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View Full Version : What was your start with Linux, and then Ubuntu?



RadicaX
August 4th, 2013, 08:21 PM
So how did everyone of you find Linux and then Ubuntu? What was your start in this? I remember being about 12-13 something like that, and hearing about Linux from some PC magazine, and then a forums. When I was a little older, and had been learning more about computers, I again heard about Linux, this time Ubuntu though, and thought it was pretty cool. I had got a liveCD and really liked it a lot. My family did not, and seeing as how we had only one computer at the time, we did not change from windows. (took them forever to switch from AOL to firefox mama mia. Worse web browser in this world I have ever seen.)

Was not till a bad virus made Windows unbootable did they finally switch to Ubuntu. (except my sister, she uses it, but she does not try to learn nothing with it.) It was not the half hour boot times that made them make that switch, it was just that it would not come on. After that though, they have really like Ubuntu, and the speedy way it does things, and would rather have that than windows. So I still have plenty to learn in Linux, and Ubuntu, but I have enjoyed it greatly!

bapoumba
August 4th, 2013, 09:32 PM
Moved to Cafe.

RadicaX
August 4th, 2013, 09:42 PM
Thank you Bee Pooka person mod.

bapoumba
August 4th, 2013, 09:45 PM
:)

fontis
August 4th, 2013, 10:36 PM
It was way back in the day.
I always had a weird interest in something other than Windows and I had already played with Mac. A friend of mine had a father who worked as an IT tech back in the day and so he had a Linux computer running at home. I told him to hook me up. He warned me that I need to read some basic BASH crap or I will be lost not knowing what I'm doing. I told him "friend pls". So he gave me what I later come to see was Slackware.

Back then, all distro's were what new users today would call "hardcore". Anyway, I installed it and was clueless. Toyed around for a long while in my stubbornness to get it to work and eventually I managed to get it to a usable stage. I used it for a while then switched back to Windows to play games.

Anyway, that experience lead me to look for more. And eventually I tried all of the popular distros at the time (Mandrake, Redhat - though I hated the fedora icon LOL, Gentoo etc) until I stumbled upon Ubuntu on it's spawn and kind of stuck with it. I just liked the philosophy behind the community and the distro back then.

And that's pretty much it.

llanitedave2
August 4th, 2013, 10:52 PM
I didn't come from Windows, but from a Mac environment. I decided to drop the Mac when I realized that Apple was reducing functionality in its "free" apps like iTunes with every upgrade. I first tried a Mandrake distribution back around 2002. Then I gave SUSE linux 9.3 a try. It was a bit buggy for my taste. At some point I think I installed both Fedora and Ubuntu around 2005. The Fedora didn't last long. I got rid of my last Macintosh computer, an iBook, around 2007, and I've been using Ubuntu almost exclusively ever since. (Except at work where I'm still stuck with Windows). My wife finally gave up her eMac around 2010, and she's been using Ubuntu exclusively as well. Neither one of us misses either Mac or Windows.

Snowhog
August 4th, 2013, 11:59 PM
Started toying with Linux pre-2007. I tried Debian 'Woody'. Found, tried, and liked Kubuntu. Started with Edgy Eft and became a full-on Linux user in March 2007. I have used Ubuntu, but just prefer Kubuntu, and have been using it ever since.

ibjsb4
August 5th, 2013, 12:06 AM
Started with Ubuntu 8.04 and still got it looking like 8o4 :D

Irihapeti
August 5th, 2013, 12:30 AM
Pure curiosity got me started. I saw a magazine in a small-town supermarket with a free ISO of Ubuntu 7.04. After a lot of agonising over whether I'd destroy everything, I installed it alongside Windows without difficulty. Two or three days later, I joined the forums.

