How did you find out about Linux? Who introduced you?

[mfarquhar]

Where did you first find out about linux?

[mips]

1992 While studying. Knew about Unix but not linux.

[rado_london]

It was a friend of mine. He told me and i was like: WTF. Then i cam to UK and one day i was bored and searched for linux- then it all begun with slackware........................

[m.musashi]

I first tired linux around 2002 or so. I knew about unix and was familiar with apple's move to a "unix-like" kernel. I don't remember how I heard about linux though. I remember downloading debian something and installing it on an old laptop. all I got was a bunch of text flashing by and then a command prompt. Not overly impressed with that I didn't do anything with linux until a guy who happens to work for the OSS side of HP was at a school tech meeting and when he mentioned linux I asked a few questions. He said I should try Ubuntu or Suse. I tried both and stuck with Ubuntu.

[fuscia]

i don't remember. it was probably while looking for something faster than what i had (windows ME).

[Engnome]

A friend found a pressed hoary hedgehog in school and installed it, I saw it and liked it so i installed it aswell. He got bored but I stuck with it.

btw Finding something like that is not odd at my school, were all very geeky and we got programming on or schedule :D (we also get free laptops, I LOVE MY SCHOOL :D)

[m.musashi]

btw Finding something like that is not odd at my school, were all very geeky and we got programming on or schedule :D (we also get free laptops, I LOVE MY SCHOOL :D)
Free? Or just built into the cost of tuition? Of course, that is almost like free.

[groggyboy]

A few years back, a friend of mine told me about linux. He was/is quite the geek, and had a huge poster on his wall that timelined the history of the computer operating system - it traced everything, from windows to mac to *nix to you name it.

i thought nothing of it, just that linux was some hardcore geek thing.

then last year when I finally got my own computer, I got an windows XP deck thru my university. it came with a cd that had a bunch of open source software (OpenOffice.org, theGIMP, Gaim, Firefox, etc) instead of all the microsoft junk.

over the course of the school year, i kept replacing software components with free/opensource equivalents. finally, something (probably an internet article somewhere) sparked my interest in linux. i tried knoppix first, and wanted more, so i took the plunge, installed ubuntu, and haven't looked back!

groggyboy

[kanem]

I read about it in '98 in some MIT magazine. Even then the authors were speculating on how it might take down Microsoft.

Learned more later from the net.

Didn't actually install it 'till '03.

[paul cooke]

Where did you first find out about linux?

started hearing about Linux way back in 93... never actually got around to dabbling in it until 1999 when Zipslack appeared (could run from an Iomega Zip disk) and then when Mandrake 7.0 came out, plucked up the courage to install it properly...

back then duel-booting was a dangerous thing to get going as it was all to easy to screw up in the partitioning process... and automagically resizing a partition was very new. Before hand, you were faced with wiping windows and formating the disk, installing windows, then installing Linux... or purchasing a second drive for Linux. Mandrake changed all that for me as I was able to resize my existing windows partition to give room for Linux.

Now I have no windows partitions... just a vmware image for those few progs I am forced to run as part of my OU studies.

[dolny]

Around 1998 I guess, not sure - but it was Redhat 5 or 6.0. My soundcard, Internet and graphic acceleration didn't work :) It was ugly and I couldn't do anything special with it. So I deleted it, then after some time I tried other distros and frustrated by their instability (Mandriva, Fedora, X server crashing for example when I loaded a new font :| ) I decided to try Ubuntu and I loved it.

I guess I read about it in some magazine because I wasn't using Internet at the time - It was very expensive in Poland - well, Poland was far behind civilized world ;) (still is in many aspects :P)

[BWF89]

I took a programming course in Visual Basic my freshmen year in high school (2004) and while I was walking to put my book back on the shelf I saw that someone changed his backround to a picture of a penguin holding a gun with the words "BORN TO FRAG" printed on his helmet. I walked up to him and was like "That's a cool wallpaper, where did you get it?" and he said "It's Tux". So when I got home that day I did a Google Image search for "Tux". I learned that Tux was the mascot for some operating system I heard that was used by only by programmers and I've been interested in Linux ever since then.

[Orbatos]

It may have been the other computer users in junior high, but I'm fairly certain what really caught my eye and got me installing was the earliest release screenshots of Enlightenment.

[23meg]

One of the computer magazines I used to read as a kid, probably Byte.

