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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What was your first experience using Linux? How old were you? Stick around or did you go back to windows before eventually circling back to Linux? (lemmy.cloudaf.site)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'll go first, I took my mom's college textbooks which came with discs for a couple distros and failed to install RHEL before managing to get Fedora Core 4 working. The first desktop environment I used was KDE and despite trying out a few others over the years I always come back to plasma. Due to being like 12, I wanted to run my games on it, and man wine was not nearly as easy to use (or as good) as it is nowadays. So I switched back to windows until around 2015 or so when I spent the next few years trying to replace windows as much as I could. Once valve released proton, I switched fully and have t looked back, unless my still there windows partition tries to take over my computer when I restart it at least.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Around 2004, maybe 2005, I had to recover some files from an old laptop and landed on a live CD of Knoppix for the job. Dabbled in Linux a bit after, but not seriously, for the better part of the decade after - mostly distro hopping and having fun, especially with old hardware, back when Ubuntu was in better standing with the community.

Ended up using it more seriously in the last ~5 years. Hopped around Mint, Manjaro (actually lasted 2 years before I borked it), and OpenSUSE before finally landing on Fedora, which has been my daily for maybe 2 years now. With the Red Hat stuff, depending on how that pans out, I'm debating on just going to vanilla Debian at this point. But I've always had a soft spot for Mint, so we'll just have to see.

As for Windows, I still have my main tower with Win 10 (no Linux) that I've upgraded throughout the years from Win 7. But Win 11 isn't having it, so once Win 10 hits EOL, it'll get Linux as well (assuming it doesn't kick the bucket first).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Knoppix was my gateway as well. I'd checked out Linux before, but I used Knoppix to help out regularly for a while, which led to dual booting my laptop with Ubuntu 6.06, ending with Linux being my main OS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The first thing I tried wax knoppix but the disk my mom burned for me didn't work, I didn't wind up actually getting to use knoppix until high school and then I found DSL was better for my needs at the time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

11 releasing was the catalyst for me just straight up not using my Windows drive anymore, I installed it to my Thinkpad (it's still there, next to arch) to check it out and holy shit was it bad. Before then I'd boot in to play games with anticheat that didn't work on Linux. Nowadays if I can't play it on Linux I just don't. Want my money? At the very least support proton. Don't? Ok I'll keep my money.