I was really excited to install linux to see what this new operating system was all about and found it very interesting and still using on 2 computers.

I remember inserting stacks of 1.4M (or were they 720K) floppies repeatedly and waiting overnight to see if I had a good compile.

i remember the insane number of floppies i needed to borrow for installing Slackware 1.0 - see an earlier post here at LQ ...

2002, some vague memory of the installation menus. It was going to be a game server box with no gui, I even took the video card out once I had it up and running with SSH access. I was hosting Half-Life mod servers: Day of Defeat, Firearms, and others. The first thing I remember was how much better hlds ran on a Linux box. It was my old personal pc, stripped down, and ran both the game servers, and hosted our website (not at the same time, the full website was taken down and replaced by a minimal placeholder site while the game server was running, the game server ran on Friday and Saturday nights).

It ran, rock solid stable, for literally months at a time, with no reboots. It ran smoothly, with low latency. It ran like a champ. After a few years it was retired, and I finally switched my own personal system to Linux at the end of last year. Barring the unforeseen, I will never return to Windows. I'm a gamer, and I have yet to find a game I was unable to get running at least as well on my Linux system as it did on Windows. The only issues I have run into that I haven't been able to work around are with third party apps for online games, and it is to the place where if I can't get it running on Linux, I won't run it.

One additional note. I knew nothing about Linux when I started. My only...

Wait! Stop the presses!

My actual first experience with Linux, the experience that got me into Linux was with BrazilFW. I converted an old desktop into a router by adding a second nic and using a four port hub. It was not efficient, in terms of power usage, and I didn't use it for that long, but that led me to buy a proper router and install DD-WRT on it. But the common thread through all these early experiences with Linux was how well everything worked on Linux, how low latency the networking was, and how stable it all was.

Unfortunately that has not been the case since I switched my pc to Linux recently, but that's a story for another time. In spite of that, if I ever do go back to Windows, it will not be voluntary, and it will be kicking and screaming...

My first Linux install
 

My first successful Caldera OpenLinux install gave me a real sense of achievement. Also the fine granularity of configurations and settings. No other previous OS I had used offered so much intricacy.

1996, Slackware on a Micron Millennia laptop (133mHz Pentium, 32M memory). Kernel 2.0.0 worked fine, but 2.0.27 (which was then the current kernel) would panic.

I remember in 2001 I went to the convenience store and I saw a magazine with Mandrake Linux cd, I read so much about Linux prior purchasing that magazine that I couldn't believe the had that in my country El Salvador!!!
I bought it and to my surprise the installation was SO EASY!!!!
graphics were OFF THE HOOK!!
since then I've been a loyal KDE user.

My favorite Cli command will be Htop.

1st Linux Installation
 

I was using Windoze98 with a 14.4Kbps dial up Internet connection on an entry level spec machine. It was barely functional. My sister gave me a CDROM with Mandrake Linux on it. I booted off it, and began the install. It pushed Windows aside and used the spare space to install itself, giving me a dual boot option. Back then there were still fancy pic editing tools for Windows that weren't available on Linux. Basically it worked, straight out of the box! And it kept working. Finally after three days I had to disconnect the internet - because I needed to use the phone. A few days later my Mandrake Linux hung and I had to reboot. "Just like Windows!" I muttered angrily to myself - but then I had to remind myself that Windows 98 needed to reboot every 40 minutes (which meant paying for another phone call) and be totally re-installed every few months (something I have never had to do with Linux). I have never looked back. I no longer need dual boot as everything I want is available from Linux repositories (currently using Mint 18.1). LinuxQuestions.org helped me out a lot when I first got started. I feel a bit guilty that I haven't been logging on lately - but everything just works.

Red Hat 6.1. "Cartman." October, 1999.

Does Unix count?
 

I'm old, some say older than dirt. I booted my first Unix system in December of 1979. It was an a 5Mb Hawk removable platter about 16 inches in diameter. All that came out on the printing console was a single sharp sign.so I booted it again. After 4 times even that stopped happening. I called the guy who sent me the disk and he told me I was supposed to type a ctrl-D for it to go into multi user. I has to wait over the Christmas break for him to re-image the disk and send it back. This was a 6th Edition Unix system and the file system was fragile with no fsck. You had to know what you were doing using fsdb, icheck, and dcheck to check and repair issues. Then there was the Massey shell with /bin/goto and /bin/chdir 6th Edition Unix was very different than even the earliest Linux but a strange and wonderful beast compared to Honeywell GCOS Mod 400 running on the Honeywell Level 6 hardware I was using.

Breaking my first system before I even got to type a command is my first memory of a Unix system. Now very close to 40 years ago.

I vaguely remember my first Linux system but I had been playing with other Unix clones like Venix and Minix so they all run together.

I was flying blind on the install
 

I got hold of the disks for Alzza Linux. A Korean language distro, based on Red Hat 4.0 IIRC. My slow times with a Korean dictionary and a lot of curse words later and I was running a 2.x kernel with Windowmaker a HUGE 15 inch crt, and a 800x600 display. That and Netscape 3.x, I said goodbye to win95 for good. Trying to remember, but I believe it had Correl Office.

I worked at a place called Video Lottery in 1995. Maybe 96. A guy named Marcus lent me a stack of 5-1/4" inch floppy drives must have been a foot high. It took all day. Was that Slackware? A year or so later I remember a Linux with different processes on different machines writing to the same file without any tcpip locking, so the file ended up as semi-coherent gibberish.

Started with Slackware, I think, about version 3 around 1992. The CD came in a book and install went well, until I discovered linux had no problem with my drive size and scrambled my DOS/WIN3.1 partition that was using some MBR magic to get my 486 to work with the 320MB drive. A few years later took another shot with SuSE 5.1 and never looked back. Switched back to Slackware about version 10.

My first Linux install was Corel Linux back in 2000. It had two problems, sound wouldn't work and the Dial Up Networking didn't work. Since support consisted of a gross over abundance lame excuses and no useful information. I removed it.

lack of self inflicted pain
 

I remember several things. Basically that it was relatively painless in spite of being a dual boot with Windows. The latter went a soon as I no longer needed Windows to do my tax. Then the relief of not having to contend with rebooting every time you wanted to install something and the lack of the blue screen of death in Linux land. This does appear to have improved in Windows but the mysteries of editing the register with the ever present likelihood of completely stuffing Windows remain. I can open the hood in Linux without too much trepidation and in 10 years I haven't stuffed anything which was ultimately beyond my ability to fix - the web browser had to do a lot of work on a few occasions. Networking with Linux (unless it is to a Windows system) is not some arcane mystical magical experience leaving you with religious euphoria if it works.