Well done!
When was this?

My introduction to linux was in a computer class in 1999. It was Redhat 5.1 running fvwm. It definitely gave a plain jane impression.
I found a Redhat copy at Bestbuy but I wasn't going to pay $50 for it. I then found Slackware and installed it but then I found Mandrake 6.0 and installed it much easier and it had eye candy compared to fvwm. I used it until Ubuntu 6.0. I hopped a bit until Slackware 14.1.
After switching to Slackware I remained with Stable branch until 14.2 was about 3 years old. i3wm wouldn't upgrade so I switched to Current branch until Slackware 15.0 released. Once Current jumped to 5.10 kernel I started compiling my kernel to stay on 5.4 due to a clocksource issue that made booting take too long (for my liking). It did boot ok and system was still rock solid but I didn't know how to work around it.
I kept hearing that Slackware was the most BSD-like linux distro and after seeing Robonuggie vids on Freebsd, I switched to Freebsd to see for myself. Sure enough I understand that comparison. I've learned a few "lessons" so far and it makes me appreciate Slackware even more for sticking to the old-school.

Freebsd has a linux-browser-installer (via github) so I can stream DRM content; however, only chrome works. The Brave browser will install but no working Widevine. And Vivaldi doesn't install . I miss Vivaldi streaming . Once Slackbuilds upgrades to 15.0 or 15.1 i'll switch back to Slackware. I just wish I could configure it so the boot wouldn't be delayed.

I was about 14 yo, and it was backtrack super hacky 5. I didn't have internet at home back then, so i resorted to just head out to cyber cafe download the iso file and stealthy move it on my hideous pen drive. I kept commuting back and forth couple kilometers multiple times to debug consecutive issues. the thing is that i couldn't virtually read or understand what others used to say on forums or anything, i was just a copycat of what is on the screen of yt casts back then. When i say copycat, i mean if a prompt popped up that wasn't already included in the video, i would just stare it having no clue what to do at all, and probably start the process all over again (prompt free). I kept doing that till i encountered the last issue during boot time, and so i kept handwriting the error logs on a piece of paper, then head out to the cybercafe, looked it up, gathered some solutions, and wrote them down on yet another piece of paper. That day i returned home late, and my did didn't wouldn't allow me to open up the computer, and so i took advantage of him going somewhere remote at the home, then fired up the computer, entered the grub boot loader menu, append flags in one of the solutions that i had on the paperclip, at the first kernel entry and voila i was greated with a lovely lean dragon.

awesome
 

That is just awesome A+++ for perseverance and I bet you learned a lot over time

Interesting. I had never heard of "Backtrack" linux, and now see that it was the forerunner of Kali, focused on security & forensics. Nice to see another Debian-based distro being popular. Good for you.

Sorry i've forgot to include the forum domain at my gmail filter for linux, and so the reply got lost somewhere at my email pile. back to it, i've indeed managed to learn more about it. What's different this time is that that i'm trying to learn it systematically, rather than plain old rote learning from youtube as i used to. Unreleated, but i want to also mention that i paid a visit about a week ago to roam around the same internet cafe after a long time of absence, and found it completely vacant as the availability of the internet&smartphones just outbrook.

Slackware: Via ISO CD Stuck To A Linux Magazine Inside Cover
 

In 1996, my job at work involved using Sun Microsystems Solaris OS, "SunOS 2.x" on a daily basis.

"Unix OS"

Reading at the time a Linux mag, it included a Slackware Linux ISO CD (Can't remember the revisions).

So, I took the plunge, and installed it on my x86 Dx2/66 Intel PC!

I convinced a co-worker to install it also. We both had dial-up Internet at the time through Memorial University (MUN) in St. John's NF.

We both coordinated a log-on time, sent each other our IP address, and we managed an 'NFS' mount over the phone line!

It worked!

Mind you, an 'ls -l' was a little time getting the listing across the dial-up connection! lol

After that, I was hooked / as I type this post up in Ubuntu 20.04 :)

KNOPPIX - Live Linux Filesystem On CD

Recommended by teachers in college classrooms

Ah, Knoppix! I remember using it as a rescue disc. I believe it was the only live distro that existed in those days.

NOT being able to login !!!
because I did'nt know my only user account was named root
and had no user name to give login

FEAR, of messing up everything on my pc and not having any operating system on it at all! :eek:

That it worked.

