What was your first Linux experience?

Link is down... but....

Back around the turn of the century when I was a high school freshman, I really wanted to try to crack wiki passwords and Linux was the only way to do it. Wifi itself was still a bit of a novelty. I was a Windows Bro. I forget the name of the package, and it would be almost another decade before I moved to Linux desktop full time - but it opened me up to a world of possibilities.

SLS Linux downloaded from one of the Bulletin Boards of that era. Around 1991 or 1992 or thereabouts. I was already using a variant of UNIX by then.

Over the next few years, I would 'look in' on the latest Linux version about every few months, usually the latest Slackware. It was amazing the huge progress in leaps and bounds as networking was added, as graphics were added, etc.

Around 2001, I felt that Linux was as good as the Solaris (SUN's UNIX) I had been using, so started using Linux full-time from then onwards.

I was using a UNIX GUI around the time that Windows 3.1 came out in 1993(?). Compared to the UNIX GUI capabilities I was used to, Windows was so bad and so primitive that I have never considered using it as my day-to-day Operating System at any time in the nearly 30 years since then.

Over 20 years ago now Australian Personal Computer published a pocket book all about Red Hat with an installation CD as part of the book.

At the time I think we we still on 28.8k dial up, so apart from the overall consistency of the unix style "everything is a file" approach, I remembered that the packets flowed noticeably faster (less gaps in between) than on Windows. I was sold.

My father is a mathematician who has taught computing and math at high school, tech and university level and he has never owned a computer, in over well 25 years of personal computer ownership, with a windows operating system installed.

For years his favorite linux was Sabayon, for the effortless connectivity to devices, local and networked, followed by Puppy because of the load to ram performance on older PCs.

Around late 2002, I started talking to one of my friends about Linux. I don't remember if I installed Mandrake first (I think he was using that, and gave me some discs) or Red Hat (I've still got the Red Hat Linux for Dummies book that I got the CDs from), but I set up a dual-boot partition on my computer. I was absolutely fascinated by the idea of running a PC without Microsoft software. In 2003 after I started college, a friend got me switched over to Slackware, and I used that for a couple years. Great environment for learning...terrible environment to use as a bleeding-edge style Linux system. But I learned a lot about how the OS was put together by trying to use it that way.

Accidentally installed Fedora onto my dad's desktop instead of an attached USB drive.

Slackware, around 2002. I was heavily into roguelike games and socialism, so FOSS ticked a lot of boxes and let me feel like I fit in with all the devs on the roguelike forums. Soon after, I discovered Debian, then Gentoo, and a whole bunch more.

Posting this to 1. ask a question and 2. Mention a cool new social site.

What was your first Linux experience? What made it stick?

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