[bonzodog]

I discovered Linux in an Internet cafe in 1996, the server was running SLS (the predecessor to Slackware), and as I was staff, I had a mail account there, so I used to telnet into the pine client on the server. I asked a lot of questions about it, as I thought it was cool, and the admin introduced me to linux, then BSD. In 1999, I installed Caldera 1.3 on my home computer after reading a book about it, and I was getting fed up of the win98se instability and I didn't like it's front end, so i litestepped it one day, where upon I got a General Protection fault. I installed the Caldera 1.3 distro, and haven't looked back.

[Engnome]

Free? Or just built into the cost of tuition? Of course, that is almost like free.

Neither, My school is payed by the taxes :D Even though its not a state-run school. Really great system here in Sweden :D (technically its not mine, but I can do anything I want with it and buy it cheaply when I graduate.)

[Stormy Eyes]

Where did you first find out about linux?

The Devil made me do it. :p

[matthew]

My first exposure to Unix was in a programming class in 1987 while at the university. I didn't hear about Linux until the late 1990's and didn't actually attempt an install until late 2004. My first Ubuntu cd (Hoary) came with a linux magazine I bought. It just worked so I kept it and now linux is all I have on all the computers in our family.

[steve.horsley]

Around 1995 I wanted to get some more unix experience but all the Suns were jealously guarded. A work colleague told me about linux that was unix-like and ran on PCs. He gave me a bag full of slackware floppies. I toyed with it, but X was a bugger to get working, and the first upgrade I tried broke it completely. I didn't try Linux again until I saw a SuSE 8.0 box in PC World a few years ago, and thought I'd give it a spin. Than mandrake for a couple of years, then Ubuntu Hoary. I like Ubuntu as a distro, as a forum, and I like their ethics - free, fully international. The combination of the three makes me feel very at home.

[christhemonkey]

Had an old computer that wouldnt boot windows, so went searching for an alternative.
And then found linux,
then was looking for one that would send me a free disc....
And along came ubuntu!

Been happily bobbing along since septemberish now!

[guine]

A friend of mine was the lug president at my college, he got my roommate to use linux and he started playing tux racer which picked up my interest in trying linux and I havent turned back since.

[yabbadabbadont]

In late '95 or early '96 (whenever Slackware '96 was released) ((no flames, it could have been late '95 despite the name)), a friend and co-worker recommended it. It even had the shiny new 2.0 kernel, what a deal. I managed to install it onto a 1GB Syquest Sparc drive using my trusty Packard Bell Legend 770 machine (486-50). Been using different flavors of Linux ever since. (currently Dapper, but I switch between it and Gentoo every couple of months)

By the way, if anyone wants to buy an old 486, I'm willing to make a deal... :D

[Harold P]

The Internet! After all, Linux basically owns the Internet. (Stereotype, I know.)

[confused57]

Just wanted to know what Linux was all about, nobody in my circle of friends or acquaintances knew anything about Linux. First, I ordered the 14 cd set of Debian Sarge; then I realized it was a server install, rather than desktop. A little more research, Ubuntu caught my eye, ordered from Ship-it and I've been pleasantly surprised. I've downloaded several Linux distros and tried them, but I keep coming back to Ubuntu. Started out with Gnome and that's what I prefer now, may give KDE a serious try eventually.

[3rdalbum]

Back when Apple were beginning the switch to OS X, I was kinda pissed off. I was a student and so I didn't have the money to upgrade my computer's RAM and operating system. So I started researching alternative operating systems.

Unfortunately, I didn't have broadband back then, and the computers at school didn't have CD burners, so I couldn't actually take any steps towards it. In the meanwhile, I noticed that the latest web browsers and P2P apps ran on Linux but not on OS 9.

Eventually, after I got broadband, it became possible for me to actually try some free operating systems to extend the life of my computer. I wanted one that I could try out as a Live CD first, because I didn't know how well they would work. I found Ubuntu, and as an added bonus I could get a CD sent to me. So I downloaded the Live CD and ordered a set, enjoyed the Live experience and then in Jan this year when my CDs arrived, I installed it.

[ThirdWorld]

In september 2005 I read an article about Linux Ubuntu, and I decided to download it. The best decision I ever made... :)

[asimon]

My first encounter with Unix (mostly Solaris and Irix) was at the university of applied sciences. There I also learned about Linux, first as a cheap way to get a Unix like system at home for doing exercises, etc. That was around the time shortly after Linux 1.0 was released. I was never without Linux since then.

