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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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For me it was:

Windows (for many years) -> Ubuntu (for a year) -> Arch Linux (for half a year) -> Void Linux (literally 2 days) -> Artix Linux with runit (a month) -> Gentoo Linux (another month) -> Debian (finally, I don't plan on changing it).

Also, when trying to switch from Gentoo to Debian, I fucked up all my data with no backup.

What was your journey?

EDIT: Added Windows

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[–] 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works 31 points 6 months ago (4 children)

You'll always end up on debian. You just dont know it yet

[–] rotopenguin@infosec.pub 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Can confirm. I've used Dos, Windows, Dilinux over Windows, Redhat, more Windows, MacOS, Windows again, Ubuntu, and now I'm on Debian.

[–] 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 months ago

Once people become familar with the basics of linux, they realize that almost anything that these niche distros offer can be accomplished in debian

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (6 children)

Agree to disagree. I keep trying Debian and Debian based distros, same with Arch based (looking at you, Endeavor), and always end up back on Fedora or one of it's spins.

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[–] marlowe221@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

Almost 10 years into my own Linux journey, I’m feeling the pull to Debian.

I’m just hanging out in denial right now on Pop OS.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Does a debian version upgrade require an OS reinstall?

[–] 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

For me, no....

I've gone from debian 9 to debian 11 and now debian sid without reinstalling OS on my desktop

Same with my servers. Debian 8 -> 11 all upgrades in-place. Will have to upgrade to 12 soon....

The only time i messed up an upgrade is when accidentally used the codename "bookworm" in the sources file and skipped a major version. The system tried to fully upgrade 2 versions ahead and promptly borked itself.... But it was an LXC container so i just rolled back my mistake. Lesson learned...

But yeah. Full re-installs have NEVER been a thing for me since going debian. It will even happily clone to a new SSD when you need to upgrade your hardware. (As long as your new hardware has in-kernel drivers, or at least some basic functionality to boot and fix the problem, if any)

[–] tuna@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)
o Windows 10
|
o Linux Mint
|
|\__
|   \
|    o Manjaro KDE
|    |
o Fedora KDE
|    |\__
|    |   \
x    |    o Windows 11
     |    o Windows 11 + Arch Linux
     |    |
     o Arch Linux
     |    |
     |    |
     |    o Windows 11 + Debian KDE
     |    |

hopefully it renders well on your client :D

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[–] ssm@lemmy.sdf.org 18 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Copying this from another thread that was basically the same question, but didn't get much attention

Started on Arch Linux for some reason back in 2016, I just decided to throw out my Windows and install it (Don't really remember what was going through my head, or why I wanted to install Linux, other than I was reading the r/linux subreddit wiki at the time). I was trapped in a TTY trying to install the thing for maybe a week, and after 9 reinstallations, I got Arch working and got a Weston compositor session running under Wayland. After realizing Weston was more a tech-demo than something I was actually supposed to use, I installed X11 and Gnome, which was cool for approximately 3 minutes before I decided to replace it with some minimal window manager instead. Can't remember if it was i3wm or something else, but i3wm sounds right; and later I messed around with some tilers like StumpWM, ratpoison, and HerbstluftWM.

After about 3 months, something in Arch broke (systemd was not reaping processes properly was what I concluded at the time, no idea what the actual problem was but I ended up with a bunch of zombie processes), and I decided to install Gentoo as my second Linux distribution. After installing Gentoo, I entered a stage which is colloquially know as "config hell" where I overconfigured everything to the point of breaking something, and could never figure out what I actually broke because everything was so overconfigured. After recompiling the whole system, everything was still broken, so I reinstalled Gentoo, this time less overconfigured, but still somewhat overconfigured (It didn't help I was also running a full self-made custom kernel config with 3 months of Linux experience, I surprised the thing booted at all).

I lived in Gentoo for around a year using HerbstluftWM, but eventually I grew tired of how much maintenance Gentoo required and just wanted some sane defaults. This led me to installing OpenBSD, which I guess was the right decision for me because I'm still using it to this day (7 years!), and is where I gained the majority of my knowledge about using Unix thanks to the wonderful documentation. Initially I didn't like the ports system because it didn't have as many knobs as Gentoo's portage did (Gentoo's portage is more modeled after FreeBSD's ports than OpenBSD's ports it seems), but I came around to enjoying hacking ports with my own patches instead of using preconfigured knobs. Eventually my porting skills got good enough that I now officially mantain a couple OpenBSD ports (games/stone-soup, www/pipe-viewer), and that list is likely to grow. I switched between some other window managers (ratpoison, JWM, FVWM2) before settling on OpenBSD's in-house cwm. I purchased a VPS also running OpenBSD, and self host various things like email, git, ZNC, web/http, and IPsec/VPN. Eventually, I grew tired of not having games to play (OpenBSD doesn't support WINE), so I bought a Steam Deck that I use as both my gaming desktop and handheld. I also bought a Pinephone from Pine64 which currently uses PostmarketOS (I hope to run OpenBSD on it some day though).

tl;dr Use Arch as your first Linux distribution and you'll end up as an OpenBSD ports maintainer I guess

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 4 points 6 months ago

It takes a special person to jump into a complicated task struggle and then pick up and even more complicated task and end up succeeding.

