I first heard about it in about 1994 when a Unix guy I knew told me about a type of Unix that could run on regular computers. He loaned me a POSIX book, but I didn’t really hear anything until 98. I started getting fed up with all the problems with Windows 98, and I started installing it and breaking it on any machine I could get access too. I don’t know how many floppies I formatted with each disk image of RedHat and Debian. I broke the school network a few times with things like accidentally setting up a DHCP server. I sent a patch to the kernel. I Learned a whole lot those first years.

I think my very first exposure to Linux was when I got a Pi 3 for Christmas when I was 10; by next year, I was trying out Ubuntu 16.04 in a VM.

However, it took several years before I began daily-driving; I had thrown it on an old laptop during my sophomore year of high school that I mostly used from the couch.

I then did a “test install” of Debian Testing on my main desktop pater that year, which just became what I used every day and quickly just became my main operating system.

I soon installed it on everything else I owned and haven’t looked back.

Around '99 or '00. A friend of mine was gifted a Linux Magazine subscription and made me a copy of the CD. It was noteworthy at the time because it didn’t have any copy protection and we were neck deep in piracy, keeping our friend group supplied with copies of games that we pulled off of IRC.

Getting a CD full of software that made no effort to prevent copying was intriguing enough that we sacrificed a spare machine one weekend (giving up the ability to play LAN StarCraft!) to see what another operating system looked like.

We tinkered on and off for a year, once we could get dual boot working (thanks to the IRC crowd) we used it a bit more often. Mostly ricing, though that wasn’t a term at the time, and playing with the hacking tools (for educational purposes only, of course).

I think there was some copy protection mode that was annoying to write on Windows but trivially easy on Linux, which was the first time that I can remember where it was just better than Windows. That, and ARP poisoning our LAN parties to packet capture and read people’s AIM and ICQ conversations because we were little shits.

Also early 2000s here, but I was in my late 20s by then. Started out on Debian not that long before Woody came out, then before too long I tried Mandrake alongside it.

Exciting stuff for someone who first set hands (and started into BASIC) on a TRS-80, and then ran GEOS on a C64 for years. I was drawn to the opportunities for more tinkering, among other things.

when I was 13 or 14 because I saw the Windows 11 copilot button

That button was announced January 2024.

I think the first Linux I installed was probably Ubuntu somewhere around 5.04-6.06, I would have been about 15 at the time.

I first started Ubuntu as a minecraft server, then last year I actually started using it as a desktop.

I think it was about year 2000 +/- I was about 23 yrs old… I’ve tried a most of the big distros, and was using Ubuntu for the longest time. Now it’s Mint I use…

I have known about Linux pretty early on, roughly the age of 10 (almost 29 now), but didn’t get to have a lot of tech interactions. It wasn’t until around 2022/3 that I got Cybersecurity / DevOps certs (still can’t get a job) and switched to Linux. I have a couple Chromebooks that run Ubuntu Studio and Lubuntu, a tower that used to run Garuda (Arch) and an old Mac that runs CachyOS. I’m more into Arch distros, but the amount of space on each comp and some hardware quirks make it difficult to run my faves. I gave my wife the Strix but she doesn’t want to let me convert it to something other than the Windows 11 it runs. I’m still working on convincing her. Lol

I initially tried linux mint and ubuntu when i was like 13 on my laptop, which is almost 15 years ago now. At the time it wasn’t because i hated windows, but my monkey brain was just interested in it because it looked so much different. After i realized that i couldn’t just use all my windows programs like usual (and especially gaming wasn’t nearly as good back then), i quickly went back to windows. Fast forward to 2020, at this point i had started disliking windows mainly because all of it’s creepy questions when you install it, like wanting your handwriting information and all that, but at the same time i thought “well what can you do about it?”. Then i saw the LinusTechTips video about trying linux instead of windows 11. This was the first time i had actually thought of linux again in all those years. The video convinced me to give it a try and i started with PopOS. After a few months i moved to arch cause i liked the idea of customizing my distro more from the ground up. Stayed with arch for 2 years, then i got the distro hop virus. Tried a lot of them, fedora, opensuse, ended up staying on Void linux for over a year in total. Now i’m using NixOS and very happy with it, and i think i’m finally settling down on a distro. I know LTT gets a lot of flack for how they handled the linux challenge, but if it wasn’t for that initial video back in 2020, i would have probably never given linux another try. And with valve investing so much into improving wine and dxvk and all that, it was viable for me to switch as a gamer.

I started using Linux before you were born, but i also was 20, so you win😄

Fedora 2. It’s been a while.

1997, it was a wonderous year 🥰 i was 16 at the time.

Linux came in big boxes with a large book and CD’s!

Mandrake 6, not quite twice as long since you were born?

about 20 years ago. Early 2000s I started messing around with Redhat and was suprised that a full OS that did most of the windows things was available for free. when Ubuntu gained traction I jumped on that and tried distro hopping a bit before landing aolidly on Debian derivatives as my linux of choice. I remember catching a ban in WoW because WINE was detected by their anti cheat for a while.

Only since last July. It’s Arch btw. I love it, but wifey doesn’t understand it and therefore I still have windows. ☹️