[Orunitia]

A few years ago I heard a friend talking about it, and it sounded interesting. I looked around online, and found everyone talking about how Mandrake was the easiest, so I decided to download it and give it a try, I think this was Mandrake 9.1. Well I totally screwed the install up and it removed XP, which I didn't want it to do. I was stuck with it for a week because my damn restore discs wouldn't format over mandrake. :P That kept me off linux for a couple months.

[ubuntu_demon]

I voted "a book" but it's probably a magazine.

regarding my "path" to Ubuntu :

Before using debian(never used it seriously for the desktop) I've tried suse and red hat a couple of times. But this is long ago. I've also tried knoppix a couple of times and liked it as a live cd. At my university SUN solaris,red hat and windows XP is used.

I wasn't satisfied with debian as a desktop distro. I used it only when I needed linux for school(I study AI) or was bored. When I read about Ubuntu being an improved debian I decided to give it a try. Since then I'm using it as my primary desktop instead of windows XP. It's my first real attempt of running linux as my primary OS.

I've been using Ubuntu since warty.

[m.musashi]

Free? Or just built into the cost of tuition? Of course, that is almost like free.

Neither, My school is payed by the taxes :D Even though its not a state-run school. Really great system here in Sweden :D (technically its not mine, but I can do anything I want with it and buy it cheaply when I graduate.)
Fine. Rub it in :).

[Buffalo Soldier]

Local newspaper in Malaysia called The Star (http://www.thestar.com.my/) back in 1993. It has a small section called In-Tech which run news on computer, gadgets and all other geeky stuff. It feature a review of two distro. One of it is OpenCaldera Desktop something something... the other one I can't remember well.

First installation experience = 1997 (nightmare, gave up)
Second installation experience = 1999 (red hat, quite good, played starcraft using wine, but after a while went back to windows)
Third installation experience = 2004 (SimplyMepis -> a few other distro -> Ubuntu)

[mostwanted]

My big brother used to do a lot of programming when he was younger. He also installed Linux on his computer and burned new versions of Knoppix all the time for me to try. Then he started becoming involved with politics and his interest in programming and Linux stagnated; although he's helped formulate a proposal on open standards for his party, he now uses MS Office on his PC (obviously running Windows). I'm dissappointed how he on one hand looks like he's fighting for open standards and on the other hand uses proprietary formats himself (sometimes he even sends me .doc files in his emails!).

But at the same time my brother lost his interest in Linux and programming, it peaked my own interest and I took both things up; first programming and then later Linux, starting with Mandrake. I never really used Mandrake (version 8 or 9 I think), but with Ubuntu I moved pretty much full-time to Linux. I started using Ubuntu with Warty so I guess I'm one of the early adopters of this wonderful distro ;)

[m.musashi]

Okay, all the honesty here has encouraged me to come clean. It was several years ago. Me and some blokes were just hanging out in this guy's basement when he starts to pass around parts out of his computer. I was pretty young and didn't know any better so, yeah, I took a look. I guess that was the start. A little while later he pulled out this linux cd and asked if we wanted to try. I was a bit hesitant at first. I'd never done anything like that. But everyone one else started to take out their laptops and, you know, peer pressure and all. So I went ahead and tried and they rest, as they say, is history. I've been in and out of rehab several times now but I just can't seem to make a clean break from windows. All the support here has been wonderful, though. I'm sure some day I'll be able to get clean and stay clean. Thanks.

[eriqk]

I first read about Linux in a Dutch pop science mag (when the mag was still OK). Sounded very interesting, and a year or so later, a friend installed it. It was quite fascinating to see it do stuff DOS couldn't. It b0rked his DOS partition, though, so he killed it. Didn't see much in the way of Linux until a couple of years later.

Groet, Erik

[kanem]

Okay, all the honesty here has encouraged me to come clean. It was several years ago. Me and some blokes were just hanging out in this guy's basement when he starts to pass around parts out of his computer. I was pretty young and didn't know any better so, yeah, I took a look. I guess that was the start. A little while later he pulled out this linux cd and asked if we wanted to try. I was a bit hesitant at first. I'd never done anything like that. But everyone one else started to take out their laptops and, you know, peer pressure and all. So I went ahead and tried and they rest, as they say, is history. I've been in and out of rehab several times now but I just can't seem to make a clean break from windows. All the support here has been wonderful, though. I'm sure some day I'll be able to get clean and stay clean. Thanks.
HA HA!

[MethodOne]

I first heard of it when I was paging through the fifth edition of The Internet for Dummies and saw a brief reference to it. Then I heard of several distros like Red Hat and Slackware on various forums.