[–] wargreymon@sh.itjust.works 14 points 6 months ago

Debian -> Slackware -> Guix

[–] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Windows -> Ubuntu ->dual boot with Ubuntu-> Windows-> Ubuntu-> Fedora workstation

All of this over 20 years.

And now I really don’t plan on going back to Windows and I’m happy with Gnome and Fedora even if I’d want to try other distributions outside of a virtual machine sometimes.

And the f course there were some accidents with lost data over the years, but I always had a pretty recent backup on a drive before syncing with cloud backup became a thing.

[–] refreeze@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Ubuntu -> Arch -> Debian (stable) -> Fedora Silverblue -> NixOS

[–] xamino@feddit.de 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Window -> Mint -> Mint Debian -> Arch -> NixOS (not complete yet)

I am incredibly happy with NixOS, I love having my entire OS and software configuration in a GIT repo, commits and comments included.

[–] ardorhb@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Ubuntu (in VM, a few months) -> Linux Mint (1 year) -> Archlinux (2 years) -> Ubuntu (1 year) -> Fedora (2 years) -> Linux Mint Debian (3 years) -> Debian (5+ years for now)

I have had a desktop PC and a laptop for a few years now. The laptop had Mint (DE) for 2 years longer.

That should be more or less it, makes about 14 years on GNU/Linux now.

[–] Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Windows -> Ubuntu -> Arch Linux

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[–] The_Zen_Cow_Says_Mu@infosec.pub 8 points 6 months ago

DOS -> slack ware Linux -> win 3 -> os/2 warp -> win 98 -> win XP -> osx (several years on Mac) -> win 10 -> Ubuntu 14, 16, 18, 20 -> fedora 34, 35, 36 ,37, 38 -> Debian 12 --> fedora silverblue 40.

[–] lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Windows 95

Suse Linux

Yoper Linux

Windows XP

Slackware

Windows 10/11

Fedora Linux

"Relapsed" to Windows for a while because I became a graphic designer and running a somewhat current Adobe suite on wine was impossible (it works now).

Slackware has been amazing, but having to built so much stuff from scratch takes too much time nowadays.

And those first Suse years were too rough to keep using it as a daily driver.

[–] statue7559@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 6 months ago

Windows (2015-2021) --> Manjaro (2 Weeks) --> Arch (2021-today)

[–] erwan@lemmy.ml 6 points 6 months ago (5 children)
  • In the 90's: Slackware, then RedHat, then Debian, then Progeny (Debian based), then shortly Mandrake (RedHat based)

  • Early 2000's: RedHat Japanese edition, TurboLinux (because I was in Japan and Japanese IME was almost impossible to get working on non-Japanese distributions)

  • Then I had fun with Gentoo looking at my terminal compiling stuff everyday and fixing broken package because I followed advices to activate crazy compilation flags

  • 2004: Ubuntu, that I used for nearly 20 years

  • Last year: switched to Fedora

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[–] dallen@programming.dev 5 points 6 months ago

Desktop: Macintosh (<X) -> Windows (XP-10) w/occasional Ubuntu dual-boot (various DEs) -> Debian + Gnome

Server: Ubuntu LTS -> Debian

I’ve also had a number of used thinkpads over the years where I mostly ran Xubuntu and crunchbang.

I still boot into Windows every month or so if I need to model something in Rhino (CAD). Couldn’t get it working in Wine and my 12 YO computer isn’t performant enough to run it in a VM. The last thread remaining and waiting to be cut…

[–] INeedMana@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Windows (~6 years) -> Mandriva (Mandrake? For I think 2-3 years) -> Ubuntu (1 day) -> Suse (2 days) -> Slackware (2-3 years) -> Gentoo unstable (2-3 years) -> Gentoo stable (2-3 years) -> Arch (9 years and counting)

The only span I'm sure about is the last one. When I started a job I decided I don't have the time to compile the world anymore. But the values after Windows sum up to 21, should be 20, so it's all more or less correct

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 3 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I’ve never had gentoo before, but what I’ve heard from other people might explain that part of your journey. You went from unstable to stable to Arch, which says something.

