What year did you install Linux for the 1st time?

[pape]

Self explanatory... I don't care whether you actually succeeded or not in the installation :)

[Kingsley]

2006

[wolfen69]

2004

[pape]

Self explanatory... I don't care whether you actually succeeded or not in the installation :)

If it was a particularly exciting/memorable moment, tell us!

For me, it was Mandrake Linux 8.2 in November 2002, and yeah, it was all new and exciting. It was pre-firefox and pre-openoffice times, so I remember having KDE 2.2.2 with KOffice and Mozilla. It took a few years to become 100% linux guy, but it happened...

[rfruth]

2002 or so (Red Hat)

[samwyse]

2000

[Chame_Wizard]

17 may/3 june 2007 :guitar:

[paul101]

me myself?? 2008 :-\"


my dad installed it for me back in 2007 :-D

[FuturePilot]

2006
It's coming up on two years with Ubuntu :)

[odiseo77]

At the end of 2003, I think.

[tdrusk]

2003 maybe? It was Fedora 4.

[Istonian]

2007

[jay019]

Back in 1999 with Mandrake 6 with the text based installer.

This was back when getting X to work on an onboard SiS chip meant some funky manual X config.
But alas how things have progressed! Its almost too easy these days.

[zmjjmz]

2007.

[qamelian]

1998

[bruce89]

2005, about the same time I joined this forum.

[Gen2ly]

I suppose it was about 1997 though I can't be sure. I spent alot of time on it building my first one and it was crap honestly. I did get a kernel built! and the x server. The x server was barely usable. I had heard in the faint corners of the internet about something called Gnome. It looked overly simplistic and mostly eye candy. Unfortunately at the time I ran out of time and never got to try more. Been using Linux for a year now.

[pape]

oops, I did a poll on this as well, but somehow managed to start a thread without poll as well....! This was not the purpose, I suppose I clicked "back" at some point..

[HippyRandall]

1998 Redhat

version? ugh who knows? it was ten tears ago:)

[dizee]

late 2006, Ubuntu Edgy 6.10.

[EmilyRose]

I don't really know, but it had to have been 1999 or earlier with linux mandrake and redhat, dont know the vs... I've been fiddling with Linux for a long time. I'm just happy as hell I finally have it working - it only took the better part of 7+ years to get a system running smoothly for me!! Really pretty amazing just how far its come since i started playing!

[ddrplayer512]

The first LiveCD I used was KNOPPIX.

Within a few weeks, I installed Fedora Core 5. Love it so much...

Then it was Ubuntu 6.06.

This all was in the year 2006.

[tad1073]

12/2007, and it took me a month to get wireless working right. I had to lug this beast up and down the steps to the router everyday. It was a good work out and learning experience.

[cecilpierce]

1994 Slackware 3.0

[haggus]

It was RH5.2 I wasn't very succesful until I moved over to Debian a couple of years ago I think I still have a bunch of old RH cd that I tried over the years

[dasunst3r]

January 2004 with Mandrake 9.3. Even then, I was amazed by how I was able to do most of my everyday tasks on a non-Windows operating system.

[drascus]

2006 was my first Linux Experiance. It was ubuntu I have tried a bunch of Distros since but this is my Favorite.

[Bungo Pony]

2007, but I'd been threatening to install it since 2001 :)

[tubasoldier]

1994 Slackware 3.0

How is it that I'm somehow jealous? Slackware is sweet stuff.


2003 for me. Redhat 9, uninstalled fairly quickly. Settled on Mandrake 9.2 at the beginning of '04.

[swoll1980]

2007 right when 7.04 was released so I'm on my third buntu know

[fktt]

i think in my case it was '04 or '05 but only like aday or so, and then did so on '06 and in january of '07 did the permanent switch. :)
and im still using 7.04.

[murlosad]

Late 2001, started with Mandrake 8.1 (bought it from Bestbuy for $30 before I knew it was free)

[LO Matt]

2005: Breezy Badger

[seanc7]

2001, Redhat 6 or 7 (whichever was current then).

