Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at Computer World asks himself when he first started using Linux after attending the Linux Foundation Summit where several others were asked the same question. The Linux Foundation has posted a video of some of the answers; boy, do I feel young.
Linux was just a myth to me that I’d only heard rumors of when most of these people started using it. I’m still fresh into the open-source world as a whole as it’s only been a little over a year since I downloaded Ubuntu on a whim and installed it. I’m still an avid Windows user, I sometimes use a Mac but don’t own one, and I often use Ubuntu and test various other Linux distributions from time to time, so we’ll see where that gets me in the future.
Linux has its roots way back in 1991 when I was just a wee little one myself. Linus Torvalds started it as a “hobby,” and nearly two decades later it’s spawned dozens of major distributions and still hundreds more all used throughout the world. Here’s part of Torvalds’ Usenet message explaining his project back in August of that year. It’s rather funny to compare what he thought would become of it with what it’s become today:
I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready… It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.
When did you start using Linux? Share your history below!
I knew about Linux since first starting to understand Operating Systems (well, more like the XP SP2 days, when I really started going hardcore techie).
I never used for real until last year, when I was practically forced to for school. Seeing how its easy on outdated hardware (and how my hardware is becoming outdated), I installed Ubuntu for the first time back in December.
And man, was I pleased
…
I now have several LiveCDs burned, tried a few distros, and found Ubuntu’s community really inviting. (I love the Linux-competition environment, though. It’s amazing– they’re pushing each other every moment
!!)
Now, I’m thinking of moving to CrunchBang Linux. In fact, I’m on a LiveCD right now
.. Really lightweight and worth the tradeoff once I learn it all..
(OK, I’ll forego my ability to vote on posts in this thread…)
My first was for utalitarian purposes, early 1999, because I wanted to share a broadband connection, so we needed a router. We put a floppy with Freesco (free cisco, not related to SCO…) in an old 386 that we bought for the purpose. Then later that year, I started ordering CD’s that an enterprising lad was distributing for cheap; the first one I tried was RedHat 5.1 I think. The first distribution I really used seriously was Arch. By then I had already tried lots, I remember doing a stage1 of Gentoo early 2002, taking a long time..!
In 1999, I got a boxed copy of Redhat 6.0, and very quickly got frustrated, due to being exposed to a totally new world. The xserver didn’t support my voodoo3 card, and when I did manage to get a gui it was a low-res vesa display. From then on I experimented with newer releases of Redhat and then I tried mandrake, which finally got my xserver working, and managed to use partition magic to get real dual booting working. Even still, I didn’t get more seriously into using linux until Gentoo started getting big in 2002, which, upon having completed the install procedure, I finally became competent enough on the command line and editing text files, that I finally became a full-time, serious linux user.
I ftp’ed version 0.11 on January 23rd 1992 on to a machine at Wellington City Council, New Zealand. I had to use a utility called rawrite to write a boot floppy and a root file system floppy. After this I booted it on one of WCC’s 386 PC’s. (Was this the the first Linux boot in New Zealand?). Linux booted and asked for the root floppy. A getty for Linux did not yet exist, so there wasn’t any login-password interaction. After booting you were dropped straight into a root shell (GNU bash). Commands such as ls, cd, and ps, worked like the real thing.
Edited 2009-04-13 06:02 UTC
I first heard about Linux when a friend of mine sold me a stolen magazine with a RedHat Linux CD on the front in 1998.
I didn’t get a chance to install Linux (family computer, rest of the family liked windows) until 2003 when another friend introduced me to Gentoo Linux.
For someone that is technically minded Gentoo is the best first distro because it forces you to learn so much. After installing Gentoo the first 3 times(the first 2 times were kind of fail) I knew more about GNU\Linux systems when I had learnt about Windows in the past 10 years.
– Jesse McNelis
I started with Mandrake 6.0 and thought it was the coolest thing then, and also started running FreeBSD 4.3 – Of course I wanted more and used Caldera 2.3 which later made me switch to SuSE 7.0 until Novell took it over. I discovered Slackware 8 and Debian 2.2(Potato).
Still faithful to FreeBSD, Slackware, Debian and newly arrived Arch.
Indeed, times have changed… {Hint} -> Kernel.
Well… I’ve been using it since I started my college, in 1995. I think, if i recall correctly, it was with Slackware 2.x, on a Cyrix 486DLC, with 8 Mb of RAM.
It was fun!
Edited 2009-04-13 10:03 UTC
In the 90s I downloaded and installed 99% of all software available for free for Windows and quite a lot available for ‘free’ from warez sites. I loved exploring new programs and trying new things. At the same time I learned the ins and outs of Windows 9x and DOS, taught myself HTML and javascript, had fun. After a while I started getting bored; you can only try so many notepad replacements before you start saying “So what?” and so I branched in to trying operating systems.
