When did you come to Linux?

[athi]

Did some programming courses in HS and college in the early 70's and learned that programming is not my thing. Started using PC for work with DOS 3.11 and WinNT. Purchased my first PC in 02-28-1998 with Win95, still remembered the date since i paid $1400 for it. Took 1 day to crashed it and another 2 weeks to reload Win95, good times. Play around with Redhat in the early 2000 about the same time that I switched to Win2000, but never got it working right, mostly due to drivers installation and me problem. Started using Ubuntu in 2007 after MS released Vista as a backup plan. Switch to Mint when Ubuntu went to Unity DE and to Mate when Cinnamon came out, since I like the Gnome2 and WinXP/Win7 desktops. Switch to all Mint Mate at home around 2015.

Been kind of the PC fix it guy since I got my first PC, needed to since I break mine regularly. Got pretty good with Win7 and avoided working on other MS O/S, but recently had to setup a bunch of Win10 laptops. Learned enough about Linux Mint to fix the problems that I am having, particularly SMB/CIFS and Vino/Remmina. Lately been building nas4free/xigmanas NAS servers from old desktops for myself and people who want video servers.

Appreciate what you guys are doing to provide support for Linux Mint and to keep all these Linux Mint versions going, even a non-Ubuntu LMDE just in case version (paranoia is a survival trait).

[Kendall]

I remember seeing the announcement for Ubuntu 8.04 after I was already running Ubuntu, but I don't remember which exact version I started with. Of course that was some time ago so my memory of the ordeal could be way out of whack. Anyway, I hadn't done any coding since high school ('02 ish) and when 9.04 upgraded to 9.10 it removed the option for me to disable the touchpad on the laptop I was using for whatever reason. That was the impetus to get me to jump ship to Mint and start getting into coding again, albeit in a limited capacity at the time.

[MurphCID]

Anyone still using any of the Red Hat type distros? Or have they gone away since apparently they do not have an LTS fork (or so it seems).

[In2Blues]

I started with Ubuntu but can't remember when. 2015 maybe? Anyway, I used it for a while but was a little frustrated because I came from Windows and was not used to being able to do things for myself.

I liked the stability of Linux but an Ubuntu update didn't play well with my system so I scrapped it.

Going back to Windows was the worst mistake I could make.

Finally, after "updating" to W10 and the resultant desire to throw my computer out the window (no pun intended), I looked at Linux again and found Linux Mint.

To say I love it is an understatement. Yes, it can use some tweaks, but what OS can't? Overall, it's amazing. Especially the Cinnamon desktop.

I tried a couple of other distros but found Mint the best of them all.

Now that I'm becoming a little more familiar with things, got a new computer which runs VirtualBox perfectly (I still need a couple of the old OS's programs), there's no turning back. I don't even dual boot because Windows is such a royal pain to deal with.

I'm even happy with LibreOffice as a replacement for MS Office. Works great for me.

Keep up the great work Team Mint!

[MurphCID]

Apparently I was wrong, CentOS might be an LTS Red Hat fork.

[rjsrjs]

I started using Linux Ubuntu 10.04, don't remember what year, and haven't looked back. Was running Windows XP before Ubuntu. XP wasn't that bad but Ubuntu 10.04 was so much better IMO.

[JoeFootball]

Apparently I was wrong, CentOS might be an LTS Red Hat fork.

CentOS is indeed based on RHEL. Not only that, a few years ago, they partnered with the Red Hat team to collaboratively develop the platform, while staying independent of Red Hat itself.

EDIT: CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat

Joe

[MurphCID]

Bump, we have new members. I almost purchased a package on Amazon of Mandrake 7.1, but resisted the temptation since I doubt it would work on my Ryzen system.

[detimo]

I started using Linux in 2003, 17 years ago. This was with Slackware Linux on big CRT monitor.

[Minux1]

Early 2000's bought a Suse Linux installation kit from FutureShop that consisted of about a dozen CDs which contained the O/S + several programs/browser installers.

[MurphCID]

Was Suse really that good back in the day.

[Beerislife]

When IBM dropped support for OS/2 Warp 4 I started playing with Mandrake KDE and RedHat Gnome (Before it became Fedora) No way was I going to install Windows on my machine after using something that actually worked!

I miss OS/2 and have a copy running in Virtualbox just for old times sake!

[lsemmens]

OS/2! Haven't heard of that for centuries! It had the potential to be a windows killer but, sadly, never quite got there.

[MurphCID]

Anyone recall (not fondly) the sheer bloody agony of attempting to get drivers to work, or dependency h*ll from not having that one library (or the correct one) to make some software work? The constant refrain of: "If you are not smart enough to figure it out, you don't deserve to run Linux!" and "RTFM you stoopid Newb!" ? I do, and I never want to go back to those days.

[JoeFootball]

Anyone recall (not fondly) the sheer bloody agony of attempting to get drivers to work ...

Oh yes. In the 1990s, my meager means provided for my only software-based modem, which worked just fine with Win 95/98, but I just could not get it to work with Linux despite my ignorant efforts. This frustrating lack of connectivity was probably the #1 issue that kept me from Linux as my primary OS at the time.

[MurphCID]

Yeah, my first one was 1200 baud, and it was amazing at the time. None of my modems ever worked right under linux at the time.

[Vladimir00]

I started using Linux in 2014.At that time I had something resembling for paranoid schizophrenia.But I was aware that my paranoia is mostly unreasonable.(official diagnosis of schizophrenia I received as a child. I've always had a developmental disorder ).My first linux OS was debian. After ubuntu. In 2016 I started using Zorin.I had several problems with Zorin. As a result, I got severe OCD.In April of this year, I switched to Linux Mint.Works perfect.My mental health improved dramatically after that.

[Minux1]

... no downloadable Linux ISOs with extensive driver databases in tow back in the day ... you learned how to swim or you sank ... whining about NVidia and Broadcom drivers were the least of a newbie Linux users problems ... Linux friendly hardware was at a premium ... kinda made me wish at times that I had Torvalds on speed dial

[MartyMint]

Bump, we have new members. I almost purchased a package on Amazon of Mandrake 7.1, but resisted the temptation since I doubt it would work on my Ryzen system.

Mandrake 7.1 was my very first bare-metal Linux install. Used it for 2 years (as it morphed into Mandriva) before moving on to Ubuntu 6.10

[MartyMint]

... whining about NVidia and Broadcom drivers were the least of a newbie Linux users problems ...

Huh?

If you had NVIDIA drivers installed, every kernel upgrade would break your system. Proprietary graphics drivers were by far the touchiest part of maintaining a functioning system. I remember the days before distros came with "driver managers".