.
I had worked with UNIX machines in college in the 1990-1993 timeframe; by 1994 I had scraped up enough shekels to buy an IBM PS/2 Model 60 that had been "upgraded" to a "486" using some Kingston product that I no longer recall.
In those days, Microchannel support was nonexistent, and I had to wait another year or two until I had a cheapo beige-box machine that could actually run Linux.
It was superior to the Windows of that era in every way unless you needed to do office productivity stuff including printing which SUCKED if you didn't have a laser printer that supported postscript (big bucks in those days).
First distro I used was slackware; had to download one diskette at a time - one bad diskette and back to the lab to doswrite it again or download it at 64k (assuming no one else on campus was using the Internet).
Got curious about 2004, so installed Red Hat 9, then Fedora Core 3, then lots of distros until I settled with Debian for a while.
2010, starcraft 2 got released so left linux
2016, just got a sysop work using linux rhel and solaris
still i haven't used linux at desktop again
>>53239910
in chronological
>ubuntu 10.04
>crunchbang
>archbang
>arch
>gentoo
>arch
I've been using Linux for five or six years now.
I grew out of video games and could finally be free of microsoft's shitty bloat and spyware.
I first got into it because my friend told me Ubuntu would run better on my old laptop. Fucking idiot, recommending the most bloated distro.
>>53241271
Yeah, just been waiting for something like that...
>>53239910
Started on Red Hat Linux 7.2 in 2001.
Have used many distros, but spent the most time on Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, CentOS.
Now I am paid to do kernel patches for my work's product's kernel, I occasionally get to send patches back into the kernel as well.
Was hired to write kernel code for uploading firmware to devices to our firm's linux-based computers. That was my first exposure to Linux. Interestingly the software that uploads the firmware itself was being run on a Windows machine.
Then I pretty much was the only person maintaining Linux for that device for a long while.
I have Ubuntu server at home, mainly working as webserver, but I still use Windows for my everyday tasks because software. I do have a cygwin installation on my machine at home, though, and I actively use it.
>>53239910
I've used Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS and SailfishOS (Mer).
I've used Linux for about 5 years, give or take.
I don't use it exclusively, I dual boot into windows 7 occasionally for the sake of gaming.
I first got into it via wanting to try out xmonad.
>>53243508
This sounds cool. Out of interest, what prior experience did you have that you were hired to write kernel code for an OS you'd never used? I've always thought embedded firmware would be fun to get into.
>>53243535
Embedded firmware is not fun. Experiences differ, but I'm happy I don't do embedded anymore.
I was hired in about 2007 as a college student for pennies, and they didn't expect any results really - they were uploading firmwares using Windows HyperTerminal and what I was tasked with was a convenience feature.
My prior experience was just tinkering with BASIC and C++ (come to think of it, it was also my first exposure to C) for maybe 5-6 years.
>>53240683
>>53239910
What's a story /g/?
what's the female equivalent of pajeet?
>>53244104
Shital
Literally a real Indian female name
>>53244104
Pea Jet
>>53239910
Aurox and Mandriva from magazines.
Then Debian, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, now Mint.
>>53244104
Dickshit
I am not even kidding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKnTTclYvvo
I use Linux for 5 years now, went through a lot of distros. But the ones I used for more than a couple of weeks (in that order) were Debian, Arch, Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE and now I am back at Debian.
I ditched Arch because I really dislike the community, just a bunch of circle jerking neckbeards that think of themselves as the pinnacle of computer science, Fedora was meh, Gentoo was too much of an effort and honestly I am too stupid to use portage.
openSUSE is a pain in the ass in terms of privilege management, Debian just works™, has one of the best packaging systems and a reasonable (and large) community.
Downloaded the SLackware floppy disk sets, in 1995. Not all at once, because my modem was only 14.4K. Just got the basic stuff, and downloaded the rest later (there was like 50 disks in all). I was dual-booting to DOS also. The HDD was only 400 MB, but that was enough back then.
Later went to Debian because it had package manager and easy upgrades, and I couldn't figure out how to upgrade Slackware from libc5 (I fucked up something and it broke the OS).
After a long time on Debian I went to OpenBSD. Was already using it on router/firewall, and some servers first. I'm using that since 2005 or so for my desktop.
>>53244128
Btfo
Literally
>1997 or thereabouts, learn about unix, want to have it at home
>classmate introduces you to Slackware, use it to make your first home server
>by 1998 be settled into Debian because superior package management and SysV init
>dabble with desktop Linux occasionally but always ditch it for Windows
>always run a home server though
>fast forward to about a year or two ago
>find Proxmox for server, love it
>find Linux Mint 16, love it
>finally, today
>all your computers and laptops run Linux (mostly Mint) except for the main desktop and HTPC, because games
>>53239910
Elementary OS : Kind of buggy
Debian : Not good, had problems with hardware because non-free firmware was missing and the only way to detect that was reading the message on boot that lasted for like 1 seconds
Fedora : Kind of good but stuck with pulseaudio shit and gnome so i switched to
Arch : Best distro I've tried out so far, not bloated, no outdated software very good documentation
>Distros have you used
Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Gnome, Arch, OpenSUSE, Backtrack, and maybe one or two more I'm not remembering.
>How long have you used Linux, and do you use it exclusively? How did you first get into it?
I first used Linux as a freshmen in high school to get away from games and focus more on large development projects. I tried a plethora of distros for a day and settled on Fedora, I used that exclusively for two years. Then I built a much more powerful PC and used windows for games as a junior/senior.
I used windows for about 2 years. Now, 19, I have again removed windows 6 months ago for Arch Linux in favor of the FOSS principle. While I do have to make a number of compromises in exactly how much FOSS I use, my system remains largely free and I feel good about it. Not to mention that i3 and openbox are pretty damn comfy once you set it up. Ricing Linux is more fun than video games anyways as long as we're not talk about battlefield.
2003 - 2004: I found out about linux on magazines. Got knoppix. Later tried Mandrake and SUSE.
2005: I wanted to do a full switch to linux, so I went Debian. After several days of trying to make my sound work thanks to a friend, and a month later, I decided it wasn't so amazing of an experience.
2006 - 2009 - Tried ubuntu early on, then decided that I didn't want that. For a good while I just stopped caring
2010 - Tried to get into that again, with the usual (Debian, Buntus, Mint and the like), tried Arch on a netbook. Eventually I found more comfort in linux distros, but still not enough.
2011-2013 - Not much activity due to depression and self improvement. By the end I tried just not bothering with anything and putting on some Xubuntu.
2014 - Happy that it's difficult to find issues, I keep distro hopping like crazy. I end up disliking pretty much every OS known to man.
2015 - Get new PC, get into graphic design. Trying distros is just a random thing that comes into mind every few months.
Now - Still using Windows 8.1.
- played around with Linux around 12 years ago
- dual-booted Ubuntu 10 years ago but almost never used it
- got an X200T ThinkPad in 2013 and decided to primarily use Linux on it
- used Linux Mint and Xubuntu on my laptop, but kept a Windows partition for the rare times I needed it
- became comfortable enough with it to dual boot Linux Mint and Windows 7 on my new desktop build, using Linux as my primary OS
- now using Linux full time for productivity, media consumption, and even some gaming (now that I have Path of Exile running smoothly in Wine, I haven't booted into Windows in over a month)