I got more interested when I saw someone using a computer with FC3 during my Windows command-line class. I asked what it was and the teacher told me about it. I wanted a small distro, so I found Damn Small. I got a chance to play around with the apps and most of them are great. I first used full-fleged distros when one of my friends gave me a copy of KNOPPIX 3.8 and a remaster of it. I asked for some Linux CDs from my instructor and got Red Hat 7.3. It was actually Red Hat 9 and discs 2 and 3 were switched around. Unfortunately, it wiped out the restore partition on my old Compaq laptop and RH ran horribly slow.

During the summer, I was researching several distros. I wanted to put Fedora on my machine, but I couldn't download the images in enough time with my dial-up connection. I ran across Ubuntu when someone said "Go Ubuntu!" in a forum. So I decided to order some Hoary CDs. I couldn't use them until I got a hand-me-down machine. When I started using that machine, I put on FC4 and, like RH9 on my old Compaq, it was slow. I requested an external serial modem on the local Freecycle mailing list, but a user there decided to send me a Xandros CD instead. I found out it didn't work with my Winmodem. Finally I installed Ubuntu and never went back to the others. Right now, I occasionally do some experimentation with other distros, but use Ubuntu as my main one.

[RavenOfOdin]

In '95. . .Doing a few jobs here and there for people my mom knew down in Texas. Some girl she knew did work for Compaq and we talked about it often.

[hizaguchi]

College. I got a student job in the electrical and computer engineering department and ended up working for a Linux fanatic. I was resistant early on, but I slowly gave in and I'm glad I did. Also ended up with a very handy ECE login account, which is nice for remote access to the Linux computer lab that the same guy set up. Now I can run expensive proprietary research software from the comfort of home. :)

[towsonu2003]

Around 99, a magazine gave away free knoppix livecds. At that time, I loved installing and trying out stuff (hence breaking and fixing Windows). So rebooted with the livecd and liked what I saw. Never forgot it, but Windows seemed easier (bc Knoppix had some glitches and stuff)

Couple of years later, when I had access to broadband and an old spare computer, I decided to try out Slackware (seemed the most popular distro among experienced users, solid, not not-dependent, and had a very detailed "installation howto"). Installed Slackware there and played around. bla bla bla

I learned the basics (commands, partitioning, installation etc) with Slackware in that old computer. Later on, the computer went "boom"[1] after I installed Xubuntu on it.

[1]Literally, made the sound "boom" and put out a little of some real-bad smelling smoke... Never booted again... I think it liked Slackware better.

[PrimoTurbo]

I saw a site of Quake2 servers and a bunch of them had a windows icon but most had a pengiun. So I looked into it, this was probally 1998.

[GoombaDoolies]

I'm in the boat a lot were in.

I've been building my own computers since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and thought that a geekOS would be the next natural step. So I installed a Red hat CD back in about 1998, and the computer promptly poo'ed itself (Cyrix back in those days). I gave up and went back to 98SE. I also used ME (Mistake Edition) and had the only stable copy in the known universe.

I'd always wanted to try it again, so I did a bit of looking and saw the usual Suse, Red Hat and all. But I picked up a computer mag I regularly used called PC User (yes it isn't a linux format mag) and it had a Breezy CD on it. So I tried it out.

I ran dual boot for a long time, but XP them promptly shat itself (the circle of life!), and so I installed Ubuntu on full time. I got to the stage where I didn't have the time to play many games, so once I got through the initial withdrawal stage (from not having my games), I moved on.

I then bought my wife a laptop June 2006 for a tax write off. She broke XP within 2 months (adware, spyware, bloatware and her general lack of competence). I installed Dapper over the top, removing the recovery partition at the same time. She loves it and would never go back, citing that it is easier to use.

Now we are an MS free zone.

We've moved house twice in the last 3 months, so Internet at home hasn't happened, so I never upgraded to Edgy (and from what I read, that is probably a good thing). I will upgrade to Feisty when it comes.

[Corfy]

I don't remember how I first heard about Linux. I do remember looking at boxes of Red Hat and Corel Linux at the store in the late 90s and wondering if it was worth trying, but never went ahead with it (mainly because I didn't have a second computer to try it on... I don't think I knew about dual-booting at the time).

I tinkered around on my home computer and got pretty good at administrating Windows. My tinkering eventually got me moved into the IT department at work (no formal training other than a couple of programming classes in college, but they asked me because it was cheaper to move me over than to hire someone who really knew what they were doing). Now I am the IT department at my office (I will come back to this point in a bit.)

