what was the first linux distro you used

[asqwerth]

Mepis 6.5, the one based on Ubuntu.

It was the first and for a while, the only, distro able to boot up graphically on my Dell Pentium 4 at that time (probably around 2006 or 2007). I'd burnt a few CDs with other distros before that, including Ubuntu, but they failed that first hurdle. My PC had 2 hard drives, the first contained WinXP and the Data partition, while the whole second drive was specifically there for Linux trials and experiments.

Mepis 6.5 ran really well, and I kept it for a long time on my hard drive, while also starting to enjoy the fun of multibooting. I found 2 other distros some time later that worked well on the machine, ie PCLinuxOS (KDE) and crunchbang 9 (also by coincidence the one crunchbang release based on Ubuntu - I didn't go looking for Ubuntu variants, honest!). I didn't really like Mepis 7 but Mepis 8 and 11 were good. Mepis 12 beta just refused to work on my machine, which was getting older by that time, so I found myself looking for distros with lighter DEs. I continued to use Mepis 11 but also installed WattOS (LXDE), crunchbang 10, and the last 3 really nice Gnome 2 distros - Fuduntu, Parsix (debian testing) and the original SolusOS.

And then, XFCE got much prettier and really nice to use with SolydX and Manjaro. By this time I hardly booted into Mepis 11 anymore.

But what do you know, the 3 Gnome 2 distros all went defunct around the same time (Parsix continued as a Debian Stable distro running Gnome 3, which was too much for my graphics card to handle). So SolydX and Manjaro XFCE became my mainstays (although I was still multibooting).

Until whispers of MX14 began to be bandied around in 2014....

Now my reliable workhorses are MX and Manjaro. SolydX is gone from my (new) machine now. The official edition moved back to a Debian Stable base, and because it sticks really close to vanilla Stable, you don't have the fresh and interesting packages that MX has in its own repo. There's no packaging team. If you want newer stuff you would probably have to get it yourself from Debian Backports or compile it or add the MX repo (I'm guessing it won't cause too many issues). It's a fine distro, but to me it lacks the spark that MX has.

I still multiboot though.

[mmikeinsantarosa]

mepis-8 was the first one I stayed with for any amount of time. Starting off, I also tried knoppix, openSuse & PCLinuxOS. At some point back then I burned a CD/DVD for every distro @ distrowatch and gave them a try. Lot's of coffee cup coasters. - mike

[Luis_P]

Mandrake 10, around 2004 or 2005.

[i_ri]

hello frenzy67
Anxiously awaiting here word from the lead developers; esp. anticapitalista, of course. and all. seen a bit of puppy mentioned in the forum; wondering when it will hit this list. worth mention that slackopuppy or precise always let me know if linux would run on a machine. kept it aside the mepis cd for looking into machines [that means deleting malware on ms.w..._...] seems we are mostly older than puppy.
curious. good topic frenzy67.

[in2media]

thanks guys some interesting stuff here,some distros i know and tried some i dont know
anyway thanks for all the replies

[balarm]

My first distro was, I don't remember very well, Mandriva or Mandrake.
Then thanks to videoguides of Prof. Antonio Cantaro http://www.istitutomajorana.it/forum2/ I learned a lot about PC world and found a link to Mepis 14 that I used as secondary O.S.
Finally is my first distro from last year.

[rokytnji.1]

Me

Me again

Finally after I got a Pentium 2. Did I graduate to AntiX.
http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2009/07/fix ... -gear.html

By then. Running old gear. I was comfy cosy buying motorcycle parts off of ebay and installing linux to do that.
Been a team member for MacPup Puppy Linux. A moderator at the eeepc forums. Not to shabby for a dude that got into linux because of motorcycle parts.

I just figure things out as I go. Poke and hope is my methodology. Nice thing was. The internet was still friendly to older kit's like I learned on.
Took me awhile to get a newer laptop to try Mepis. I found out I was KDE dyslexic.

[richb]

. ....................

A moderator at the eeepc forums. Not to shabby for a dude that got into linux because of motorcycle parts.

...........................................

And a moderator on this Forum.

[m_pav]

Mandrake in 2000/2001 and the Knoppix live cd. Would have kept on using Knoppix but I kept stumbling with the language as it had both English and German once installed to HDD, then in 2003, I found Mepis 300.1 if I recall the version correctly.

[richb]

I believe it was Mepis 2003.10, an October release. There may have been an earlier 2003 release. But I think the October release was the first really usable version. That is when I switched from Xandros to Mepis.

EDIT: There was a release in May 2003.