When did you come to Linux?

[MurphCID]

I was late in discovering the Amiga, and could never afford one, but it seems to have been a very nice machine and operating system. Heck, it took me 30+ years to afford a Macbook Pro, after wanting a Mac for decades (now that I have it, I ignore it for the most part).

[sn00pd0g]

I first tried Linux back in 1999 Red Hat then tried Mandrake then tried Ubuntu and loved it easy to install. It was fun to use. I put it on my wife`s Eee pc it worked great for about three years, then after a upgrade some of the keys didn`t work any more so I went back to windows 7 and low and behold after awhile he same keys did not work any more. So there I sat with a computer that was as good a a boat anchour. And I found Mint Mate 19 and low and behold ALL of my keys work

[BG405]

same keys did not work any more

This does look like a hardware issue to me, so if it does recur, you could try plugging in a USB keyboard & see if this works OK. Keyboards are usually not too difficult (or expensive) to replace on laptops & netbooks so this may be worth investigation.

[all41]

When did you come to Linux?

I think the universal answer to this question is:
"Later than I should have"

[Moem]

When did you come to Linux?

I think the universal answer to this question is:
"Later than I should have"

That's not how it feels for me. I came to Linux when the time felt right... and when I had had enough of Windows, so I had a reason. I'm not sure it would have worked for me if I'd tried it earlier. I jumped in when Linux for the desktop felt doable, complete and mature. This happened to be at Mint 17.

My partner came home to find me having just installed Mint on my netbook. He asked, so you're finally ready for Linux? No, I said, Linux is finally ready for me!

[BG405]

He asked, so you're finally ready for Linux? No, I said, Linux is finally ready for me!

This may well be the case with many but I'm not sure myself.

Whilst I would undoubtedly have benefitted from an earlier Linux adoption, when I did make the switch it was practically overnight. That means my involvement with Windows effectively ended right then, so at least in my case, the late adoption meant I have hands-on experience with MS OSs up to Win10.

This might be useful if I need to fix one & it also kept me in the loop as to all the shenanigans MS were (& are) getting up to. Still, I can read about the latter here & as for the former, it's getting less likely .. & more likely that the machine in question will have Linux put on it instead.

I think the universal answer to this question is:
"Later than I should have"

Trying to wrangle the pros & cons of what I said in my response to Moem, I suspect the answer is "Yes".

It's quite hard to assess really. I think now that more Linux knowledge & experience couldn't have hurt, but only if the switch wasn't as quick i.e. more of a change-over period, if I'd done it much earlier.

[MurphCID]

You know the Slackware guys then and now are the real studs of the Linux world, they have my respect. But I want simple, reliable, and easy to use so I use Mint.

[ud6]

2005 Hoary Hedgehog I first saw it then I downloaded the glorious Daper Drake (Ubuntu).. free, and a great philosophy.. I was hooked. Messing with boot up speed, customisation and all the things I couldn't do in windows. But also, damn the driver support was poor.

Now I look back I think why the heck did I bother? I actually wasted a huge chunk of my time achieving nothing, though I guess I had fun.. and I probably avoided a few viruses on the way.

I also remember, on my dual boot system I could transfer files quicker by rebooting into ubuntu than I could by just transferring in xp. Indeed, if linux had had decent drivers, it would have blown windows out of the water. It was only Windows 8 that they seemed to get decent performance (speed and boot up speed). Seems Windows 8 was the height of their achievements though

In the middle period, there was no decent software for video editing, so kept dual boot. Now we're living in the dawn of the new age, starting with mint (I jumped on it right away cos I prefer green, and had codecs already installed, and Unity is ugly). Drivers pretty good, software pretty good, despite improvements in windows file transfer linux still outcompetes in many cases, especially of you use f2fs on usb. (You gotta hear me moan at work when they want file transfers onto a FAT32 usb).

Looking back, I think we can be proud.. whilst my windows powered bank ATM is slow and crashing amd my work collegues still complain of time consuming updates, my android phone is a dream, as are my two mint MATE laptops. Linux is 5000% better, windows has maybe improved, but still has some of the same old problems and some new ones (advertising, super bloat).

[MurphCID]

Driver support, yeah, I remember that nightmare. It is still hit and miss with certain wifi cards though. I just wish the UI was more attractive, and that it had iTunes support so I could transfer my wife and kids to Linux.

[sn00pd0g]

same keys did not work any more

This does look like a hardware issue to me, so if it does recur, you could try plugging in a USB keyboard & see if this works OK. Keyboards are usually not too difficult (or expensive) to replace on laptops & netbooks so this may be worth investigation.

Problem is solved with mint 19

[MurphCID]

When did you come to Linux?

I think the universal answer to this question is:
"Later than I should have"

That's not how it feels for me. I came to Linux when the time felt right... and when I had had enough of Windows, so I had a reason. I'm not sure it would have worked for me if I'd tried it earlier. I jumped in when Linux for the desktop felt doable, complete and mature. This happened to be at Mint 17.

My partner came home to find me having just installed Mint on my netbook. He asked, so you're finally ready for Linux? No, I said, Linux is finally ready for me!

Agreed, when the time was right, and my Mandrake adventure was not the right time.

