Yes, im doing le funy Meme. And yes, I am an autist, with some signs towards something adhd adjacent
I first tried Linux Mint when I was 12, eventually changed to Ubuntu when I was 13 or 14 because I saw the Windows 11 copilot button, installed arch at late 14, and got to gentoo when I was 15.
Can anyone beat me to it?
Just to put you all on notice: I started my kids on Linux from day 1 of their computing lives. I’m playing the long game here. In another 80 years they’re going to be in the longest living users category.
They mostly use Linux as their daily drivers. Any time they have to use windows for school work they also rage at the terrible UI and lack of ease of use. <Insert evil laughter here>
Back at the university, sometime around 1995 when I needed a Unix for the exams. Downloaded on 1.4 Mb floppies
in 2002 when my windows me computer start looping on the blue screen of death, with all of my college papers/essays/tests/assignments trapped in it.
the recovery media refused to work because i had upgraded the computer several times and i couldn’t afford the $180 windows xp cd. so i bought a linux magazine for $5 that included a copy of mandrake linux installation media and used paper printouts from my college’s computer labs to help me rescue my work from the computer.
lol. This is my story as well, except I wrecked my XP MBR and the CD was in Dr. Dobbs that my dad had a sub thru his work from. I was too impatient to wait for him to bring home an XP install CD.
I suspect that this is the story for most Linux users; windows failing at a critical need
That’s how you do it. Waiting to drown but suddenly learning to fly :D
I started 28 years ago with Slackware 3.0, then Gentoo, Ubuntu, took a detour via OS X, then back to Ubuntu, now Arch.
Recently started learning Linux with ChatGPT…
And WOW! I love Linux!! It’s so easy to deploy apps with Docker!
I first started Ubuntu as a minecraft server, then last year I actually started using it as a desktop.
I’d say I was around that age. Maybe earlier, 10? But only because my dad was into linux. This was back in 1998 to 2000 though. I wasn’t actually allowed access to a computer’s hardware (and therefore the ability to install an OS, given my extremely restricted access) until I started uni with an old computer that didn’t even have onboard sound.
I started using linux Slackware in 1996. First time I was paid to install linux on a server in 1998. It was Red Hat 5.2 way before they switch to Enterprise Linux.
Been my desktop daily driver since 1999.
Yes, I’m old.
In University. In the 90s we used commercial un*x (HP-UX, IRIX, AIX, Solaris/SunOS, SCO) and some others like SVR4, BSD, Minix. Then a guy on usenet talked about making is own kernel running on a 386. My first real full linux install was kernel 0.99 on a 486DX50, around 1993, came in multiple floppies, then to install X11 that was like 10 more floppies! Configuring things was a bit nighmarish.
I was in 8th grade so 13-14 years old right?
I’ve been daily driving Ubuntu for at least 16 years. I miss when Ubuntu had Windows style Start Menus and barely functional entertainment software.
I don’t care about specific distros, I chose Ubuntu because I liek purple
Slackware. 1993.
I’m old lol.
Been through:
Slackware
Mandrake
Debian
Ubuntu
Redhat , old and new
Fedora
Arch
Knoppix
Pop!
CentOS
Enlightenment
Etc etc…
Right now I’m living on KDE Neon.
I started robotics at 12, started linux aroumd the same time but had to use windows for the program used for robotics competitions,
Stopped attending them at 14 so started using arch right after that and used it for 6 years.
After that used gentoo for a year at 20, and now I’m 21 using nixos.
I also started selfhosting with linix vps-s at around the age of 18, with debian. And last week started to move all my server to nixos with nixos-anywhere and deploying the server with deploy-rs.
Might make a blogpost on my selfhosting journey and on how I use nixos for selfhosting. Haven’t made a post since the start of the year.
About the time that Windows 10 came out. I was just messing around and ended up liking it.
I think I tried DamnSmallLinux in a VM around like 2008 or something which I thought was really cool, then I tried Fedora which I didn’t really like, then I tried Ubuntu which I really liked and still do, although I’m going to switch to Mint at some point because I prefer the idea of having a community-owned distro.
