What was your first experience with Linux like?

[keiichidono]

Posted by Rick Hamilton

As humans, we experience “firsts” for almost everything in our lives. Having your first birthday, Getting your first car, Discovering your first true love…these are all experiences that are important to us, that we all cherish. I was thinking about what my next blog post should be and had a quick flashback to my first experiment with Linux, Kubuntu 6.10 in particular....
[Click here to read more (http://bagoflies.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/what-was-your-first-experience-with-linux-like/)]

I think it's a fine post by one of my editors, what do you guys think? :)

[dragos240]

My first experience was on the verge of good and bad. Ubuntu 8.04 is the distro I had installed on this laptop. It rarely connected to a network, which was very very frustrating, within 2 days I had found a makeshift way of making this work. It was okay, I really didn't like it, but it seemed much better than windows. So I never looked back.

[coldReactive]

It was back in summer college, when I was doing the Intro to Operating Systems class. A few years ago abouts, we had MEPIS and KNOPPIX for Linux.

I must say that it was a slightly painful experience, KNOPPIX wouldn't recognize my devices very well, and my laptop wouldn't allow KNOPPIX nor MEPIS to see its harddrive.

[RiceMonster]

Frustrating. I installed Arch as my first distro, and I messed it up big time. I thought I could handle it because I had basic knowledge of how to use bash and vi. Man, my system was really a mess. So when I got fed up, I went to Ubuntu for a few months until distro hopping, then going back to Arch, and then recently Fedora as well (I use it on my laptop).

[SunnyRabbiera]

Not that good, my first distro I tried to install was Yoper, but its installer was quite complicated.
Then came Suse 9.1, it was alright but I could not take its dependency hell.
What kept me going was XP's issues so I went in search of another linux and soon I encountered Mepis linux 3.3.
A wonderful start to my linux journey.

[ibutho]

My first experience with Linux was a nightmare that I'd rather forget (but never will). 9 years ago I got a free Debian 2.2 (Potato cd) from the Linux Emporium (http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk)and I thought I'd check it out. It was a nightmare getting the damn thing installed, but I finally managed after a couple of days of making many errors. Unfortunately I was stuck in text mode because X would not work and I gave up on Debian (I think this is why its not on the list of my favourite distros). I then tried Mandrake Linux 5.1 (based on Red Hat Linux 5.1) and that worked fine, but my internal pci modem was not supported so I had to get an external 56K modem. I know Linux on the desktop is not perfect, but its a lot better than when I first started using it.

[lvleph]

My first experience with linux was in C++ class in 2000. I don't even know what distro it was. The Desktop was CDE, I believe. It was very strange and I didn't really like it. I loved terminal, but not the Desktop Environment. Then I tried SUSE, but was frustrated by dependencies. I then gave up for a few years until I tried Ubuntu 6.06. Much better, but I still had issues, and gave up again. Now I have been consistantly on Ubuntu since 7.10.

[Blu Fox]

A few years ago when I installed ubuntu 7.04 on a damaged hard drive (didn't knew it was damaged) so needless to say, not a pleasant experience.

Tried again a month ago with 9.04 and I like it so far

[hyperAura]

Not so happy at the beginning as I was forced by the Uni to do everything in Linux, but loved it after a while..:)

[Exershio]

My first experience was pretty rough. I was 11 (or 12, I forget) years old at the time (I'm 18 now) and I found a neat little distro called.... Gentoo. Yes, you heard me. I actually tried installing Gentoo as my first Linux distro because I thought the logo was cool and it sounded like an awesome OS.

Little did I know back then haha. I didn't really start using Linux until I was 13 when I tried Mandrake (before it was named Mandrivia.) Then I moved to Ubuntu, then to OpenSUSE, and now to Arch Linux, where I probably won't leave for a long time (if I ever do).

[chris200x9]

not that good I tried xubuntu in highschool and partitioned over windows :O plus I had a winmodem and couldn't go online...I had to get some guy to put on windows again (I was a major n00b) but now I'm up running gentoo and arch (I learned stuff yaaay)

[rajcan]

When I first started I didn't know what I was doing. Last summer I interned at a software dev company, and my last week there I played with hardy in a vm. Since then I've fallen in love with it and now I've got intrepid as my main os. I've also tried out DSL and I like it because of how tiny it is. I had a 512 mb flash drive and didn't know what to do with it, so I installed DSL 4.2.5 on it.