[Arch_Enemy]

Driver support, yeah, I remember that nightmare. It is still hit and miss with certain wifi cards though. I just wish the UI was more attractive, and that it had iTunes support so I could transfer my wife and kids to Linux.

Driver support...I was an "Early Adopter" and bought a ZiP drive the minute the store I was working for at the time got them. We had a store in front and a service dept in the rear. Great little thing! One hundred megabytes on something the size of a floppy!

Then I started with SuSE...Oh, there was a driver alright. After you compiled it into the kernel!

[MurphCID]

I still remember the nightmare of getting a Canon printer to try and work under Mandrake linux back in the day using CUPS. Printers are so much easier these days.

[cecilieaux]

1998. Had just purchased the company in which I worked and moved the offices. We were then using one Internet computer and a sneaker network, but that was behind the times. So I found a teenager -- literally -- who was tech savvy and he suggested making the Internet computer into a Linux server, under Red Hat 4, which was then free. That little server interacted with Windows machines for years until the machine itself died in 2006.

Some time after, I became intrigued with Linux and tried dual booting with Mandrake, then Ubuntu, finally Linux Mint (because hated Unity).

[lexon]

Around Dec. 2003. I had purchased a desktop PC from Walmart online with Lindows on it. It became Linspire shortly after. Windows did not like the name. lol
I started here with Mint 6. Ubuntu forums at the time were a real pain.
Linux path below.

L

[jelabarre59]

My first Linux install was 1n 996 or 1997, Slackware on a Micron Pentium 133 laptop. By 2001 I was primarily using Linux at home and at work (that and AIX). Even working at a Linux company now (a contractor, not a regular employee, so it's not like I'm being infaithful with another distro on my own time).

[murray]

... bought a ZiP drive the minute the store I was working for at the time got them. We had a store in front and a service dept in the rear. Great little thing! One hundred megabytes on something the size of a floppy!

Zip drives were great, until you got the dreaded Click of Death...

[thenextguy]

My first Linux install was 1n 996 or 1997, Slackware on a Micron Pentium 133 laptop. By 2001 I was primarily using Linux at home and at work (that and AIX). Even working at a Linux company now (a contractor, not a regular employee, so it's not like I'm being infaithful with another distro on my own time).

Same here, first came to try a Linux distro back in 96 or maybe 95, Slackware. Hated it. After being used to NeXT computers as well as working with SunOS/Solaris, Irix and other Unixes it was just one hell of a shock. I did finally settle on NT 4 as my main PC desktop OS, but tried various other Linux distros over the years at various times. Then this year started trying out almost all Linux distros available, first on a live USB stick, then some select ones in VMs under Windows 10's Hyper-V. The last few months I've been running Mint 19 Mate and LMDE, plus successively two other distros. I'm about to give Mint Cinnamon another go, and then I'll make my final choice which to give a proper install on its own disk and dual-boot with Windows on my main system. Plus I tend to use a Tails Live USB stick for most of my online activities.

[lsemmens]

... bought a ZiP drive the minute the store I was working for at the time got them. We had a store in front and a service dept in the rear. Great little thing! One hundred megabytes on something the size of a floppy!

Zip drives were great, until you got the dreaded Click of Death...

I still have one floating around here somewhere. I picked it up at a second hand shop some years back for only a few bucks but it was way past its use by date even then. I played with it for a while and then promptly forgot it,

[sgtor]

For my story I need to start with DOS and Win3.1. It was long before 1995 because win95 hadn't come out yet but I don't remember the exact year. I always wanted a computer but could never afford one. I knew nothing about computers or tech but by this time I could buy a used one for about $500 so now I could afford one.

So I bought my 286 with DOS 6 and Win3.1 pre-installed and loved it. Yes I loved DOS. I bought two books, one for DOS and one for win3.1 and learned everything I could. Back then you had to load memory modules in DOS in proper order and there were ways to tweak things to get even more memory beyond 640k I think it was, and I just loved it. lol crazy yeah but it's all I knew about at the time.

So one day I was on IRC and somebody mentioned something to the effect of "if you ever want to see a real OS check out UNIX". So I started researching this UNIX thing and eventually found out that there was some sort of free UNIX clone called Linux.

I happened to be in a book store one day and spotted a book called Using Linux, so I picked it up and lo and behold there was a CD with a copy of the Linux OS in the back so that was all I needed to see, I took it to the cash register and bought it.

That CD turned out to be Slackware v.1 or 2, one of the earliest versions at least. So I followed the book and managed to get it installed and indeed it was a real OS. A computer OS as opposed to just a disc OS which is what DOS was. As a matter of fact if I'm not mistaken DOS=Disc Operating System.

So from that point on I always had a Linux computer for playing around with and having fun and the Windows computer as the workhorse. Wishing it didn't have to be that way of course.

As the years went on I would keep trying wine to see how many of my "can't do without windows progs" would run and it was never enough.

So then I started looking for Linux versions of programs that had windows ports and started using those and making sure everything was converted properly.

Then a few years back I made the full transition to Linux only and now I only have two windows programs that I run in a windows VM. Every other computer or laptop is Linux only and I couldn't be happier. I do wonder though how much easier my computing life would have been if I had just done it sooner.