At home, I started using free software on Windows. First it was Firefox and Thunderbird, then OpenOffice.org, then GIMP, then Gaim, and (in no particular order), PDFCreator, 7-zip, Nvu, FileZilla, VLC Player, and various other programs. It then started to dawn on me that most of the software I used also ran on Linux. But I didn't make the plunge just yet.

The straw came about two years ago. A co-worker brought me his personal computer, saying that he thought he had a virus on it. Being the IT guy, he asked me if I would take a look (after hours, of course). I soon discovered his problem. His 90-day trial of Anti-Virus on Windows expired two years earlier. He didn't have "a virus", he had 93 of them. He was also bogged down with hundreds of instances of adware and spyware. It took me several days of working on his computer to get it cleaned up, but by then, Windows got somehow corrupted, so I had to reinstall that.

After that, even though it wasn't my computer, I figured there had to be a better way than Windows, so I started really looking into Linux. First I downloaded a LiveCD and played around with that for a while. Then I started investigating the various distros.

After reading about apt-get, I decided to try Debian (then Sarge 3.1 Unstable). I downloaded six CDs from the site and started installing. I immediately ran into some major problems, however (unstability, extreme slowness, my peripherals didn't work). I figured I had done something wrong, because I couldn't believe this was what people had been praising all this time. I battled with it for about two weeks trying to get it to work right (turned out it was just a minor thing, but I didn't realize it at the time). Once it was working properly, I saw what the appeal was.

After a few months, I really started to get into Linux, but after my install problems, I couldn't bring myself to recommend Debian to anyone else, so I started looking for another distro. That is when I tried Ubuntu (then Breezy Badger). The install went flawlessly, so I have stuck with Ubuntu ever since*, and have watched it get better and better with each update.

I made a New Year's Resolution to remove all Microsoft products from my home computer. I'm not sure if my wife will let me, but that is my goal.

* - Ok, I admit it, I did briefly install Fedora Core 5. I swtiched back shortly, though.

[seijuro]

Started with a shell account on a server when I first became an IRC admin back around '98 first distro I played with was FreeBSD never had a problem dual booting since it offered the option to install a standard mbr with out a boot manager I simply installed it on another drive and selected which drive to boot from the bios. I didn't fully convert to linux till 05 because of the lack of drivers for hardware I wanted to use.

[geakMonkey]

I first noticed books about Free Software running on a Free Operating System in 1996. My AtariST along with my multimedia studio equipment had been stolen and I could not afford to replace them with Mac/MSWindows. My first try to install was from an obscure company which went out of business. The disk had some Russian Docs and I could not figure out the HOWTOS. My first successful installation was on Redhat 5 but soon I shifted to Mandrake 6 in 1998.

[Quillz]

I first found about Linux on the Internet, at least four or five years ago. For quite a long while, I thought "Linux" was just one concrete operating system, like Mac OS or Windows. It wasn't until just a few years I understood that "Linux" was just a kernel, and that there were multiple distros.

[xmastree]

I heard about it ages ago. When I had a 486.
I bought a conputer mag with a linux CD on the cover. This was before IDE CD drives, they usually connected via an interface on a soundcard.

So, no bootable CDs. Instead there was a selection of floppy drive images on the CD, and a rawrite type program for making a boot floppy with CD drivers on it, with which you could install linux.

Except that none of them would work with my Orchid CD ROM.

So that fell flat.

Then, more recently, I saw some RedHat CDs for sale in a local shop so I gave it a try. The discs were defective so I returned them. All their stock of RH had the same visual defect, so instead I took Mandrake.

I played with that for a while, but some things (e.g. sound) just refused to work, and I lost interest. (their usenet group (http://groups.google.co.uk/group/alt.os.linux.mandrake/search?group=alt.os.linux.mandrake&q=breuer&qt_g=Search+this+group) isn't the most friendly place either)

Then, something weird happened. I received a huge box of Ubuntu 4.10 discs out of the blue. So, I tried one and thought 'wow, this is soooo much better'. It wasn't perfect, but the support here on the forum inspired me to stick with it.

I've stuck with it ever since.

[OrangeCrate]

I've known about Linux since I started using DOS 1.1 back in the early '80s. Decided to try Ubuntu Dapper as a desktop alternative after reading several reviews on DistroWatch.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu

[mon_m]

I was once attacked by my neighbor's dog when I was 12. Some crazy, older, really scary, and uber geeky guy. He named his dog "Linucks." :confused:

[dickinsd]

Well I ticked 2 options:

Other - because I first heard about Linux in a magazine a LONG LONG LONG time ago (well it seems a longtime ago)

College - because that is when I first had to use UNIX and was reminded how UNIX like Linux was so I had Linux on my laptop to help me get through a university module.