I grabbed a copy of some version of Red Hat out of the back of the local library’s copy of ‘Running Linux’ and spent an enjoyable week learning enough setserial and isapnp and minicom and so forth to get my modem to dial the internet. I then spent a day figuring out how to make pppd stay alive for more than a few seconds, then came learning how to set up X (RAMDAC? Memory on my video card? Monitor refresh rates?). I will never forget the day I first had X, fvwm and netscape up and began browsing the web. I felt so awesome.
For me Linux has been a never-ending supply of crack to feed my addiction for trying new things and learning new things. More than a decade later I still do not feel I have mastered all aspects of the system, especially because those damned developers keep changing it. In fact, I probably know less of it now than I did five years ago due to the rapid pace of advancement and additions.
Summer of ’98:
Slackware 3.5
kernel 2.0.34
This is after Slackware 3.1 (i guess) my RedHat 5.2 CD:
http://twitpic.com/38fwq
Want an ISO file?
I first started messing with it about 1994. I first messed with Red Hat. My dad worked at a big corp. called Sonoco. They make bags and paper and such. He brought home a copy for me to play with cause we just got our first Windows machine and didn’t like it all that much. Then when Mandrake came out a few years later, that was heaven! That’s when I began using it all the time. Now that I’ve graduated college, it’s all I use. I’ve done my office desktop with it, my Acer Aspire One runs it, heck even my HTC Tilt run android! I’m a little linux nutty and love promoting it! I built my own processor in college using a software the previous head of IT built. Took 6 months to make a simple 4-bit processor and it could add, subtract, multiply and divide. As well as count down and up. Great software, written in perl! Whoo, I love linux.
I started off with Mandrake back around 2003 or so. From there it was over to SuSE for a stint, and then over to Ubuntu, where I’ve been for a couple years now.
I know I will be modded down for this post but let’s face a fact. What about ” when did you last time used linux?
Many people have used linux successfully all these years but there are many who tried hard and gave up..Count those millions who gave up..if they would have stayed with their distro..might have proven 2009 as year of linux BUT…..
I started using Caldera and after hopping many distros I settled on a heavily patched kernel on debian system….
Edited 2009-04-13 14:11 UTC
I started (seriously) with slackware in early 2000, stopped using it seriously around 2005 or so when i realised that everything was in a perpetual state of “almost there”, and that i was kidding myself into thinking that all the effort i was putting into using it was worth something.
Edited 2009-04-13 14:36 UTC
Like I said earlier, I had a XT class machine in ’89 just before Linux and *BSD hit the scene. When I decided to try 386BSD I ordered a 386sx with 4 MB of RAM and a 80 MB hard disk. At the time this was considered a mainstream machine. I formated the hard drive 40 MB for MSDOS 5/Windows 3.1 and 40MB for 386BSD. Unfortunately 386BSD at the time didn’t like Gateway computers and I had problems with the keyboard. I loaded up SLS Linux. At the time Linux didn’t have built in networking which wasn’t bad since I was still using dialup without SLIP or PPP. I used kermit to dial work and even figured out how to use zmodem within the kermit terminal emulator. The first IP networking was from a userland package called ka9q. I played with it a bit but luckily Linux got “real” networking before long. When X became available on SLS Linux I learned that my graphics chip wasn’t supported. 4MB RAM was pretty low end for running X but I did manage to get mono X up albeit slowly. At the time having a console in 132×50 char mode was more useful than X. In emacs I could have 4 good size windows in 132×50 text mode splitting my screen vertically and horizontally. Gateway had a huge price drop and since my 386sx was less than 90 days old they let me upgrade to a 486sx with a 320MB hard disk and a e3000 based graphics card for just the difference in price which was like $100. On this puppy I got color X running and started use SLIP to connect to my work PC which was on the internet. My work PC only had 2 MB of RAM so when Linux got to the point where it would no longer boot on 2MB machines I switched to NetBSD on both ends. I went back and forth between Linux and *BSD a few times depending on what I was doing and my priorities. At work I tended to use BSD because early on it had quite a lead in robustness over Linux but by 2000 my employer and our customers all have been specifying Linux for projects and when BSD is mentioned the responce is usually BS what?
I notice that Solaris 10 is actually cheaper than Red Hat Enterprise Linux now. I’ve tossed out the idea of Solaris for a few customers but now Linux seems like the standard and everything else is a gamble. I can remember back when SunOS was the standard and Linux was the gamble.
My first foray into the Linux world was with Conectiva Linux 2.0 Marumbi which was basically a poorly localized version of RedHat 5.1 (or 5.2, I can’t recall) for Brazilian users in February, 1998.
I was lucky to have most of my hardware working when I first installed it and the small bits that did not work up front could have been worked around later, which was surprising considering that I would never have built a PC explicitly to work with anything else other than Windows back at the time – my friends that accidentally introduced me to Linux were not so lucky and decided to put it away and have nothing to do with it (decision that they ended regretting later, as that knowledge would have been useful on certain jobs that they landed on years later…).
I kept with Conectiva for a few years as they really managed to build a community around their product and services and each version was substantially better than the one that came before it. I dunno, it somehow made me proud that the developer of Windowmaker and original main developer of Synaptic – which used the WING toolkit back at the time, not GTK and was originally made to work with apt-rpm for Conectiva – was a fellow Brazilian and Conectiva employee: Alfredo Kojima.