Later on, I played with other distros, such as Fedora, Puppy, Debian and SalixOS. I even had an openSolaris liveCD at one point. However, Ubuntu and its flavours has remained my main OS throughout.

jerrylamos
August 5th, 2013, 12:41 AM
Dapper Drake Beta was first linux that I found useful. Tried Red Hat and some others which were pretty crude.
Mostly use Ubuntu with occasional Peppermint, Slitaz, TC, etc.
Use stable Ubuntu 13.04 lately when doing something important but most of the time on unstable U+1 13.10.
Occasionally play with (x)mir or Unity 8, neither of which are touted to be prime time yet. Boy are they right about that.

angry_johnnie
August 5th, 2013, 01:30 AM
I went from Feather Linux in late 2005, to Damn Small LInux in 2006, to a frugal Puppy Linux installation in 2007, to Kubuntu 7.04 via wubi, to Linux mint 4, to PCLinuxOS, to Mandriva, to Ubuntu 8.04.

I have migrated all of my computers to Linux, exclusively, since Ubuntu 8.04. I used Ubuntu, exclusively, until Lucid Lynx, whichever number that was. After that, I moved to Debian, and there I stayed.

I do try other stuff every now and then. My spare hard drive has seen it all, from Windows XP to Free BSD, but Linux is still my primary system.

jonkers2
August 5th, 2013, 07:42 AM
I had been trying Linux during the mid-90's. Linux was still at 0.x, my computer was a 386 with 4MB (yes: MB) RAM. Starting X itself took a few minutes. Distro's I remember trying: Snow Linux, RedHat 4.2 and SuSE (which was then still very German and included as a CD in German magazines).

That was not too successful: it was still *trying* Linux. And then quickly back to Windows.

It all changed in 1999: I started using Corel Linux, which was very usable. And then Mandrake Festen came; that was the moment I switched to Linux completely; no more Windows anymore. Mandrake/Mandriva was great, until 2004/2005. In 2006 I switched to Kubuntu, and in 2007 to Ubuntu. And it's still Ubuntu since then.

TeamRocket1233c
August 5th, 2013, 09:03 AM
Well, the first distro I installed on my hardware back when I had a PII was Crunchbang 10, as I had to get rid of Win98 at the time and Linux was pretty much my only option, the first distro I started actually using when I got a halfway decent computer on my 20th birthday was Ubuntu 12.10, stuck with Ubuntu 'till 13.04 and switched to Fedora in May, on the beta release of Fedora 19, mainly as I wanted to run newer stuff, and Fedora 18's installer sucked, so I pretty much had no choice but to get F19 beta, as although Ubuntu's a nice distro, one of its downfalls is it's a bit behind other distros as far as kernel version and stuff goes, the latest Ubuntu kernel is 3.8, and the latest Fedora kernel is 3.10.4. Also, I developed a preference for RPM distros, and the YUM package manager as well.

I've also played with Debian, Archbang, Manjaro, and BSD before too.

But yeah, started with Crunchbang 10 on my ancient old computer, then got into Ubuntu for a few months on my current computer, and ran 12.10 and 13.04 in that span, and as of May, I'm now running Fedora 19.

And I've pretty much been into Linux for only a year now as I spent my childhood on Windows and Mac. First OS I ever touched back in kindergarten was Win95, and then I've used Win98, Win2k, WinME, WinXP, Vista, and Win7 over the years in addition to Mac OS 9 and OSX, as my school district used Mac while I was in grade school and switched to Windows around middle school, in addition, the graphic arts class I took a couple years ago had brand new (at the time) iMacs, so I had OSX exposure there.

I've also messed with DOS a couple times recently in the form of FreeDOS. Also, I suspect I'll stick to Fedora for a while, or go to Archbang or Manjaro should I either get bored or tired of Fedora, or should it ever rub me the wrong way.

Unfortunately, the public schools over here are still on XP, although that OS reaches EOL in April, and they're slowly going to Win7. I would be stoked if they picked up Ubuntu Server and Edubuntu though, I mean it would save them in software and hardware costs, as hardware that would otherwise be too old for Win7 or Win8 would be able to run Edubuntu no prob, resulting in pre-existing workstations and laptops being kept in service, and it really wouldn't be that big a learning curve, I bet both staff and students could pick up Unity pretty easily, heck, I prefer more of a traditional Windows-style or GNOME2-style desktop and I picked up Unity instantly, so really, Unity isn't that hard to use as a UI, at least as of 12.04 and later anyways, in addition, Ubuntu and consequently Edubuntu handles pretty much everything with graphical utilities, at least on the desktop, so it wouldn't be quite as hard to manage as Arch or Gentoo would, for example, also Ubuntu Server uses CLI, so the OS would be a bit harder to manage on the servers than on the workstations and laptops. Still, going to Ubuntu Server for the servers and Edubuntu for the workstations and laptops, IMO, would be a better deal in the long run than sticking with Windows.