God those early linux distros were horible - I meant they seemed good back then - but compared to what's available now a days - they were terrible - and getting hardware to work - arrrgh!

Of course back then Windows was horrible as well and so was the Mac OS - they've all come along way.

[dickinsd]

I was once attacked by my neighbor's dog when I was 12. Some crazy, older, really scary, and uber geeky guy. He named his dog "Linucks." :confused:

:D

sorry about you being attacked - but Linucks :D :D :D

:lolflag:

[RChickenMan]

I took an Intro to Unix course in college. We were instructed to use the knoppix live cd. I booted it up, expecting to be greeted with a black screen and a blinking white curser, but lo and behold, an entire desktop environment came up on the screen! Wow, Linux is a real, practical operating system? I had no idea! The next day at school I shared my findings with my fellow computer engineers, and one of them recommended I give Ubuntu a shot. So I installed Ubuntu, and, well, here I am!

[BigBabyDaddy1968]

A buddy of mine at another forum switched recently (goes by SweetSpot, here) and posted his thoughts (raving, near-messianic :D). Several members discussed pros/cons in another thread, then SS and I started discussing it via PM and...well, here I is! So I voted "other" as it was an internet buddy....

[richardjennings]

I first heard of Linux shortly after getting my first 33kb modem :) I don't know when I first used Linux, I think it was through telnet to cyberspace.org.

I first installed debian about 3 years ago, then fedora, and now Ubuntu :)

[daniel of sarnia]

I first saw it years ago on tech tv. PHLAK, I wanted to be a 1337 hax0r lol, pleas don't make fun, I was young and all I knew was windows dos and VB. I forget if that was befor or after I started with C.

Anyhow I really liked it, although I did not really know how to use it at all. So I looked for other linux distros that lead me on a long and winding path to ubuntu where I've been since 5.10, I love it here...

[Interestedinthepenguin]

I chose "A Family Member", and "the Internet", because they go hand in hand.

I'd noticed hints of Linux in 2004, (people talking about *nix stuff in forums, alternative versions of a program for "*nix" systems, people claiming WinXP sucks and that there was better, etc.) but was totally oblivious to it. I was just getting into computers then.

My uncle told me about Linux (and recommended it) last year, so I guess he opened my eyes to the Linux/open-source community.

[DirtDawg]

Back in 2001 or so there was an IBM commercial on television with some blonde kid what was supposed to be Linux, I guess. I had an imac g3 (I'm writing on it now!) with no OS, so I put 2+2 together.

Ta-daa!

[CCBalla10]

Where did you first find out about linux?

I go to a college that is known for Computer Science...which was my major :) and they introduced it to all of us.

[Coelocanth]

I don't recall when I first heard about Linux but I'd been vaguely aware of it for some time.

But just over a year ago, I became fed up with the security problems in Windows, which had prompted many on-line searches for ways to tighten up my security on XP . This was prompted by a very nasty piece of malware that got onto my system and required me to go to a computer guy who could have spent a few hours on it and disinfecting it for a hefty fee - or saving a bunch of money and reinstalling the OS (I had basically zero computer skills, so had no idea how to help myself). I chose to reinstall.

Just after that, the wife and I decided we needed a new computer and I wanted to try my hand at building my own. This eventually led to me getting a better handle on locking down XP, but ironically also led me to finding out more about Linux and I stumbled upon Ubuntu. I decided to try a dual boot with XP and Breezy (thanks to Herman's wonderful guide, it went flawlessly), and now I find I only boot into Windows to play some games.

So, the upshot is, I was aware of Linux for a long time, but didn't really find out about Linux until just over a year ago.

[runningwithscissors]

Newspaper article.

[steven8]

A friend of mine introduced me to Linux at a cocktail party. We were all quite tipsy and Linux came home with me. I don't remember much after that, but I woke up the next morning to find a note pinned to my pillow which read, "Maybe we'll meet again some day. Your Little gnome"

Now, don't go reading to much into that. :)

Actually, it seems like I've always 'known' about Linux. I remember, back after I bought our first computer sometime after 1997, I walked into Best Buy and they had Red Hat Linux-in-a-box. It was about a third of the cost of windows, and I was intrigued, but too nervous to give it a go.

[Crooksey]

I was like 11 or 12 and wanted to be "uber 1337" so i started dual booting red hat.