[ComputerHermit]

2000-2001

Redhat and Mandrak 8.0

[Rashedul]

Heard about Corel Linux from my Gr 10 teacher in 1999 and decided to find out what it was all about. Bought a book on it and it came with a Corel Linux installation CD. Tried it for a bit and gave up on it.

Then came knoppix and ubuntu few years ago.

[rude_lee]

2003 with linxp

[Whiffle]

2001

[fissionmailed]

2007, I think, the summer. It already feels like I've been using Linux forever. I'd never go back now though. :)

[pinguino13]

2006

[schauerlich]

1991. I was Torvalds alpha tester.

Disregard the fact that I wasn't more than a few months old when he invented it. :)

But really, 2007.

[kutjara]

1997. Early December, I think.

[bigbrovar]

on the 5th of july 2007 few minute after midnight .... the brown splash screen of feisty was welcoming me to the new and exciting world of linux... i stll remember cus it is just like it was yesterday

[|2A|N]

2006

[lswest]

2003 -> Debian and Ubuntu (had one on my PC, the other i used on my friend's laptop) And yeah, i fixed most of my issues myself, which is why my join date is some time in 07, because i felt i could help people here ^^ and i had a graphics card issue, which i ended up solving myself XD but yeah.

[Sephoroth]

Late May or early June 2007.

I had been wanting to install Linux for a while before that but had been hesitant. Seeing demonstrations of Beryl pushed me over the edge and finally got me to try out Ubuntu. The videos kind of served as a proof of concept that Linux could indeed overpower Windows or Mac OS X in software outside of the server market.

[atomkarinca]

I guess it was 1997 and it was SUSE 5.0. It was a terrible experience for me. Than I started using GNU/Linux in 2005 with Knoppix. Then Fedora 5, Ubuntu 6.06, Mandriva 2007, Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10 and now 8.04.

I love my Xubuntu Studio now.

[Dynaflow]

Summer 2002 - Mandrake 8.2.

[Arkenzor]

2007

[vishzilla]

Jun '06 Ubuntu Dapper

[hessiess]

see join date;)

[Tuxoid]

July 12, 2007
Ubuntu 7.04, Feisty Fawn
getting sound to work felt like black magic, but then again,
this was 15 years after Linux had it's first major release.

[aomlives]

2006
Ubuntu 5.10

[MountainX]

2008 for me

Maybe this should be a poll with choices
1. 2008
2. 2007
3. 2006
4. 2005
5 2000 thru 2004
6. 1999 or earlier

Or is that too recent and too limiting?

[roachk71]

Late 2000. :KS

I wanted to try Linux before 2000, but from what I'd heard, Linux was still mainly for servers. My, how the times have proven many of us wrong!

[chucky chuckaluck]

october 2005. had i not had so much trouble with figuring out wireless, i would have done it sooner. my first was breezy.

[dmizer]

first install was Red Hat back in 1995 or 6. used it for about a year or so before i started getting caught up in dependancy hell. never touched linux after that until i picked up a knoppix cd, and shortly after, i installed Hoary Hedgehog somewhere in 2005.

[SunnyRabbiera]

2004 or so, but back then there wasn't much that was good... my first linux experiences were horrid.
Luckily my experience changed in 2005 with Mepis 3.3, my first full time linux experience and it was awesome.

[jordanmthomas]

2005, about a week after I got my own computer (didn't want to risk messing up the family computer and had never really thought of using anything other than Windows)

[jespdj]

1994

[kpkeerthi]

2004 (SUSE). Went back to XP in about a month. LOL!

