When did you start using Linux and why?

[zoli62]

I met Linux at the turn of the millennium. The first release was a Red Hat that ran at a gateway to my workplace at that time. Suse followed. I got to know Debian later. It was a tool for gaining experience. Then came Linux Mint four years ago, later last year Manjaro and Antergos. I heard Antix at that time, and I thought it was promising, but I just got to the point of installing it on a regular machine. I must say, knowing Debian, I wasn't disappointed. Lightness, speed, airiness are the words I first thought about MX Linux. To tell the truth, I have recently bought an SSD, on which MX Linux without systemd starts like lightning. Everything has what it takes, and developers have added some useful tools that aren't in other distributions.

[Eadwine Rose]

My best friend used Mepis, I started converting in .. 2004, 2005? The rest is history

[Mauser]

I first tried Linux back in 2000 because Windows 98se was so unstable that it would freeze in under 10 minutes once online and continued to freeze and then the "Blue Screen Of Death." I tried Corell, Mandrake, and Red Hat which none of them I could connect to the Internet even though I was using a external US Robotics modem because the D.U.N. was rubbish. The sound didn't work on any of them and on Madrake video would stop working. No support at all for Linux back then but an over abundance of lame excuses. I didn't try Linux again until September 2015 after reading the E.U.L.A. for Windows 10 which shows that it's Spyware/Malware. After using openSUSE for a month I removed Windows 8.1 which was on my computer. I haven't used Windows since. After 2 months I made the mistake of trying another distro which I can't discus on this forum. I was lucky to find MX-15 at that time and have been with MX Linux ever since.

[Adrian]

I mentioned before but it's an interesting story how a closed source program converted me to Linux, Xandros released a version that included Opera by default since I was an Opera user and realized that I live 99.5% of the time (or something like that) inside the browser, this was the lightbulb moment "if I can use Linux + Opera for 99.5% of the things I need it means it's pretty ready for me to use it as a desktop"... obviously Linux was able to run a browser before, but Xandros was easy to install and pretty user-friendly, and it had a good community (hello Rich) so that was my home till I switch some sources around and did a upgrade that broke Xandros' KDE, at that time MEPIS was releasing 2004 beta, I tried that and I liked it, I stuck around since that time till Warren abandoned development, I was already using Arch when Jerry contacted me and invited to take a look at his MX project, then I started to tweak the installer and the rest of Qt apps and that was it, MX pulled me more and more and eventually gave up my Arch installation.

[richb]

I am sure we crossed paths on the Xandros Forum Adrian. I was moderator on that forum, but had to do very little moderating . As you said it was a good forum. And I thought a pretty good distro. Started with SimplyMepis 2003.10, the second release. The reasons for my move away from Xandros are clouded in the mists of history. Since then I flirted with only one other distro other than MX ,Kubuntu. That did not last long once MX was introduced.

[manyroads]

Been in the Linux world since about 2006.... my first conversion to daily Linux use was shortly after Ubuntu came into existence. I futzed with other things earlier, but left the Widows world about then.

[timkb4cq]

I became aware of Microsoft's business practices in the 90's and didn't want to support them anymore. Tried slackware circa '98 but my hardware wasn't up to running Xf86.
By 2001 I had a better machine and started using Mandrake. Got tired of rpm dependency hell after a while and tried a few others before finding Mepis 3.4-3. Been around here ever since.

[Jerry3904]

I have no computer background like everybody else, but just got super annoyed with MS in 2002 or so, so switched my business computer to Mandrake--which highly irritated the corporate IT people. Then had a bad upgrade with Mandrake, so moved over to Mepis (can't remember why) 3.4-3 and have been working for Warren's vision ever since.

[gimcrack]

Windows made me start on Linux. July 15th, 2003 SimplyMepis. I know it was the middle of July of 2003. Not sure if it was the 9th or the 18th. So met it in the middle. Got tired saying Middle of July 2003. July 15th 2003 was much easier to say. I started just before Ubuntu made it's first release. SimplyMepis was mention many time, when I was searching for a Linux distro to checkout. So I download SimplyMepis on a CD. I just lay it on top of my PC. Three days later my Windows XP got a terrible virus. Which required to do a reinstall. Now this was my third trouble with Windows XP that year. I had my Windows XP almost in the CD tray. But I seen that Linux disk laying on top of my PC. So I lay my Windows XP disk to the side and just put SimplyMepis into that CD tray. I knew how to install OS's, so the procedure to install SimpleMepis was quite simple. Now I just install SimpleMepis on the whole hard drive, so no Windows XP at all. After the reboot, there she was a KDE Desktop beauty. I poke around a little bit. I just click onto Firefox and try to learn how to install Linux software on this PC now. That's when I read about the Package Manager. I just look on SimplyMepis and there it was a Synaptic Package Manager. I spent my first two hours inside that Package Manager. I start searching of names of software. I did use many opensource software on my Windows XP. So I was kinda familiar with some of these. After I learn how to install packages. I was mainly on the home stretch already. Slowly after my first 5 days using SimplyMepis. I was up and running like normal on my PC. I even had all my peripheral device working. At this point, I said to myself why go back to Windows. I never went back to Windows so here I am with MX. It's like I went in a complete circle with Linux. Since MX is related to SimplyMepis.

[MAYBL8]

I was just doing some surfing on the Web and ran across an article about Mandriva Linux.
I started out a few years ago with Mandriva. When that ended I went over to Mint. I liked the Debian version of mint at the time because it was more of a rolling release and I could use KDE with it. Then they decided to stop supporting KDE and one of the users there developed his own spin and called it Solydxk. I followed them because they were a rolling Debian release. It was too bad they couldn't get more development support and changed to just be Debian Stable. So I created my own Debian that was a testing version with MATE as its desktop. I had been using that for a while and with Steve's help got my compiz working in testing. So I followed Steve here into MX and I think this is where I want to stay now.