lads
August 5th, 2013, 02:29 PM
When I got into university in 1996 they had different terminals tyoes powered by a "huge" Unix system and a few PCs with Slackware. In 1997 I installed RedHat (don't recall which version) on my Pentium, dual booting with Winblows.

The first years in the profession forced me to stick to Winblows, but I kept trying different distros at home: Knoppix, Meppis, Xandros, Debian and others I can't remember. I first tried Ubuntu (6.10) in 2007, and that time I got very close to switching to Linux as main OS. Unfortunately it wouldn't send the signal properly from my laptop at the time to external monitors and I had to stick once again with Winblows.

Finally in 2009 I got a new laptop and tried Ubuntu (8.10) once again with dual boot; this was the first Linux distro I managed to use as main OS, both at home as professionally. In 2011 I had only Linux systems booting up on that laptop. I went through all Ubuntu releases on this laptop up to 12.04, always by upgrading, without any trouble.

Although the switch to Linux was at certain moments hampered by technical issues, what really made it possible was the increasing number of FOSS I could use professionally, that allowed me to leave commercial software completely behind.

Linuxratty
August 5th, 2013, 03:12 PM
Nine years ago, I saw this battle between Lindows,later to become Linspire and Windows and wondered what that was about...
I became fascinated and started researching Linux.
My first distro was Linspire and I loved it. later I moved to Klikit (a disaster) Mepis, fedora and Kubuntu and finally Ubuntu. I now have Ubuntu with the classic Gnome panel. ). Sep. will be my tenth anniversary using Linux.

montag dp
August 5th, 2013, 03:16 PM
Two years ago I started working towards my PhD, and all the computers in our lab run Ubuntu (because we do coding and simulation on remote supercomputers, which run Linux or Unix). Within 6 months or so I was using the Wubi version of Ubuntu on my laptop. That eventually broke and I started dual booting. Now kind of wish I could completely abandon Windows, but there's one really good program that is holding me back from doing that. I still have to admit it can come in handy to have Windows installed for those cases where someone has to have something in MS Office format or for various other reasons. In any case, I rarely boot up Windows anymore.

DeadlyOats
August 6th, 2013, 03:18 AM
I started with SuSE Linux, before Novell bought it. I kept using it for a while after they bought it, but they started playing funny with the open source community with their licensing, or something. I started looking for an alternative, and that's when I started hearing about Ubuntu. I think I started with SuSE 6 or 7 (don't remember. It was way before Novell bought the company.). Then I switched to Ubuntu 6 or 7 (it was so long ago; can't remember exactly). Then Canonical sprung Unity on us. I went looking for a new OS again. Tried OpenSuSE, and ended up with Kubuntu.

I'm happy with Kubuntu. It'll be good as long as they don't try to spring Kubunity, or some such crap... LOL

lads
August 6th, 2013, 09:10 AM
I still have to admit it can come in handy to have Windows installed for those cases where someone has to have something in MS Office format

Quitting M$ Office is far easier than most folk think, I left it behind years before I completely switched to Linux. Moreover, in Academia/Research that kind of software should actually be interdicted, it doesn't deliver the quality needed for scientific work.

Once you learn how to use Latex you wont be able to go back. And when you integrate your documents with a versioning system you'll wonder how can other folk do proper collaborative work.

su:bhatta
August 6th, 2013, 09:26 AM
Ok, long story....
Back in 2002, some of my friends doing MCA were using RedHat, i've no clue which version! Just knew that there was these open source OS, which were available free and were a bit buggy but did the job!

The my proffesional life took over and Windows XP pretty much did it all!

Suddenly, in 2010, found interesting ScreensShots in deviantart.com of Ubuntu with Conky! Man I had to have that!
Installed Maverick Meerkat 10.10 and have been on and off using Ubuntu since then!