[misfitpierce]

2002

[toupeiro]

It was either Late 1997 with Slackware or Early 1998 with Redhat. Thinking back, I can't honestly remember. I know early 1998 with Redhat was definately my first stint running linux for any significant length (longer than 5-6 months), but I distinctly remember playing with Slackware a year prior (my first real exposure to anything other than MSDOS/MS-Windows on IBM/PC hardware) and I remember trying it again later with Redhat new "text installer". I vaguely remember having to do a ton of compiling on a 486-DX4 100 to install the version of slackware I had. Redhats install was insanely more simple by comparison. Its pretty amazing to see an install like Ubuntu's considering what it was like about ten years or so prior.

To give it some real ground for comparison, I look back ten years from now with Microsoft and see Windows 98 and compare it to Windows Vista from an overall installability and usability comparison. Linux's maturity and progress still feels leaps and bounds over what Microsoft has given us in an OS in the last decade. Though, and not to turn this into yet another bashing of Windows, I will give kudos to MS for Active Directory versus the progression of NIS+/openLDAP. NT Domains were simply primitive in comparison to Active Directory, and NIS, while being an extremely effective domain model was equally hindered by its aged design (no domain trust controls, no native DHCP support to name a few), and NIS+/openLDAP were not as siginicant improvements to that network model, IMO, than Active Directory was to NTDOM. Microsoft, in their ability to make money in spite of themselves, does do some things right and progressive.

[bnsrinivas]

2005
was the first time i installed Linux in my system.That time i did not have much idea about how to install it.Just by trial and error i came to know the exact partitioning.I installed red hat 7 and fedora on to my system.

[anaconda]

1994 Slackware 3.0

sama here..

Didn't get it working properly though. Next time I tried with redhat6

[xpod]

Never mind first years with Linux ...the first year i used a Computer was 2006,March 2006 to be precise.4 months later i stumbled across Ubuntu and the rest as they say....."is history"
Late starter ok:)

[Sukarn]

2002 I think. It way some version of Mandrake (now known as Mandriva)

[SunnyRabbiera]

2004 (SUSE). Went back to XP in about a month. LOL!

I know the feeling, if it was Suse 9.1 I feel your pain brother.

[samjh]

2000

Red Hat 5, I think. It didn't recognise my hard drive so couldn't install it.

[bonzodog]

My first home Linux install was in 1999 with Caldera Linux 3.0. I have run Linux as a sole OS at home ever since.

Went from Caldera to Slackware in 2000 with a short stint running Redhat 6.0, and also tried out Mandrake for a few months in 2001.
Moved to Ubuntu 64 in 2005, then went to Zenwalk in 2006. I now have Zenwalk on my laptop machine and Arch on my Desktop.

[Wobedraggled]

99


Redhat 5.2 then slack 4

[rolnics]

probably around 2001, as I tried Mandrake, but it didn't last!

[starfry]

1994. It was a slackware build.

I also had a distro called Linux-FT by a firm called "lasermoon" around the same time.

[Mazza558]

End of '05.

[regomodo]

mid '06.

Slack 10

[imT]

First time i installed linux in the spring of 2007 (Mandriva i believe, for a few days)
but i completly switched, this year in January.

[reyhan]

2006 it was redhat

[szymon_g]

2002 or 2003, Red Hat Linux 7.2

[HansKisaragi]

Hmm, if my memories serves me right it was in 2002.

It was Mandrake 7.x or 8.x i think.

Been switching between windows and linux ever since.

Now iv hopefully totally converted to linux. :KS

*running the latest ubuntu beta*

[Joeb454]

May last year (2007), nearly a month to the day after Fiesty was released :)

Hardly use Windows now, I'm just too lazy to get rid of it ;)

[matt79]

I think I installed it around 2003. And have used it off and on since then.

[BLTicklemonster]

1999, then once every 6 months thereafter. Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, you name it. None were useful at all, because none had internet connectivity, nor "concise" information on how a layman would get internet connectivity, or I would have probably not waited for Ubuntu, which I installed in 2005, before finally getting in to Linux full bore.

[dcast]

In late 2004 I think, I have been onboard with Ubuntu since 4.10. Ubuntu was the only way I could get Linux since they had ShipIt and at that time I had Dial-Up and there was no way I was going to download the entire image at 5kb/s!