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[–] fratermus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 6 months ago

warning: some non-linux included below

  • minix
  • slackware
  • early Debian
  • FreeBSD (ftp installs instead of 20 floppies! OMG!)
  • Debian
  • Crunchbang <-- loved that original project
  • Solaris (friend gave me a Sparc 5)
  • DSL, Puppy linux (had a tiny netbook)
  • **Debian on workstations and servers since ~2014 **
  • various debian-based distros on RPI

I do spin up other distros in a VM from time to time to see what's what. Most recently NixOS since people won't STFU about it. :-)

Mint -> Arch

[–] nik9000@programming.dev 5 points 6 months ago

Windows -> RedHat -> Windows -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu -> RHEL -> Ubuntu -> Debian -> Arch

[–] 404@lemmy.zip 5 points 6 months ago

Over about a decade: Win7 -> Mint -> Manjaro -> Mint -> Endeavour

Eyeing Nix atm, looks cute, might hop later

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Slack, mandriva, Ubuntu, gentoo, arch, xubuntu, knoppix, mint, QubesOS. In that order.

Currently at Qubes and I can't imagine downgrading to any OS that doesn't have these VM-level sandboxing features built-in

[–] jeremyparker@programming.dev 4 points 6 months ago

My journey was Windows-> Ubuntu -> Mint -> Fedora -> Arch.

(Infuriatingly i still use windows for gaming, but nothing else.)

Did i mention that i use arch?

More importantly:

fucked up all my data with no backup.

One time i messed up a script and accidentally copied 40,000 mp3s to the same filename. 20 years of music collecting, literally going back to Napster, all gone.

Well, not completely gone. I've got everything uploaded to iBroadcast, and I'm pretty sure i can download my library. But I'm not sure i deserve to.

[–] pukeko@lemm.ee 4 points 6 months ago

Apple IIc > Windows 3.1 > Windows 95 > Windows 98 > Windows XP > Brief experiment with Ubuntu in the REALLY purple and brown era > OS X > Elementary > Fedora > Endeavour > Fedora > Silverblue > ublue > NixOS

(not counting numerous VMs with everything from Debian to Linux From Scratch)

[–] MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 months ago

I started with Corel Linux, moved to Mandrake and then began an 18 year distro-hopping journey. To keep it interesting, I rolled a d100 on distrowatch.com and installed whatever I landed on. About 6 years ago I landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed and haven't hopped since if you don't count a brief dalliance with endeavour on my laptop.

[–] ksynwa@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 months ago

I tried one distro and now the other distros confuse and scare me.

[–] 1boiledpotato@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 months ago

Windows (for my entire life) -> Ubuntu (for half a year) -> Kali (for a year; yes, I was that kid) -> Manjaro (half a year) -> Windows (for a short while, my Manjaro broke and I had school) ->Arch (past 4 years) -> now trying out NixOS

[–] Veraxis@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I am not sure that I can really call what I did distrohopping, but

Mint w/ Cinnamon (several years ago on an old junker laptop and never ended up using it as a daily driver) -> Manjaro w/ KDE Plasma (daily driver for ~1 year) -> Arch w/ KDE Plasma (~2 years and counting).

I have also used Debian with no DE on a file server I made out of an old thin client PC and I have used Rasbian on a raspberry pi.

[–] pbjamm@beehaw.org 4 points 6 months ago

Slackware(1995?), Yggdrasil, Redhat/Fedora/Mandrake, SuSE, Debian/Ubuntu/Mint

Probably some others I have forgotten, and there was a lot of back and forth at various times but I settled on Debian based because at the time APT was the best package manager. I mostly use Mint or straight Debian now because familiarity makes it the simplest for me after all these years.

not Linux but also Solaris, SunOS, & AIX

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.de 4 points 6 months ago

It all started with SuseLinux with KDE2. Then a long while it was Windows only. In 2021 I dabbled with Elementaryos, because it damn looks beautiful. In 2023 then I took the plunge. Started with Garuda Linux. Then KDE Neon then Fedora, then OpenSuse, Fedora Silverblue, then Nobara Linux, Fedora Kinoite, then back to Mint, Garuda and now've I settled on Nobara KDE.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 4 points 6 months ago

Windows 10 years -> macOS 6months -> Windows 10 years -> mint 1 week -> Ubuntu 1hr -> Garuda 30mins -> endeavor 1hr - > arch 1 day (I got filtered) -> manjaro 1 year -> fedora 1 week -> nobara 6 months.