[shadylookin]

My first experience was with Mandrake 10. I was surprised at how graphical it was. I was under the impression it was mostly command line stuff. It went relatively smoothly, though at the time I didn't really get the point of an os that didn't let you play games.

While it's impossible to look at things from a new user perspective I think linux distros have only gotten easier to a completely new user to start since then.

[mdsmedia]

Back in 98-99 I bought a "pocketbook" with Red Hat on the CD....version 6.x I think.

The pocketbook was a guide to dual-booting Linux with Windows 98.

I managed to install it. Even managed to connect to the Net on dialup.

The next attempt was Ubuntu Hoary in October 2005. I tried the LiveCD and spent a few hours chatting in IRC, remarking at how quick it was.... yep, XP really was that slow on a 6 mth old notebook. I installed Ubuntu on my notebook and haven't looked back.

This last weekend I've managed to install Arch on my desktop. I learned more in a few days than I have in 4 years.

[Irihapeti]

Rather nerve-racking! I had got hold of an Ubuntu 7.04 liveCD that I wanted to try out. I spent quite a bit of time googling all sorts of stuff about dual booting and got thoroughly anxious about the whole thing. In the end I just took a deep breath and did it, and had far fewer problems than I thought I would.

The worst was one of those errors that apt-get occasionally does, where a package gets half-installed and you can't do a jolly thing; a forum member gave me a terminal command to use and all was fixed. After that, there was no stopping me.

[Viva]

Horrible. Partly because it was so different to windows while I expected it to be the same and because installing software was so damn difficult. Linux Distros have come a long way in the last few years.

[wirate]

well, literally I am experiencing my first experience of Linux with Ubuntu 9.04. First I used it virtually with VirtualBox. It had some problems like file access etc. Then I did a Wubi install. You must admit installing software (other than those present in package manager) is a nightmare as compared to Windows software installation. I'm new my views might change :)

[Viva]

well, literally I am experiencing my first experience of Linux with Ubuntu 9.04. First I used it virtually with VirtualBox. It had some problems like file access etc. Then I did a Wubi install. You must admit installing software (other than those present in package manager) is a nightmare as compared to Windows software installation. I'm new my views might change :)

Software companies usually provide a deb file or a repository so that you can install it by double clicking it or through the package manager.

[calrogman]

My first experience was pretty rough. I was 11 (or 12, I forget) years old at the time (I'm 18 now) and I found a neat little distro called.... Gentoo. Yes, you heard me. I actually tried installing Gentoo as my first Linux distro because I thought the logo was cool and it sounded like an awesome OS.

I'm 14 and if I really wanted I could install Gentoo as my main OS in a snap! (a four hour one, sure, but I have installed Gentoo before)

[MikeTheC]

Red Hat 4.2. It was interesting. Very, very primitive compared to modern standards, but it was really cool to see a desktop who's overall quality was nearly that of a Mac of the era.

[Dimitriid]

My first try was on Mandrake 6.0 and I had it installed for basically a couple of days. The issue was that back then I was bound to nothing but dial up at the 33.6 kbps modem that came with my computer, which was so old that it did not have any USB ports and it also did not have any PCI ports so I couldn't install a better internal or external modem.

Turns out mandrake just didn't have a way to make my modem work cause it wasn't actually a modem, but something call a "winmodem" or softmodem which basically means that its a crippled hardware that depends on the driver to use the CPU to do some of its tasks, but naturally it would only work on windows.

So basically everytime I wanted to find out how to install an app, how to configure something, etc. I had to restart and boot windows 95 to do it. When trying to install of course I didn't know about Master Boot Records so I literally had to go out to a cyber coffee or something to find out how to re-establish MBR.

Back then things were not nearly as pretty or easy, im surprise of how simple and usabe Linux has become, even distros considered more complicated like Arch Linux are so far ahead from those days I can hardly believe I am talking about the same Linux that was so impenetrable and inaccessible back then.

[t0p]

I had an old (P3 dammit!) laptop running Windows 98. I wanted rid of that goose, and had been entranced by my reading about Unix and Linux and the brief taste of command-line *nix heaven via a shell account on a FreeBSD machine. So, I got hold of 2 Linux CDs from magazines - OpenSuse and Mandriva; and I got shipit.ubuntu.com (http://shipit.ubuntu.com) to send me a couple of Ubuntu CDs (Breezy Badger).