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...-1540-dm-1388/

Sunland Village Ease Computer Club, Mesa, AZ
 

Several members of our computer club installed Ubuntu with the help of a nonmember who had been using Linux for some time. That was in 2007-8 time frame. I continued with Ubuntu and I attended the Phoenix Linux User Group at monthly meetings. Since early in 2010 I have hosted a SLUG (Sunland Linux User Group) meeting monthly continuing through the current time. We have stayed with Ubuntu and are now on 21.04. Our group varies from 4 to 10 members meeting monthly all year round. We also use ZOOM beginning in 2022 for those who go North in the summer.
Boyd Tong (boyd85209@gmail.com)

I am not sure about the year exactly (I think it was around the beginning of the new millennium) as I remember I was discovering first RedHat (before it went commercial), then Mandrake (changed to Mandriva a few yrs after) and finally I learned about Slackware and was love-at-first-sight.
Haven't rolled back or regretted since.

My first linux installation was a Debian Woody with kernel 2.4 in 2002. I spent three months installing and learning linux at the same time. I had dual boot for few months untill I uninstalled Windows and never used it again at home.

I also kept the dual boots for several years as I was a completing my master degree and couldn't spend much time fixing all the newbie's f@#% up$. I think I single booted all my machines to slackware in 2009.
Gosh, what wonderful memories.
Thanks to whoever started this thread.

It doesn't sound like you had the lovely experience of creating root and boot disks or all of the distribution disks for early versions of Slackware. At one time, I had something like 27 1.44 MB floppy disks for a "complete" (binaries, not including sources) Slackware distro...roughly a 1.2.8 kernel in approximately 1994? A lot of water under the bridge since then...loved it when distros became available on CDROM(s). I used to purchase the InfoMagic "Developer's Resource" disk set that included several distros and a bunch of other stuff. I still have one from 1995 and another from 1999. Made life apart from floppies a reality.

MxB

lol, yes, I don't have those nightm... sorry memories!
(but, off topic, I do remember using 10+ 3.5" floppies to install the great 'msdos' and then the shitty 'windors' 3.0, 3.1 etc...)

It detected my main hard drive (at the time I had only two) as a "Picture CD". Go explain to the stupid distro that there's no such a thing as "500 GB CD" in existence. :doh: It took me almost a week to finally "catch" the idea that it's a plugin causing this, so I started installing different distros and comparing the programs they came with. Eventually I found out that all the distros with their "Picture CD" had Pix and Brasero pre-installed in them. So I uninstalled them both and the problem disappeared. Since back in the days I had chosen Mint for my first distro, I installed that (18.3 had just been released) and after removing Pix (Mint never had Brasero, fortunately) I was able to finally use Linux like everyone else. Since then Pix and Brasero are in my blacklist for programs. Because a stupid plugin in these programs decides that my hard disk is a picture CD, all because I have a directory named "Pictures" on it. Even nowadays I'm wondering what kind of an idiot programmed these plugins...

Lots and lots of floppies
 

The first successful install was a Slackware install. I still reinstalled it several times because that was easier than monkeying around with the configuration after the install. I tried Debian but could never get it working. Redhat worked but I stuck to Slackware for several years. I forget what graphic interface it had but I only used that occasionally while on line. Off line I stuck to the terminal mode.

What a great thread. Glad I finally discovered it.

I had to go back and take a lookey at the past versions of Ubuntu to see which one I installed as my first install of Linux. For those of you that started off with Ubuntu and also need such help, here is a video URL of past Ubuntu versions: https://youtu.be/_tacUvncVz0

Before I forget. My Uncle had told me about Ubuntu and thus introduced me to the free operating system. He lent me his free copy of the Ubuntu CD to do an install on an old x86 Intel based PC - that I can't recall which one.

So Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope was my first install of Linux.

I was so impressed that the old machine that I installed it on, well it basically breathed new life into that old machine!
From then on out, for many years, when my ex-wife's law firm was chucking old computers, as to replace them with new machines for the lasest versions of Windows to work on, well I made sure they gave me one of their 4 year old systems that was targeted for the dumpster. For years, I had no need to buy a computer. I could install Ubuntu on a 4 year old computer and it simply "flew" with speed, in my opinion. Also, that was back in the day that Conical would mail you a free version of Ubuntu upon request - on CD.

Even though it's an old thread. If you're still around, thanks for the thread and bringing back memories for me!

I remember being afraid of something go wrong!

My first hard drive install on my own home build was... Lindows (I know, I know) later known as Linspire when ms took exception.