[Pocadotty]

I knew a little about Linux for several years, but never experienced it until 2005 in a computer science course at University.

I have been on my way to becoming a fanatic ever since.

[user1397]

a friend booted up a breezy cd (still text-mode back then) and showed me that there was an alternative to "windows"

..and I was like "Whoa..."

[goumples]

Took a Network Operating Systems class at school.. had a choice between Windows Server 2003 and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise. I picked the later out of curiosity.. later that semester after some research, I did installed Ubuntu on my home PC.

[blackspyder]

I had heard about linux from various sources since 99 and finally desided to try it in 05 when Windows XP had made me angry. Bought the book "Linux for Dummies" and immersed myself in FC5 and 6.

[mhamed]

During end of 90s mainly from Solaris during my studies, it was quite different and excited I did not take it seriously to switch immediately but I was looking around for a good one to me I started with Fedora, Mandriva, and finally I stuck Ubuntu.

[B. Gates]

Quite a few years ago, one of my minions reported to me about this "Lunix" thingy. He was worried that our monopoly might be threatened. I calmed the poor fool down and said "no worries, we'll just buy them out like we always do with the competition." But then he explains a bit further and I became worried - who exactly can we buy out? There's no sole company!

Give it time though. :KS

[jaywee]

I first met Madriva Linux from a PC magazine, and felt so fresh, so I format my whole disk to install it !!

[Sunflower1970]

My brother told me about it around 2000 or so. After some trouble he was having with Windows 98, he switched to Red Hat. He loved it. He would mention it on and off through the years. I was satisfied with Microsoft...until that fateful Dec 30th when XP crapped out, and Vista on the horizon. Decided that was the perfect time to start using a different OS.

[Compucore]

I heard about it when it was through a magazine locally up here and I was going to college in the early 90's. ANd Linus had just started with it. And I was starting to find about it through that way. And got slackware versione 3.4 for the 386 computers.

Compucore

[Kingsley]

My friend was bashing Microsoft because its software isn't open source. He told me Linux is much better but I wasn't sure of what he was talking about. Was Linux a program? A few months later I read something about Ubuntu 5.04 and ordered some free CDs. After VMware and troubles with partitioning, I finally got the hang of Ubuntu 6.06 in mid 2006.

[solracarevir]

I heard about linux for first time on year 2000 on a magazine i brought at a local supermarket, it included a cd which i tried on my computer but were unable to install it, and I erase it from my mind. 2 years later (2002) I heard about Linux again and about how much progress was done since the time i tried to install it, this time was knoppix live cd, I had only one pc at that time so a HD install was not feasible cause i was scared of losing data, so the live cd was a logic step to try it. Worked great! but not so great to leave windows behind, i was to bounded to the redmond monopoly. I keep using linux live cd, knowing it was way more secure than win but scared to install it. on 2003 i did my first HD instalation as a dual boot (i was taking a visual basic class so at that time I needed windows) it was SuSE this time... but most of the time what i used was windows. after trying mandrake, later mandriva, going again to SuSE i was feeling comfortable with linux and started using it a little more( 50/50 time split with windows). On april 2005 I heard of Ubuntu which it's 5.04 version has been just released and since then i have been a Ubuntero (but windows was still sitting at the other side of my HD. It was on 2006 that i decided i was ready for a ubuntu only life (and a virus free, speedier, and more stable life also)
so i backed up all my data (all my stuff were stored on windows and i read it from ubuntu) deleted the win partition, resized my ubuntu partition and restored all my data on ubuntu. Since then life have been a more pleasant one. :D This is my small testimony hope you liked it and enjoyed it.

[FuturePilot]

I heard about it on the internet. I had actually heard it a few times before but never really though much of it since I was under the false impression that there was no software for Linux. Boy was I wrong. Then I started doing some reading about it on the internet and it peaked my curiosity.

[Unterseeboot_234]

I had Linux RedHat, vers. 10 laying around in a box. Hadn't got around to installing it. People told me Linux/Unix was finicky on an install. I kept putting it off. I was on a computer bulletin board and another person described the LiveCD and information about where to download an ISO for Ubuntu. After playing with it, I installed Dapper on it's own partition. Later, I bought hardware specifically for 64-bit Ubuntu and surprised the computer factory by telling them to leave M$ XP completely off. Windows-free for a year now.

[0vv1]

In 1994-1995 I was working as a computer operator running mostly Solaris machines (and Wang....anyone remember those?). I fell in love with Unix and wanted to be able to run it at home. A consultant I was working with recommended this thing called "Linux" and loaned me a set of Slackware CDs. And so it was.