[MemoryDump]

1998 Redhat

version? ugh who knows? it was ten tears ago:)
about the same for me :guitar:

[Dragonbite]

Twas the night before (actually, morning of) Thanksgiving (21rst or 28th) in the year 2002 when in a dark bedroom-turned-studio-&-office I decided to "darn the torpedoes" and install this little thing called "Red Hat Linux 8.0"!

No, I did not backup my all-important Windows partition before installing this as dual-boot (MBR? what was that?).

Luckily I never needed that backup. whew!

Since then it's been a slippery slope downhill for me ;) At least in terms of free time not fiddling with Linux or reading about it or downloading and installing the latest applications!

I had a friend who was my "linux guru" whom I still curse his name to this day for introducing me to such an addictive operating system and community. He wandered back to Windows until I "saved" him and he returned sort-of. Now he comes to me with questions about distros (though he beats me on CLI commands).

My next big step was when I actually got a machine to install linux on that I didn't have to maintain Windows and make sure it was accessible! That became the kid's comptuer (Edubuntu).

Now I have a laptop and don't have to answer to anybody (except to my wife when I stay up until 2-3 AM a couple nights in a row trying to get it fixed/reinstalled :lolflag:).

Naturally this is more dangerous than I ever expected!

[dashnak]

I believe it was 2003

[jethro10]

2000 - Suse it failed miserably for me.
several times on and off since then.
2006 - Ubuntu, permanently

[Kleist]

I don't remember exactly, but it must be the year 2003 or 2004. I found this linux magazine in the bookstore with Debian in a free CD and I tried it. I was happy with the internet working, but I didn't know how to make flash or java working. I spend a lot of time until I had java working, and other things like playing mp3 files and the usual stuff, but it was very hard for me, and gave up after a while. Later on, I heard of ubuntu, and everything was easier.

:)

[notwen]

Slackware 3.5 in 98. The extremes I went to to be leet on irc. =]

[aaaantoine]

2002. But 2007 marked the first frequent-use installation.

[Fire_Chief]

1998 - Linux on PPC. Didn't have a GUI installed at that point but fun to start playing with. :)

[MONODA]

2004, Debian. I didnt succeed since I canceled half way through, i didnt even know that it was a OS. I was using a net install and didnt expect it to download more than 50 megs! thats how clueless I was.

[SOULRiDER]

Early 2003 i think.

[RebounD11]

Whenever SUSE 9.3 came out...

[jolx]

way back in 2007 when i was 13 i installed ubuntu 7.10 :guitar:

[dart1007]

April 2006...:)

[jabeez]

Probably around 2000'ish, with "Mandrake" and "Suse", never really used them all that much, got frustrated at little things I couldn't get working and gave up............

[bapoumba]

Merged the other thread without poll in here.

[Seti]

Just after my birthday in February 2004. Mandrake 9 I think. The week before I had bought 'Zone-Alarm Pro' for some stupid reason (go ahead, laugh) and quickly realized what a joke Windows is. After installing Mandrake, my computer and I started getting along much better. :)

[love2learn]

novemeber 12 2002 redhat 8.0

The only reason I remember that is i went and found the first thread i posted on the internet about it.

http://www.techimo.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41152&highlight=love2learn

The title to that post? No wonder Windows is over linux in the masses!!!

wow Tux and I have come a loooong way compared to my latest post....

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=57494&page=31

i hope you dont consider this thread crapping. I just wanted to show the difference in my posts from then till now. If this is in bad tastes feel free to pm me and I will edit this post.

[Unitux]

2006 or 2007 Oh, memories.. :) Dapper was 1st distro, then Fedora, then dapper again. (that was just 1st day). I was totaly lost in linux world :)

[picopir8]

I believe it was Redhat in 1999. Though I had used unix, solaris, and the like since about 1993. I didnt totally switch to Linux at home until 2007.