It was not what I was looking for at the time although it might have been had I been willing to pay for the premium packages in order to get various pretty common hardware going without rolling my own kernel. I almost ditched the linux at home effort but gave the knoppix live CD a go as they just came out with a script for hard drive install---oooh. I stuck with that for quite a while but I was building boxen like a maniac and for some reason was in love with nVidia cards. Even though my stuff was not cutting edge it was misery generating mode lines for X to get the right rez on my monitors, etc. I spent more time in console than I ever do today. Finally picked up a card that I needed to roll a kernel* to get an experimental driver into it for a TV tuner and I was utterly defeated. That is how I wound up a deb girl dating Sid. 20 years later I still have not ever rolled my own kernel. And don't have to. Probably never will. Will die happy.

*I had a good laugh a little while back when I stumbled upon some of my old posts trying to do so. Newbies thought I was a guru and there I was crying all night at my keyboard. I finally did get the tuner card working in Kanotix or Siddux forget which. It was precompiled in their kernel

When I first started using Linux, I was already triple booting DOS/Windows, Coherent, and Consensys SVR4.2 using Coherent's boot loader. It was a simple matter to add a second hard disk and load the version of Slackware that was included in Linux Unleashed. I remember being scared to death that trying to run XFree86 would fry my NEC monitor and it was some time before I was comfortable that I had the correct mode lines to fire up XFree86. Linux wound up replacing both Coherent (no X11) and Consensys (ooh, the $$$ they wanted for development libraries...). Windows only hung around on disk for a while to play some games but it scribbled on itself one time too many for me and its partition got repurposed. (I used to keep a pristine copy of Windows on DDS tape that I could restore via the Linux installation using 'dd' following Windows killing itself -- or to start from scratch with a new game w/o any garbage in the registry -- but tired of that after a while. Windows-free for at least 15 years now.)

Update: I eventually realized that I'd previously posted to this thread. Oh well...

I remember being really happy, that after downloading Slackware via phone, all the floppy disks worked and and I saw a login prompt .... Was a 'wahooo' moment back then. The next good feeling moment is when I convinced our company to move off the Windows NT server and build a Redhat Linux server. Maintenance went 'way way' down after that turn of events and so did the 'stack of user licenses'. From then on while was at that company Linux was Server(s) OS. And of course at home, I now run Linux on all systems. Never looked back. No regrets.

I had a Windows 10 Pro Lenovo Thinkpad T460, an Ubuntu 22.04 desktop bootable USB stick from eBay, knew current version was 22.04.3, that computer had nothing to lose and was also from eBay, I left that bootable USB inserted a while before I actually did an install. I then unplugged that bootable USB, turned off like my computer, plugged that USB stick in again, and booted with F12 presses, then proceeded to "Try or install Ubuntu". Like my first attempt to actually install almost succeeded but failed right after wipe computer and before fully install OS. I booted from USB again with a now no OS computer with a small Windows EFI partition. That time it worked and I installed Ubuntu 22.04.3 with Ubuntu Pro from that USB I found was 22.04.2. I remember being happy to have something boot and ready to try again. It had failed on last step of installer, pick a time zone before but now I could use it. I had to use another computer with Ubuntu one to manually enter like my Ubuntu Pro key. One hand for one computer, one for other. I had a good time installing many programming systems. That installed system ended with me purging python3 because I could not remove a python swift client. Never purge python3 from Ubuntu. X E.

After writing all that I realize, that was like my first computer install, not like my first install. Like my first install was an accident of trying to install Jolla Sailfish on a Nexus 7 Grouper and installing CyanogenMod instead. I then flashed stock Android on that and tried again, success that time. I did not even let CyanogenMod boot once fully. Suffice it to say like my actual first install was an accident. I am unsure if MultiROM counts as Linux but I had that installed first. When Jolla Sailfish booted I had trouble with getting past its tutorial. I had some almost useless data I lost in that first install. I did those installs without a computer attached. X E.

I think, around the late 90s early 20s, I installed first RedHat when it was still free & non-commercial. I remember playing with the console like a child plays with its first radio-controlled toy. Then I tried a few more: Mandrake (I believe it was changed to mandriva a few yrs after) and finally landed on installing Slackware (I don't remember if it was 8.0 or 9.0). There I fell in love with the text based installation and the absolute system-fitting, regardless of video drivers (although I remember I struggled a lot to get the wi-fi working).
I haven't changed distro since although, it was on dual boot for at least 6-7yrs before becoming my main & only distro in all my comupters.
I think, around slackware 11 or 12 i was using cd-rom and not floppy anymore )

I have been a Linux user since 1995, my very last windows was v3.1, after that, I did my research and I decided to use Linux as my ONLY Operating System. I distro-hopped for a while, and I decided that Debian was my official Linux install.