I wanted to do a dual-boot, but my n00bish mind couldn't get itself round partitioning. So I took a deep breath and did an 'entire disk' installation. Suse first... and it threw a wobbly almost immediately, complaining about dependencies or something... I can't remember for sure what the problem was, but the upshot was: no installation. Scrub Suse.

Mandriva next... and this one dropped me into a shell (command line environment). Some kind of graphics card issue or something. Anyway, no X, and such a problem was far beyond my humble powers. So, goodbye Mandriva.

So, I approached my Breezy disk with trepidation. But I took comfort in the notion of 'Third Time Lucky'. And guess what - it all went swimmingly!

I look at my early experimentation with Linux as similar to one's first sexual experiences. The first couple of times it's a bit of an embarrassment/disappointment/disaster (select to fit). But then it all seems to fit together and WHAM! - you're a goddamned Lothario!

And now I'll bid you adieu and return to my little lady (a netbook... small but perfectly proportioned. Ooh la la!!)

[Giant Speck]

My first experience sucked because the distro that was recommended to me (Linux Mint) wouldn't install. So I gave up on it for a while until I found Wubi. That experience also sucked because I didn't know I could just download the .iso file and install it through Wubi, so I had to wait more than three hours while my impossibly slow internet downloaded and installed Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon.

The first few hours were pretty cool until I found out that Hardy Heron had just came out, so I tried updating to Hardy through Wubi. BIG MISTAKE. It freaked out, so I had to reinstall Ubuntu through Wubi again, and once more, I had to wait three hours.

Eventually, I got fed up, said "f*** it" and downloaded and burned a Kubuntu Hardy Heron disc and managed to install it correctly.

I gave it twenty gigabytes of disk space originally, but over time, I grew to like it, and so that space grew from twenty to forty to eighty (this number has since decreased to forty-five ever since the test builds of Windows 7 were released).

After KDE 3 was scrapped in Intrepid, I switched completely from Kubuntu to Ubuntu.

[richg]

It was very nice. I purchased a PC factory equipped PC with Lindows 4.0 in 12-2003. A few small bumps. I read many Linux forum messages and found out it was much better to buy a car ready to drive than building my own car. I wanted to drive a car, not build cars. My way. Yours may be different.

Rich

[slakkie]

My first experience was two-fold:

Hell, as I could not get my X to work (RHEL 4/5 don't recall anymore). I also tried FreeBSD, also X not working.. I spend weeks to fix it.. Nothing worked..
Mandrake, my X worked flawlessly out of the box. I was so happy!! But learned more about FreeBSD in between since we had a FreeBSD X-server at work and fiddled around on that box a lot.

Then installed mandrake on another PC for a school project, acted as a desktop/server.

Around one year later I installed FreeBSD on my home pc (took me a couple of days to get everything working, sound and X were troublesome (I never had good encounters with Xfree86).

Installed FreeBSD on my PC at work as main server, main desktop PC was still win2k. We worked with Windows and eXceed (X-client for Windows). Then my Window PC also got converted to BSD.

Installed Ubuntu in May 2006, co-worker told me about it, waited a bit for it too mature and went for it. Dual boot at first, completly replaced Windows 6 months later.

Replaced my FreeBSD 4.11 server (at work) two years ago with Ubuntu, and most of my machines now run Debian or Ubuntu.

[kevdog]

My first experience with Linux -- well wasn't with Linux -- it was with Unix on some VAC system. Purely the X windowing system with nothing else. Man it was a pain -- and no introduction. Pine for email -- vi or emacs for editing. Xgraph for graphing. Linux as it stands nowadays is a godsend.

[Swagman]

A nightmare.

Very different from what I was used to.

The O/s.... Debian PPC "Woody"

I had to follow it parrot fashion and made many mistakes on the way resulting in me wiping it and starting install again... numerous times, usually for incredibly silly things.

Like... Not knowing to press space bar to select stuff etc.

here's a PDF of the install guide us n00bs had to work to, to get our AmigaONE computers running with debian.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/amigaone/AmigaOne_Debian_Install_Guide.pdf

[cb951303]

my first experience with linux was "Peanut Linux" :)
I then switched immediately to Mandrake > Red Hat > Suse and finally Slackware (For a long time) until I met Ubuntu around 5.10 or 6.06

Edit: LOL! Peanut linux still exists: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=alinux
it looks like they chose the wrong way though...