Now I've got my laptop with Win8, UbuntuStudio 13.04(KDE DE), Debian Wheezy(Gnome 3.4), Fedora 19 Jam Spin(KDE DE) !

I love the GNU/Linux way!
Am sticking to it one way or another!

montag dp
August 6th, 2013, 05:35 PM
Quitting M$ Office is far easier than most folk think, I left it behind years before I completely switched to Linux. Moreover, in Academia/Research that kind of software should actually be interdicted, it doesn't deliver the quality needed for scientific work.

Once you learn how to use Latex you wont be able to go back. And when you integrate your documents with a versioning system you'll wonder how can other folk do proper collaborative work.I know all that. I don't personally ever use MS Office. I use Latex for writing documents and Matlab/Python/Other language for most computations instead of Excel. Or LibreOffice when the spreadsheet format is useful. But, sometimes people want something to be specifically in MS Office format, and then you're stuck.

RadicaX
August 6th, 2013, 07:55 PM
I have never really needed MS Office or the things for it, but my line of work does not call for such things. If I did need to, I would just use an Opensource one or something and figure out how to format to be in a similar form. (Sure it takes learning, but you have to learn to do stuff anyway.) I am not into having one program tie me down to a system. But hey that is me haha.

All interesting stories.

shahinul
August 7th, 2013, 07:56 AM
The first linux distro I succesfuly tried was Mandrake version 9.2 (known today as Mandriva) but after a few years and other short periods with other linux distros and unix I moved to Ubuntu since version 8.04 with a small interruption when unity and gnome3 took over until I discovered MATE.

KivalliqKid
August 7th, 2013, 03:37 PM
In early 2009 I discovered OpenOffice, and was blown away, it was a full featured office suite for free! Then got to learning that it was open source and what that meant. I wanted to know more about it and spread the word. Googled quite a bit of it and for some reason "Ubuntu" kept popping up, at first I simply ignored it because, well I had no idea what it was. After awhile I had a better understanding of what opensource was, and I finally clicked on a Google link about Ubuntu... Mind blown again. A full on OS, for free, opensource just like OpenOffice. Read up about Ubuntu, and finally got brave enough to try it out on my dying SONY VIAO with a live CD. It was 9.04. I was impressed, it worked, everything just worked and it was fast! After a few weeks I got brave enough and did an install (this time it was 9.10), and it did everything I needed and wanted. It gave that laptop a new life (albeit short lived because the hardware died about two months later). After that experience I was hooked, but had to wait until we got a new device, a Acer netbook. Ubuntu flew on it compared to Windows, and then was able to convince the wife to allow me to install it on our desktop. Been an awesome experience ever since.

montag dp
August 7th, 2013, 04:28 PM
In early 2009 I discovered OpenOffice, and was blown away, it was a full featured office suite for free! Then got to learning that it was open source and what that meant. I wanted to know more about it and spread the word. Googled quite a bit of it and for some reason "Ubuntu" kept popping up, at first I simply ignored it because, well I had no idea what it was. After awhile I had a better understanding of what opensource was, and I finally clicked on a Google link about Ubuntu... Mind blown again. A full on OS, for free, opensource just like OpenOffice. Read up about Ubuntu, and finally got brave enough to try it out on my dying SONY VIAO with a live CD. It was 9.04. I was impressed, it worked, everything just worked and it was fast! After a few weeks I got brave enough and did an install (this time it was 9.10), and it did everything I needed and wanted. It gave that laptop a new life (albeit short lived because the hardware died about two months later). After that experience I was hooked, but had to wait until we got a new device, a Acer netbook. Ubuntu flew on it compared to Windows, and then was able to convince the wife to allow me to install it on our desktop. Been an awesome experience ever since.Great story. If nothing else, the performance of Linux versus Windows on the same hardware should be a huge selling point. Whenever I boot up Windows it seems like it takes forever to do anything! Why does it need to use 50% of my RAM all the time? Seriously? And anti-virus software is a huge pain too.

mdsmedia
August 7th, 2013, 07:03 PM
Installed RedHat in late 1990s... as an experiment. Managed to get an internet connection. Didn't try again 'til 2001 when I bought a RedHat disk set again at a swap meet.