Then I had a stroke on 5 September 2011, and everything went to {heck}. But I still use Debian Linux.

2001/2 - Red Hat 7.2 from book. I'm was been scared .

My first linux was something one of my IT guys me on a floppy around Y2K when I was an IT administrator on a contract job. He gave me a post-note with what to do with it after inserting floppy and booting on it. Was trying to work on some hack to speed up my modest home built frakenputer on a dial up connection on windows 98 but required getting into some inner workings that were "protected from users" by Uncle Bill.

My first GUI distro hard drive install was Lindows (later known as Linspire) a little bit later 2001 or 02. It didn't inspire me enough to pay them for neat little packages of video and sound drivers only available for paying customers. But I was petrified to resize windows so one of the guys at my new gig dug up an ancient spinny disk of a couple of GBs for me. I was quite the chicken for a while, always had to be a separate disk. Oooh I hated lilo. Generating mode lines for X came next. No wonder my eyesight gave out. Then on to debian Sid, kanotix, siddux. Linux life on the wild side.

After moving to Mesa AZ in 2005, I joined a computer group in my community. I also began attending monthly meetings with the Phoenix Linux User Group (PLUG). Up until then I was unaware of Linux. One of the PLUG members lived near my community and agreed to join our computer group for monthly meetings. I had an old laptop and he loaded Ubuntu for me. We met in a neighbors home and began learning ubuntu which was rough around the edges in 2007. The fact that the operating system was free and would work on my old laptop was great. Since about 2013 I started a monthly meeting for those interested in ubuntu. One of our members was employed as a linux system administrator and really helped the group along. I offered to load Ubuntu on computers for those interested to try and a few did. Attendance varies from 4 to 7 members. I also attended PLUG meetings.
I use Ubuntu for all my computing. I do have one laptop with Windows that gets turned on monthly, updated and shut down. I am 88 and retired 35 years ago from Western Electric in semiconductor engineering.

In the late 1990's, I tried to install Suse on an Amd k6-2 450mhz with Via chipset. The Suse I purchased at a computer show because my analog modem was too slow to download a whole distro before any phone calls broke the connection.

I only tried to install Suse, because it could not make it through the install. It did not properly support the hardware.

I tried installing it a few times, same result.

Well... since I was in Graduate School, I guess I was a smart guy, as my end goal was a PhD {in Mathematics}.
Actually, I was good at every subject, but since Mathematics {Real Mathematics} tends to cause non-math-guys to freak out.

I started with Slackware, I had no problem when I installed it with FLOPPY DISCS!
Ahhh... those were the good old days :)

Then I eventually moved to Debian in 2005 after a few years of "distro-hopping".

Then I had a stroke in 2011, and everything went to {crap}.
Well.... as they say, that's life. I still use Debian, and I stopped using "testing" version, and am now sticking with "stable" version

Never the less, have yourself a wonderful day!

Not my first install but I still remember when I decided to try Linux Mint out. I had successful installed several dual boots so I figured "I know what I'm doing" and didn't look up any guides or resources. I ended up wiping the Windows partition on my laptop. Whoops!

That is the story of how I finally quit Windows for good. I want to say it was Linux Mint Elyse? One of the early versions of the distro for sure.

I did that once, then I found the System Rescue organization. System Rescue is a live image containing tools to help the user do just what it's name says. I've kept the latest copy on hand ever since. The tool I use the most is GPartEd, with test-disk in second place. To know all it offers, go to the webpage.

Ernie

You know, in the fifteen years since that experience, I've never had to rescue a system. It got me to completely change my data habits. I now keep data backups locally with contingency and via the Cloud. I treat the computers themselves as disposable products. If I break an OS (which I've done because I like to play with things), it's no big deal because I can just fresh install and my data's all sitting on a big old thunderbolt array.

I run a home server to centralize all the files in my house. I'd be kind of boned if I ever had a fire since I'm using third party services for my remote backups and those aren't neat and tidy like my home setup. But it's so freeing to not have to worry about losing all of my data because I had a hardware issue on a laptop or something. Looking back I am glad I ruined a bunch of stuff for myself as a newbie because it really taught me to have some better data practices.

I've never had to rescue a system again either (I started with GNU/Linux in the late 1990s), but I still keep my System Rescue image around, just in case. I've also found that a few of the utilities on that image are useful for system management, for example, I use GPartEd to manage my system partitions when I want/need to make any changes, and test-disk when I want/need to recover an accidentally deleted file/directory (I can be a bit fumble-fingered sometimes).

Ernie