[Bungo Pony]

Probably around 1995-1996. Me and a couple of high school friends were chatting. They were complaining about Win95 and I mentioned that someone should come up with an alternative, free version of Windows. They mentioned that there already was an alternative called Linux and mentioned that you could run some Windows apps with a Windows emulator. That conversation stuck with me ever since.

For the last 6 years or so, I've been threatening to try out Linux. The more frustrated I became with Windows, the more I thought about trying Linux. About three months ago, I started looking into OSes and Windows Vista since I was getting a new PC. I hated Windows XP and knew I wasn't going to install it. I read some reviews on Windows Vista and decided that I wasn't going with that either (even though my new PC came pre-installed with Vista).

I decided on dual booting Windows 2000 with Ubuntu. I happily scrubbed Vista after trying it out and went ahead with my plan. I've re-installed Windows 2000 a few times since then (once because of a nasty spyware and trojan infection) and the only time I re-installed Ubuntu is when I got a second hard drive co-ordinated with the release of Feisty.

I probably won't break free from dual-booting anytime soon. It's handy when one OS breaks down, but I'll admit it's quite easy to fix Ubuntu via the command line (as opposed to Windows Safe-Mode). Perhaps I'll eventually break free from Windows as Win2k becomes more and more outdated, but it'll be a slow move.

[starcraft.man]

LEO LAPORTE!

Hehe, great tech guy (He SHOULD be adopted by Canada, hes very Canadianlike :p). He kept mentioning it, I kept using open office and firefox and then I had an epiphany. "I use open source programs on a closed source system.... HUH?!!!" Two days layer, I'm a linux man :p

I won't ever look back :D

[PartisanEntity]

Like many I had heard of Linux many times, I was always interested in trying it but it seemed hard and I wasn't really ready to invest the time and effort. About 3 years ago I got a copy of Knoppix on CD from our student union, the campaign was called Free Software for Free People, it was a live CD which I tried out but the graphics looked awful and so I thought I would leave it for some other time.

Then about 6-7 months ago a friend of mine mentioned he had heard about Ubuntu (he is a Mac user), I started reading about it, was impressed with the screenshots and the nice graphics, so about a month later I tried Ubuntu and apart from initial newbie issues I fell in love with it. So glad I made the change.

I managed to get my younger brother interested in it for a while, I also installed it on a friends laptop and she has started using it and prefers it to Windows XP.

[e^(i*pi)]

A friend got me into using Python, and while I was doing some research on that I kept running across Linux boards. I started looking into it and decided to try it. Interestingly enough, my interest in Python waned shortly after that but I became obsessed with Linux.

[arkangel]

A friend told me about. So i got a magazine with slackware kernel 1.2 or something, X no way. (IBM aptiva L 31). Then suse kernel 2.0 with Afterstep and Windows Maker(really cool that time :guitar: ) ....

[Foxmike]

A newspaper mentionned it into year 2005's interesting technical things if I remember well... I was looking towards a linux distro to try out, this one came to me at this moment!:)

[TheTruth34]

I kept getting windows genuine notifications; so, I asked a friend of mine how to get rid of them. He suggested I install ubuntu. Have had no reason to go back to windows since.

[TheMono]

ShipIt CD's I found - grabbed one and loaded it up, couldn't get my wireless to work (This was Breezy)

When I saw Dapper's release, I donwnloaded and installed - worked a treat. Haven't looked back.

[dangerousnerd]

It was 1999. Y2K had programmers everywhere in a panic. MySpace gave 12 year olds a new place to pour out their angst. Spongebob was wowing kids with his nasally high voice. And a lanky high school freshman (me) burned his first 6 disc set of RedHat Linux 6.0 while all the other kids had dates to the dance.

I read about it on a forum somewhere in the internet tubes. It was love at first sight. I've been using it as my primary OS since then. :)

Edit: Oh yeah, I've been using Ubuntu since Warty. I was bouncing between distros until then.

[roachk71]

I had heard about Red Hat on a computing news show back in 1996. They demonstrated a RH-based office and small web server. At that point, though, I could only dream about using any open source OS, since the computers I owned were all 486-based, with a minimal hard disk, no CD burners, and only WebTV for internet.

Then, in February of 2000, I had a chance: a 1.2 GHz Celeron with 128 MB and a 10 GB hard disk. I bought a Mandrake box set and installed it. I really didn't care much for that distro; it was painfully sluggish and buggy (most notably dependency hell.)