October 2005 I tried Ubuntu Hoary live CD. Chatted on IRC and at the time it seemed to be more responsive than the Windows XP I was using, so I dual-boot installed Hoary. Never Looked Back!!

Yes, I still dual boot. Some things are Windows only, but I continue to look for alternatives for everything Windows. I HATE every time I boot into Windows.

kurt18947
August 7th, 2013, 08:00 PM
My 'gateway' distro was Mepis, maybe around 2006. I didn't find the office apps sufficient for my purposes though I marveled at Firefox working so well off a CD and not needing to do any incantations to get the wifi to work. Today, Windows takes quite some time to boot because there are several critical updates since the last time it was booted, some months previous.

evilsoup
August 7th, 2013, 08:44 PM
My little brother accidentally killed a Windows XP installation while trying to get rid of some virus on the family computer I'm still not sure if he did that on purpose or not, but by the next day we had Ubuntu... 7.xx (can't remember which one exactly). Eventually I ended up taking over as the main 'admin' of the computer. Then we all started getting our own laptops, and at that point I had come to prefer Linux over Windows (mainly for middle-click paste lol).

evilsoup
August 7th, 2013, 08:53 PM
I know all that. I don't personally ever use MS Office. I use Latex for writing documents and Matlab/Python/Other language for most computations instead of Excel. Or LibreOffice when the spreadsheet format is useful. But, sometimes people want something to be specifically in MS Office format, and then you're stuck.

You should probably check out pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/) -- it can take LaTeX input (amongst other), and output to docx (and a whole other list of formats). Of course, this doesn't help if you need to collaborate with people sending you those documents, and I can't vouch for how well it works with very complicated documents, but you might find it useful.

Ninja>Master
August 10th, 2013, 10:25 AM
For me it was 3 years ago in Grade 6. We was in the computer class and was discussing operating systems. Then we heard about Linux and Unix. The teacher said that back in their days they had used Linux and said it was pretty good. After the class me and my friend was talking about Linux. I said that we have to check it out. He said that he will search for it on the interwebs and will tell me what he found the next day. The next day he said he have found a Linux OS and its called Ubuntu and its awesome and looks cool. He said it kinda looks like Mac. I said that it was a pretty weird name and told that give me the installer so I don't have to go through the trouble of downloading it since he has already downloaded it. And so I got my hands on Ubuntu and that's how I came to know about Ubuntu and Linux ;).

howefield
August 10th, 2013, 10:32 AM
Threads merged.

JRV
August 10th, 2013, 01:19 PM
My first experience with Linux occurred sometime around 1995. Up until that point I was using DOS, the early releases of Windows did not Interest me. I was waiting for a 32 bit operating system. When Windows 95 was introduced it surprised me that Microsoft would create a 16 bit operating system 10 years after the introduction of the 386 processor, so I went looking elsewhere. I gave OS2, Linux, and Windows NT4 each a six month trial, enough to become fairly comfortable with each. At that time I decided to go with Windows NT4. I don't remember what Linux distro I tried, but it came in second. I installed Linux every year or so to see how it was progressing, and it soon became apparent that Linux was getting better while Windows was just getting more bloated. When Microsoft introduced Vista I took one look and knew it was time to make the switch.

After a bit of research I decided to try Ubuntu 7.04, and Puppy Linux. I was able to come up to speed fairly quickly, but I joined both forums to ask a few newbie questions.

Chris of Arabia
August 11th, 2013, 05:54 PM
I found myself with an unused PC about 5 or so years back, and (eventually) installed 8.04 server on it, with the KDE on top of it. Within around two weeks of getting it going though, the power supply went 'pop' and took the mobo out with it. I ended up putting a new box together and started over again. The 8.04 was going till around 4 weeks ago when I decided to upgrade it - just for a change I only succeeded in killing it, but I've now successfully got 13.04 server running, again with KDE on it. I'm just working my way through a few final tweaks, them my LAMP server will be ready to go again.