But then, I managed to find a job where RedHat was heavily used as a server and as such I decided to use the real thing on my desktop and it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with it.
When RedHat stopped catering to the hobbyist market with RH 9.0, I started doing the distro hoping as everybody else here and used Slackware for a brief time and then Debian, which I still use today as my main OS and can’t see myself using anything else now.
My main workhorse no longer has Windows installed, although I still have a Windows XP VM on VirtualBox for those times that you absolutely cannot avoid it – less often these days – and my laptop has Vista Home Basic because it was already there, but I hardly boot it.
My wife likes to use that POS every once in a while but it is funny to see her booting into Sid unwillingly because Vista for some reason sometimes sees everyone else’s wireless access point in the building but ours whereas Sid has yet to display such behavior. ^_^
It must have been right around 2000 as the wonderful Corel Linux came out in 1999 and was bought by Xandros in 2001. It was incredibly easy to install, I still can’t believe it. Of course I went on to others after that.
1998 or so. I think it was when Mandrake first came out. Saw it in the software section at my Post exchange. Been using Linux ever since do to everything but game…
I began with Redhat 5.2, moving to Redhat 6.0, 6.2, stopped off at Mandrake for a while, then spent a number of years with SuSE. For the last few years I’ve been running Ubuntu/Kubuntu. During the SuSE years I switched all my family over to Linux exclusively.
I still have one machine running Windows XP for a navigation program for my boat. It has never been connected to the internet.
I had actually used it before but it was in late 1996 that it was where I needed it to be. Slackware ’96. I dual booted with Windows 95, Linux being my primary desktop. (I needed Windows for Quake!) I moved to Red Hat 4.2 in spring of 1997. And by fall of 1997 I was 100% Linux. (Although I did have to forgo Quake and Hexen II for a while. Linux versions came along later, though.)
Of course, it helped that I was a long time Unix admin and had been using SCO Open Server with DOS/Merge as my primary desktop previously, before the Windows 95.
I’ve pretty well been in the Unix and Unix-a-like camp since Spring of 1988.
The first time I have ever heard about Linux was on Internet while searching through websites in late 97. Maybe I was interested on running a web server but I knew nothing about at that time. I grabbed a copy of SLS and Slackware from the book I purchased. But could not get it working properly back then. Later I got a copy of a distro based on RedHat6 and it was a breeze to install still at that time for me
I have used Linux as my main is for several months in 99. However, later I turned to FreeBSD and it is still my most preferred desktop OS. Though I like both Linux and *BSD as I think they all have their own merits. But these days I barely use either of them 
1996 was looking to lean unix-like operating systems and went patrolling used computer stores for a used workstation a clerk at one of the stores I went to mentioned Linux and gave me a CD never looked back sence.
It was back in 1996 with some Red Hat (thanks to my high school). Then at home first with a Slackware 3.5 (aargh), then I switched as my only desktop (Mandrake) around 2000, after the Windows ME fiasco.
Started using Linux in 1994 and Unix in 1993.
Most of the versions were console-based and it was a lot of fun.
The desktop GUI was very young then. The text-based installers required you to input all sorts of video card & monitor specs. I recall the dreaded warning, “Failure to input the proper values may result in permanent damage to your monitor.” Never destroyed a monitor, and never met anyone who did.
The fun part of Linux back then was that the user communities and the distributions matured together. It was a time of learning & growing.
I recently came across a box containing very old Linux CDs. Old enough to be eligible for a retirement pension ……
Still use Linux and wouldn’t want it any other way.
Love it.
It was at a friend’s dorm sometime in 1993, I saw his computer running something like a unix, and a name linux show up on the screen, Wow, it is cool. I thought it is related to my friend, as his last name is lin, and lin+unix=linux, haha ^_^. So I started my journey with linux, it was Slackware! I still remember the tireless time to download pile of floppies to get the new version. And floppies are not reliable, I had to verified them after write…. it was fun.
Since then I have switched back and forth between various distributions, but every time I switched back to Slackware. ^_^
Sometime around Feb-Mar 1995 using Slackware from the Infomagic cd set. I dual booted various versions of Linux and Windows until around mid 1998 when I converted my system totally over to Debian 2.0. Then started using Ubuntu with the 4.10 alpha release and still use it today. I now maintain OpenOffice.org for Ubuntu.
I bought a boxed Mandrake Linux 8.1 along with Chinese Simplified input method bundle back in year 2001 when I was a high school student.
Then I started my journey with GNU/Linux. Later on I tried almost all famous distros, several years with Fedora Core, Slackware and finally switched to Debian/Ubuntu family because of APT.
For myself, Desktop/Laptop, I am with Debian/Ubuntu, Arch and Gentoo. For work (Server), mainly Debian and Oracle Enterprise Linux.
I still have a photo of the 1st Linux box:)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/terryandtaotao/3359261696/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/terryandtaotao/3359261688/