[stoodleysnow]

I was first introduced to the wonderful world of Linux by the school IT technician when I nosily asked him why the school server he was working on looked so different (graphics) to the rest of the computers.
Fedora 3.92, 2005?:confused: may have been 2004 though. Because I seem to recall Mandriva 2005 being released. So yeah. could have been 2004. Too late to change my vote?:(
I dabbled with SUSE 10.1, Fedora and Mandriva for a while before Ubuntu Dapper caught my eye. Then I upgraded to Feisty last year. And Gutsy too. Soon to change to Hardy this year :)
I also like Xubuntu and to a lesser extent Kubuntu, Fluxbuntu, Edubuntu and Linux Mint.

[amazingtaters]

Well, I've been with Linux almost a full year now. Started with Fiesty (which at the time was new and a big deal) in the first week of May 2007. I was a quick convert, as Vista was terrible on my lappy, and it gave me the last needed incentive to make the jump into Linux. I've been Windows free at college, but still keep my PC at home on XP because my 2Wire HPNA adaptor isn't supported.

[sanderella]

Suze in about 2003.8-)

[1875]

SUSE in 1998. Started using as primary OS with Redhat around 2002-2003. Now 100% Linux.

[cus1984]

2008 Ubuntu is my first

[Bruce M.]

July 31 2007 - First Attempt: Ubuntu 6.04 Live CD - Successful

[motoperpetuo]

1998 or so, i think. it was whatever version of redhat was included with SAMS "Teach Yourself Linux in 24 Hours" book. i figured i could learn linux, fake knowing unix, and thus get myself a better job. it didn't work. i'm glad linux has gotten easier since then.

[frup]

I voted for 2005-2006 because that is when I got my first working installation (2005). We had finally got broadband... I was a site and got a free voucher for Linspire. I used it for 6 weeks before I switched to Ubuntu 5.10.

I had been trying to install Linux since 2002 or earlier though unfortunately I only had 56kb and never succeeded in getting a whole Iso. I tried miniature distros which didn't work either.

www.linux.org is probably the biggest hinderer for average user Linux adoption. If it was better laid out and more intuitive I'm sure I would have managed to begin earlier.

[tuebinger]

Ubuntu in 07

[retrow]

Installed a version of Redhat from a CD that was tucked into the flap of a computing magazine I subscribed to back in 1999. The best thing to come out of that installation was that by formating the drive to ext2, some bad sectors (40MB) which had developed on my 2.1GB Fat32 formatted hard drive were miraculously cleaned.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the 1024x768 display to work and I didn't find the prospect of working on 800x600 too appealing. So I went back to Win95.

[Irihapeti]

Ubuntu 7.04 in the middle of last year.

[james9876]

ummm... 1998... it didn't work then mostly, lol!

I could get a desktop but that was about it...

[Sandsound]

Been using Linux for my webserver since 1996, and since Ubuntu 6.04 I have been using it as my main OS for music-production and everything else.

Converted my husband for two years ago, and now almost everyone in my family use Linux :-)

[calc]

Feb 1995 (almost 1994 darn)

Feb 1995 - Jun 1998 - Slackware/RedHat/Yggdrasil
Jun 1998 - Sep 2004 - Debian
Sep 2004 - Current - Ubuntu

I totally switched over to Linux around Fall 1998 before that I dual booted (rebooting into Windows occasionally). I still have Windows installed on my machines but now only reboot into them to do firmware upgrades, etc that I can't do in Linux or off a bootable cd.

I have been a Debian Developer since Jul 2000, and Ubuntu MOTU/CoreDev since ~ Jun 2007.

[RandomJoe]

Sometime in the 1993-94 school year I started playing with Slackware - stacks and stacks of floppies! :) Nothing like copying the floppies from a friend, driving 1 1/2 hours back to school and finding one has a bad sector...!

I finally figured out what I was doing, and in the latter part of 1998 I wiped my last Windows partition and went 100% Linux at home.

