Very anxious stepping out of my comfort level of microsoft, but started computing in 1979 so worked with many DOS systems in the early years. Really feel privileged to have been able to work through all systems.

My wife and I both use Mint 19.2, an you could't pay Sue enough toever go back to Windows. As I'm interested in security I keep a Windows 10 Pro install for testing purposes, but as a daily driver - Urrgghhhh.

It was in 1999 when I installed Slackware 7.0 on an IBM laptop and made it a dual boot system with Win98. Though it was my 1st attempt to install Linux, it went smoothly. However, setting up XFree86 was a huge challenge. It was partly because information about ASIC chips used in laptops wasn't easily found back then, but it was also because configuring XFree86 was so confusing and challenging by itself(the video chip, horizontal and vertical sync freq. etc.). X window refused to start no matter what setting I tried, and eventually I talked to my coworker who was familiar with *BSD and he helped me with setting up X window.

In 1997, I switched my home PC to Caldera Linux, after having evaluated Suse Linux and Red Hat Linux.
However, I was still able to boot into Windows for gaming and ChessBase.
In 1998, I built a firewall hardware appliance using a single-board computer running Red Hat Linux 5.2, based on iptables. As the CPU was a non-Intel, I had to compile the kernel several times, until I got it right. Every compile run took about 4 hours.

About 2007, after reading an article about linux distros, l was determine to install Slackware. The actual first distro I installed got installed was damn small linux. Not knowing anything about linux it took me six months of googling, trial and error to get slackware installed.

In 1993 spring. I think it was SLS but may have been Slackware. The impressive thing was the number of floppies it took to install. We were using a lot of Sun workstations in my department so it was very interesting to boot up a Unix like system of some PC that was sitting around. Eventually we used a number of orphan pc systems as dns servers and print servers etc. Kind of under the covers as policy was to use DEC systems but on some projects we did not have the money to buy them.

About the same time (early 90s) as normscherer. Installed Slackware from floppy diskettes which i had mail-ordered. I think the kernel was 1.0.xxx! Was a DOS programmer foreseeing the imminent demise of DOS, hated Windows, so was trying alternatives. Couldn't get XWindows to work correctly, so left Linux until the next millenium, ended up doing OS/2 for a few years.

My first linux install was the Mint version on an old Compaq NX700 laptop. Mint looks nice and seems very much like Windows. An obvious reason, because I was a Windows user from the early nineties. Because I could not find in Mint a good driver fit for my printer I tried Ubuntu 16.4 from a USB stick. It looked like a miracle that Ubuntu offered a complete system with complete software on a 4GB USB stick. A smooth system, that made a 10 year old laptop up to date again. And a lot of software for free with it. I decided immediately to install ubuntu on my oud laptop and also on my state of the art desktop. Last year I bought a new Laptop with Intel I7 processor and Windows 10 preinstalled, but the first ging I did was formatting the SSD and install Ubuntu 18.4
Now in the Mate version, because my family is familiair with Windows and it looks much like that. Never problems with a lot of security updates, no virus threads and so on. I wish I had aqainted Linux much earlier. I must say that before my retirement practical things like having a business laptop from my employees and working all day there together with colleages in a complete windows surrounding, was not obvious.

Red Hat 9.0 2003

My first Linux installation was Solaris 9, it took so long to install and was failing repeatedly,. I was installing it for school so i decided to forget and installed Mandriva Linux 2008. Later installed OpenSuse. I've gone through all the losing data and every dual to multi booting problem you can imagine with Linux, but this days I consider myself an expert..!

Install went fine, BUT, I had elected a custom install, which didn't include Python, and it turned out the installer depended on Python, as did several other critical features. Have it a second go and it worked.

I rarely reply to non-technical threads, but this one got me thinking.... Back in '99 or 2k I was introduced to Linux by a friend. That was either on Mandrake or Redhat (before it became commercial)... Cant remember... Unfortunately, that friend passed away in 2k4, way too soon...

It was Red Hat Linux, when it was still free, back in the 1990s. It was difficult and I could not even get a GUI at first, so I stuck it out with Windows for a few more years. Eventually I went with Ubuntu 8.04 and stuck with Linux as my main OS ever since.

I was really amazed at my first try at linux, it installed very simply and worked with all the defaults. Worked with other command line operating systems in the past and now learning linux slowly.

Awesome operating system.

S.u.S.E. 5.0 (not yet SUSE)

A frustrating experience. Nothing worked, not as expected and certainly not as claimed by those who recommended the OS to me.

I somehow got the NNTP component of Netscape to work and thus had access to newsgroups. This did especially NOT help, but increased my misery. SuSE 5.0 ensured that I would NEVER again try Linux... No way.

(but SuSE 6.4 was the best experience I had ever had with any OS. My expectations were low at that time, so do not compare things which are not comparable, please. Thank you).

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