9422010
August 11th, 2013, 10:45 PM
At my GTechnical Institute I was studying for an A+ certification, two or three of the students were extremely dedicated to */Linux. I was one of the few who showed an interest, which until then I hadn't even heard of Linux. One day I was offered a Kubuntu 9.04 live CD. While i had a computer to install it on my only option to connect to the internet was with a fairly new USB wireless interface, which the kernel did not support by default at that time. And here I am years later, Linux part of my life, using the same USB device, forever grateful of the person who introduced me to Linux.

montag dp
August 12th, 2013, 01:32 AM
You should probably check out pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/) -- it can take LaTeX input (amongst other), and output to docx (and a whole other list of formats). Of course, this doesn't help if you need to collaborate with people sending you those documents, and I can't vouch for how well it works with very complicated documents, but you might find it useful.I tried one of those things once (not sure if it was that) and it worked okay. Didn't do so well with formatting though, as expected.

The-Server-4dmin
August 12th, 2013, 01:36 AM
I started off with slackware then all kinds of distros. I am now working with 200+ Ubunut serves at work and I am loving it--no pun intended.

Duncan J Murray
August 12th, 2013, 11:41 PM
For me the seed was sewn with my Amiga A1200. After the death of the Amiga system, I wondered aimlessly for years, but eventually needed a modern computer to use at university. OS-X had just come out at the time, but it seemed slow and buggy to me, so I went with Windows XP on a trusty Thinkpad. Cue years of putting up with it until I walked into work one day in 2009 ranting about how much I hated Windows (it was trying (successfully) to get me to install 'Windows Genuine Advantage' which was of no advantage to me!). My senior at that time suggested I try 'ubuntu'. I used the 9.04 liveCD with curious amusement at the big buttons and funny styling. Then I tried to install a dual-boot system, which broke my aging thinkpad. I decided then just to go for it and do a full install.

So glad I did. I was blown away by how fast it was, how wi-fi 'just worked', the sheer elegance and reliability of installing from repos and the way it gave you back your computer. I kicked myself for not finding out about it back in 2003.

Currently I am still stuck in the past. My T40 died this year after I dropped it, and has been replaced with a T60. I'm using 10.04, but with the human theme, and I have my window buttons in an arrangement reminiscent of Workbench. Not sure where to go with it. I've tried almost everything - kde, unity, G3, xfce, cinnamon, mate, gnome-classic, even haiku. My plan is to give crunchbang a go, then maybe kubuntu for a proper trial, failing that ubuntu-mate (but it's so ugly!) because I can't hang around on 10.04 forever!

seancallaway
August 13th, 2013, 06:53 PM
I picked up a Linux book from my local library that came with a Red Hat Linux 7 CD. This was somewhere around 2000. I installed it on an extra PC that I had and started tinkering around. Most of the software I was interested in had to be build from source (./configure, make, make install) as many of the RPMs were multitudes of major versions out of date. It was a good experience. I played with that (not doing anything more serious than figuring out how to setup Apache and MySQL), upgrading up to Red Hat Linux 9, if I recall correctly. At that point, I found Debian.

Debian was great! I could use a floppy to do a netinstall on this piece of sh*t laptop that I found at a garage sale. What joyous times! I began messing with C++ at that point, as I was also taking the AP Computer Science class at my high school. My interest in a desktop Linux machine was piqued. As I went to college, I vaguely remember an early Ubuntu promotion where they would send you CDs, both for yourself and to distribute to your friends. I had a stack of five or so, but never opened them.

I stopped using Linux for a while. It was a dark time in my computing life. Ubuntu was the shining light that plucked me from the darkness. I want to say that it was the 10.04 release that I really got going on. I had it installed, via Boot Camp, on my MacBook Pro and ended up using that as often, if not more, than the Mac side.

Since then, I am a daily user. I have Windows 7 and 12.04 dual-booted on my laptop and primarily use the Ubuntu side. My desktop is Windows-only, but it's really my gaming machine. General web browsing, server work, development, and the like are all done on Ubuntu.

blackbird34
August 13th, 2013, 07:04 PM
I stumbled on Linux in 2010 and got one of the last CDs from Shipit.