Thanks to some (radio) scanner programming software I couldn't find a Linux replacement for, I recently needed Windows again - it's just another application now, though - stuck inside a VM on a Linux box!

[cprofitt]

Hmm... 1995 or 1996 was my first attempt if I am correct though it may have been earlier. I can't remember if it was SuSe. RedHat or Turbo Linux...

[Jack78]

Ubuntu 7.04's the first linux I ever installed.

[SteveHillier]

1996 (suse 7.0)

[buried]

2002- Linux Kernel (can't remember distro) then Ubuntu dapper drake.

[BrandonG777]

Ahh... 94 installing Slackware off like 20 floppies! LOL. Oh, how I love apt-get and not having to compile every single freaking thing!

[howiewonderstud]

I installed Red Hat on my computer at the office where I worked in 2001 or 2002- can't remember when but several years ago...
man, did I get into trouble....

[Twitch6000]

Late 06 for me or early 07 I forget :(.

[klange]

I'd say back in '06 when I tried out DSL for no particular reason.
Got Ubuntu almost a year ago (slightly less).

[tempest]

1997, Red Hat

[little_penguin]

1998, Slackware, can't remember the version

[quanumphaze]

2004
Mandrake 9.2 later upgraded to 10 on my old P3@733Mhz 128MB RAM 20G HDD nVidia TNT2. Hardware worked really well out of the box in both Mandrake and WinXP. But I hardly used it as I had no Internet connection in my room.
Years later after nearly a year on my new laptop (WinXP) I put on Ubuntu 7.10 on it and used Ubuntu exclusively ever since.

One day (3 weeks) I'll try out Mandriva again.

[_DD_]

I think it was around 2003 when I was 11 and tried a Knoppix Live CD. Within a week I hade SuSE installed :)

[ikki_72]

Ahh... 94 installing Slackware off like 20 floppies! LOL. Oh, how I love apt-get and not having to compile every single freaking thing!you one heckuva old-timer linuxer!

I think it was around 2003 when I was 11 and tried a Knoppix Live CD. Within a week I hade SuSE installed heh, i didn't even know what is computer back then(when i was 11 on 1997). I installed linux after i read a book about open source by some hacker and "Just for fun" by Linus Torvalds. The book was fun indeed and so is Linux. First install was Ubuntu 5. I even ordered the 50 CDs (they do have that back on 2005) but too lazy to pass it around then it was too late when Ubuntu 6 came.

[nick09]

50 cds? geez talk about being a linux fan.:lolflag:

2008, Ubuntu 8.04.

[ikki_72]

i just sort of "are these guys for real?" and push the button the 3 weeks later i had to go to the post office to get the big box filled with Ubuntu CDs. But back then i don't have internet at home so i hd to go to ciber cae to get to know Ubuntu better. You might find my silly newb questions in this forum if they still have it.

[Sand & Mercury]

A friend gave me one of the Ubuntu CDs (Hoary Hedgehog) he ordered in 2005, and I installed Mandrake as well, later that year... It was only last year, though, that I took a more serious interest in Linux and adopted it as my main OS.

[JSnake]

My first attempt was in 2006. My first successful installation was about a week ago. I'm a true Linux noob.

[Mr. Scott]

End of 2001,my first distro was Caldera Open Linux which,of course, hasn't existed for a while now.

[shadylookin]

2004

it was mandrake 10.1. It was on a school computer me and 2 friends did it. We couldn't get it to recognize the network, but two weeks later I installed it on my home computer and with a little work got the internet working

[gameryoshi600]

2007

[kk0sse54]

Within the first month of 2008 with Gutsy. I was so nervous that I would screw up my computer that I researched the hell out ubuntu and Linux in general which lead to a completely successful install.

[bufsabre666]

november 2004

[ghindo]

late 2006, Ubuntu Edgy 6.10.This. Notice the time when I joined these forums, too. :p

[macogw]

2006...Damn Small Linux in a VM, then Dapper for real