Mandrake 7 was the first one I installed on my pc. In those days you could buy a boxed version with about 10 cds to install from.

Some version of Ubuntu. I got a free laptop that didn't have an operating system so I just put linux on it because I didn't want to buy windows.

Slackware, installed from a big stack of 3.5" disks

Slackware, dont remember the version but it was 1996.

I can't remember if it was Ubuntu or openSUSE, but I read about both in a PC magazine around 2005-2006 and had to try them out. I'm guessing it was probably openSUSE as it has a cooler logo.

Mandrake in 2003, I was young and didn't know what I was doing...

Linux Mint. It's been a while since I used Mint now, but I do missTimeshift

Started using Linux a year ago. My friend recommended Manjaro (not a good distro) because he himself used Arch. I was a little to stupid to use Manjaro at the time so I moved to Ubuntu, then Kali and finally Arch which is what I use now. I have practiced some distrohopping with Arco, Vanilla, Archcraft and my favourite Gentoo.In the future I want to dabble with LFS and Gentoo but I do see myself using Arch from this point forward. Linux is such an amazing operating system and it has taught me very much. Also use Neovim.

I spent weeks installing Linux in 2002, finally got it up and running and was like wow this is barely usable.

Turns out I had a fundamental misunderstanding, and there were pre-made distributions of it for you to use! Took me two years to realize that. Picked up Ubuntu and it just worked (other than wifi)

Mandrake like in 2003.

I started back on Ubuntu Hardy Heron. It was so much prettier than Windows, it got 11 yr. old me into hosting web servers

God I am old, I remember before kali rebranded 😭.

Phlak and Knoppix were mine. Neither lasted long since I couldn't install it on my home computer. The first one I installed as a dual boot was Ubuntu. While I have strayed from them over the years they have been my daily driver for the better part of 15 years

My first distro was SlackWare 7.

I'm not anywhere near my desktop(s) but it has largely been an Ubuntu box of differing flavors.

Though I experimented with Yoper, Knollix, SuSe, Mint, and a few other distros.

Deepin

Slackware 7, year 2000. Never seen linux before. Thanks to help from IT geek next door managed to boot net-installer it from single 3.5". After many hours managed do finally get xfree86 working. As far as I remember it was running with KDE.

Linux Mint

Installed and tinkered with Mandrake 6.0 First full time: Ubuntu 04-10. Warty Warthog

Kubuntu 6.06. Got the CD with a computer magazine that had a good tutorial on how to install the thing next to a pre-existing Windows partition. To this day I miss the look of KDE 3!

Ubuntu sometime in the late 2000's. I remember a friend showing me virtual desktops that rotated between each other.

I dual booted my machine and it was amazing... For 10 seconds until I realized thats all it did. When right back to windows.

Ubuntu, either version 12.04 or 12.10 when I got my first computer, a Chromebook, in Christmas 2013 when I was 10. I hated how Chrome OS didn't support anything so I found a way to put Ubuntu on it and messed around with Blender and Minecraft. Despite this early start, I proceeded to do nothing productive with it, broke it out of frustration, and now I'm 20 and struggling with Arch lmao

I installed linux mint on some really old laptop when i was a little kid but i wouldnt really consider that my first distro that i actually used on a dailybasis, that would be SteamOS on a Steam deck, it showed me how great linux could be and got me hooked on it.

Gentoo circa 2002. Soooooo over my capabilities at the time

RHEL 2.3, still have the cd somewhere

I first tried Ubuntu because it was the only one I knew of besides arch and I heard that arch was hard. I hated Ubuntu immediately and started distro hopping. I'm on Debian 12 now and it's the longest I've been on a single distro.

for me it was: Puppy Linux for a desktop machine with 254MB of RAM when I was on 1-2nd semester in Preparatory School

The first distro I used was Guadalinex, a distro developed by my Government (Andalusia, Spain) for education. I used it at school.

The first distro I installed was Ubuntu.

The first distro I daily drived was Fedora.

The very first Linux? That would be DSL (Damn Small Linux).

I don't know whether it still exists but in 2003-ish, I was looking for something on-the-go and came across DSL.

I recently (2 years now) started using Linux as a daily driver again. Had to learn a lot of new things. This time someone on GamingOnLinux adviced me to start with Mint. But it wasn't for me. So it's been a great journey.

Fedora. Core 3 or Core 4 according to Wikipedia and the fact that I recognize the names. An acquaintance suggested I try Linux, so I found info on it, didn't really understand what a distro was and settled on Fedora because I had bought O'Reilly Linux Pocket Guide that used that distro.

I switched pretty quickly after that, and used Ubuntu, Debian, then Mepis for awhile. I've run Arch, dual-booted with Windows for several years on the desktop and Debian testing on my remote server

Ubuntu!

I downloaded the installer in 2017 after MS forced an update to Windows 10 from 7. My laptop, from 2010, couldn't handle W10 and I heard Linux was good for old laptops. Not long after that I hopped around to other distros but Ubuntu was first.

Manjaro, that is the distro in my families computer

Ubuntu 18.04

Backtrack then crunchbang. Eventually I moved to arch. I've been using debian and mint lately though.

The first distro I used was Ubuntu as part of a computer class at school, but it was preinstalled on a school computer. The first distro I installed on a personal computer was Arch because le reddit said it was le epic hackerman's IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGE TO INSTALL distro. It installed, and after that I didn't use it because my favorite Windows apps couldn't work.

Ubuntu, when I started studying IT after high school, my tutor was very insistent that we know about different weird things, and how tech in general worked, and because Ubuntu was so simple, that's where he started.

Iirc it was actually Lubuntu instead of Ubuntu, since I liked the idea of Ubuntu but found it's UI atrocious

Ubuntu on 1st year of college