[PhilGil]

My first experience was a class I took in college in the late 90's. The class was online (dial-up at the time), and I thought it was pretty nifty that I could use the terminal on my Win 95 machine to remote-in to the school's computer. I have no idea what distro the school was using. There was no desktop environment and the class mostly dealt with basic navigation and commands. It was interesting, but Linux didn't seem very useful to me at the time (compared to Windows).

[fraser_m]

Ubuntu 6.10, as a LiveCD. I never installed it, as it had terrible support for my hardware. I decided to install 7.04 as a dualboot, and ruined my MBR. I finally switched to just Ubuntu for 8.04. I now have 9.04 and Windows 7 on this machine. I hate Windows.

I've decided to try Arch in a VM, as I don't want to wipe my HDD...

[Little Bit]

My first experience was wonderful, but I didn't know it was Linux. Everyone shares the computer at the dance studio because all the music and choreography is on it, plus between classes we do the web and check e-mail and do schoolwork and stuff.

It's an ollllld Dell, so I was really surprised at how fast that old thing ran, and it was point-and-click simplicity. When I complimented the owner on how simple and fast his computer is, that's when I learned it's Linux! I was amazed, because I pictured Linux being too "geeky" for a bunch of dance kids to even try, let alone do all the stuff we could do on that computer.

My own computer at home ran Vista and it was getting really slow and hard to use, and it was so much more complicated than the studio computer.

"If that old ancient dinosaur can run so fast and be so simple, why is my newer computer going to slow??"

I'm a simple girl. I need simplicity. And there it was, and of all things! Linux!?!

I got permission to install it on my home computer and put "Robin's Remix" (minimal Ubuntu + LXDE and codecs and stuff) on it - the same Linux we use at the dance studio. Ohhhhh, the wonderful speed and beauty and best of all, pure simplicity!

But more than that, no more registry cleaning, scanning, defragging, etc. No viruses. No more maintaining such a vigil over the computer that I end up running the operating system instead of running applications! Sooooo liberating!

So I'm a fangirl instantly. Me and at least two other dancers from the studio are using it now, and it still surprises everyone to learn that Linux can be so simple!

Gleefully,
Amy

[blueturtl]

Not encouraging.

Fed up with Windows looking for alternatives I first tried Slackware (maybe version 7... can't remember). Slackware, because it was recommended to me by my Linux using guru friends.

The installer was fairly easy, but kept asking me for packages to install. At some point I just gave up and kept hitting 'y'. The amount of package descriptions to read was just too much.

After the installation finishes I drop to a shell prompt. No problem I think, since I've used DOS. Unfortunately the instructions for enabling a swap partition (from my friends) are too vague, and 'startx' isn't working. Apparently I'd need to do something first.

Not knowing anything useful like 'man' I play around for a bit, and then give up...

Eventually I would try Mandrake (for a good while) and then go back to Windows again, until finding Ubuntu.

Ubuntu made my stay permanent, though I have recently migrated to Debian.

[zekopeko]

Wow! I must be one of the few that had a bump-less journey. I downloaded 6.06 on the day it was released.
I was pretty much wasted since I was out partying for most of the night. Being a geek I couldn't go to sleep without first giving Ubuntu a spin.
So wasted as I was I pop-ed the CD in, answered all the questions, partitioned my drive and started installing it.
Then next thing I can remember was me waking up the next morning in my last night's clothes and Ubuntu asking me if I want to reboot. Good times.

[HavocXphere]

Disastrous. Some ancient Redhat without a gui or manual or internet connection.

[evermooingcow]

My first experience did not involve an installation. I had to SSH into the school's RHEL server to remotely pull up a certain design software for my electrical engineering class.

It was painful. Before even being able to run the software (which I was thankful at the time that it ran on a GUI) I needed to make a profile on their server and remember entering what seemed like a page full of commands where each step I had no clue what was going on and was worried if I did correctly and carefully checked to make sure it was identical to what was on the guide.

Later on I picked up OpenSUSE as my first distro and successfully installed it at home through their GUI installation interface.

[-=hazard=-]

For me it was a tragicomedy, I mean I got this server with debian (only ssh remote) where I was going to host a p2p software by myself, I had all directives how to install etc, all things went right at the beginning, but when I had the first problem with mysql... omg it was a nightemare, 4 days searching the internet to resolve and after I resolved it I was so happy like I was reborn. After that I installed debian for the first time on my pc and than I understood what linux was... and never removed it from my computers :)

[khelben1979]

For me it was a bit tricky to get everything to work okay. I was very glad about the helpful support that I got from the Debian mailing list at the time. This was back in 1999. I was impressed that they would help me until I got the problem solved. It felt like it was mostly developers that I had contact with, so of course they knew a lot. :idea:

I experienced it as exciting and one of the real cool things at the time, was that I was able to use open source applications on an Amiga which never have been ported to AmigaOS. They simply didn't exist at the time. The downside was that it was slow, but still, exciting!

This was Debian Slink on the m68k processor architecture where I there after went on to using PPC with Debian Potato. Using Debian on the Powerbook proved that Debian is still able to run on old hardware where neither Windows Vista, Windows 7 or MacOS X ever could compete in this.

[rickhamilton620]

Hi, I'm the author of the blog post. :) I've been reading through this thread today and am glad to see so many different "first time" experiences! Keep em coming! :biggrin:

[mamamia88]

my first experience with linux was when ubuntu 8.10 came out. i installed it through wubi and when wireless didn't work i just uninstalled it and went back to windows. 2 days later i got fed up with windows again and decided to give ubuntu a longer try(the first time was about an hour). with a little digging i figured out how to install broadcom driver and the rest was history. a few months later i deleted my windows partition

[Delever]

It was CD from this book: http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Dummies-Second-Jon-Hall/dp/0764504215

All my backups were able to fit inside 12 floppy disks (for those uninitiated - one floppy = 1.44 MB)

I learned to partition my 8GB hard disk and screw things up. Linux was crap. Still, very valuable experience. From then on, i used to continue to poke state of linux from time to time until Ubuntu 8.04.

[fennec_fox]

My first experience was a long time ago with Knoppix when windows died. It was very helpful but, just being a knoppix live cd wasn't anything to make me switch. It didn't look polished or very useful besides recovery. A year later my eyes were opened and I started using Knoppix. A bit later I switched to Ubuntu and have been very happy since.

[sandybuchan]

My first experience was pretty rough. I was 11 (or 12, I forget) years old at the time (I'm 18 now) and I found a neat little distro called.... Gentoo. Yes, you heard me. I actually tried installing Gentoo as my first Linux distro because I thought the logo was cool and it sounded like an awesome OS.

Little did I know back then haha. I didn't really start using Linux until I was 13 when I tried Mandrake (before it was named Mandrivia.) Then I moved to Ubuntu, then to OpenSUSE, and now to Arch Linux, where I probably won't leave for a long time (if I ever do).

Haha, yeah, I went for Gentoo first too (after a good few years of abstinence from Linux) I liked the idea of everything being compiled to order for my machine. I won't make that mistake again! Yeah it works, but boy it's sloooow.
I'm writing this on an Acer Aspire One - the original Linpus crapped out big time a couple of days back, and a friend at work gave me a Ubuntu USB stick, from there I've got a really neat little system going from a few hours of downloads (slow connection).
I had Ubuntu on my laptop at home but had eventually to put on windows as I gave it to my wife who isn't happy with "new stuff".
I sing the praises of Linux, in all it's forms, every chance I get at work. I was knida hoping MS would go down the Vista road a bit further until even all the windows afficianados got sick fed up of it, but apparently win7 is going to be lots better - heard that before somewhere?
Cheers,
Sandy

[BrokenKingpin]

I killed a hard drive trying to partition it for Red Hat 9 (I have no clue how). Once I actually got it installed I was hooked.

[computerkid2000]

my first experience was GREAT!!!! it was like i was in a new world but it was feather linux it was pretty good than i got KNOPPIX witch was a little better and tryied different kinds of live distros including puppy linux than i got my net book but it was preinstalled withwindows but i cant overwrite windows with ubuntu or my dad will get mad so i used WUBI!! and ubuntu is the BEST EVA!!!!!11111

[blueshogun]

Fedora Core 5 on my laptop. It was beautiful and I would have switched if I could use the wireless card. Alas, it didn't work, and I didn't want to banish it to be a desktop, so I kept ******* (and continued fruitlessly trying to make the wireless work).

Fedora 10 is on it now, and it's working GREAT!

Ubuntu on my desktop, but the flash won't work :(. Ah, well, it's still better than the Dozer.