I did manage to install arch on an old chromebook but I find configuring things from scratch annoying and I like it to be configured well be default and I'll change it if I want to.

[–] yala@discuss.online 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Windows ->

Fedora Kinoite: A relatively mature atomic/immutable distro combined with excellent security standards and that resembles Windows' workflow. Unfortunately, it broke almost immediately. Though, to be fair, it was a known issue with the ISO back then. As a newb, however, I couldn't be bothered with it. ->

Fedora Silverblue: Well..., I didn't have much of a choice 😜. Or I had to forego Fedora Atomic altogether. However, I actually really enjoyed GNOME's workflow. I used this as my main system for about year. Until I found a related project... ->

Arch: The memes got me 😅. In all honesty, though, it was mostly curiosity. Still, I didn't intend to throw away my working Silverblue installation for the sake of quenching my thirst for experiencing Arch. So, as dual boot, I tried to install it. This was pre archinstall, so it took a couple of tries before I booted into GNOME. However, I guess I did mess up something as I don't recall ever booting back into that system 😅. So, what if I want Arch, but don't want to spend more time with the installation... ->

EndeavourOS: Yup. I actually enjoyed it. I also took the opportunity to install another DE; KDE. Tried out the hardened kernel. Was able to make Davinci Resolve work, which just caused a lot of trouble on Silverblue. Access to AUR. It was cool, really. And, for some time, I was actually pondering to dismiss Silverblue altogether in favor of EndeavourOS. But, I started to miss the 'stability' that I was used to from Silverblue. Though, I don't exactly recall if it was the fault of being based on Arch, or rather linked/attributed to KDE instead. Regardless, I noticed that (over time) I spend more and more time on Silverblue. At some point, booting into EndeavourOS didn't work any more. It had broken. I did engage in some troubleshooting efforts, but to no avail... ->

Zorin OS lite: On backup laptop; the poor thing couldn't run Windows but (even today) it's still kicking on Linux ->

Nobara: So, I guess I did miss some of the functionality provided by EndeavourOS; running Davinci Resolve being the primary one. But, I didn't want to pass out of the opportunity to try something else. Back then, Nobara was released relatively recently and was received very positively by the community. And had even a special guide/tutorial to make Davinci Resolve work on AMD devices. Nobara was cool. But, it didn't feel very special. I actually enjoyed EndeavourOS a lot more. It was mostly utilized for Davinci Resolve and for gaming if Silverblue wasn't fit for the job (for whatever reason). Unfortunately, even this one broke at some point 😅. I could still boot into it. But, the system just didn't do what it's supposed to do. I tried troubleshooting. But, once again, to no avail. ->

uBlue; Silverblue image: Through all that was previously mentioned, I had stability in Fedora Silverblue. It was reliable. I could trust it. Well..., most of the time 😅. Decisions related to mesa or video acceleration in browsers definitely felt more like misses rather than hits. I can't blame Fedora as they're legally restricted. But, shouldn't we be able to do better? Enter uBlue. It seemed like some black magic shenanigans. The earlier issues would have never occurred (nor did they occur) on uBlue. This 'managed' aspect of uBlue was clearly, at least for me, the reason to consider it over regular Silverblue. And so, I parted with regular Silverblue and started using the Silverblue image provided by uBlue. Not long after, I even had my own (hardened) custom image. But, eventually (to be more precise; about half a year after switching to uBlue), keeping up with hardening took up too much effort for me to bear. But, thankfully, I had already found the perfect solution... ->

secureblue (based on the Silverblue image): This was Silverblue hardened by someone that actually knows their shit. And, thankfully, I didn't have to maintain this myself. I used this for a couple of months until the next best thing... ->

secureblue (based on the Bluefin image): Currently on this for I think half a year now. It has just been a lovely experience through and through. Everything I could have asked is provided.

[–] 30p87@feddit.de 3 points 6 months ago

Mine was not really long and stretched out over multiple devices. First Ubuntu Server, on my server, then a Kali dual boot on my main PC (which was actually useful), then PopOS. Then Ubuntu/Debian, after some time LFS and finally Arch on my old laptop. Then Arch on my PC too, and my new Laptops, and finally Arch on all devices.

[–] erici@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 6 months ago

Vic20 😆 -> C64 -> AmigaOS -> MacOS -> Slackware (much frustration!) -> MacOS -> Ubuntu -> EndeavourOS

[–] boredsquirrel 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)
  1. (Some years, Childhood), Windows XP laptop with games on it, Windows 7 on some Minecraft PC lol. (3 years) Windows 10 on a Thinkpad T430, really nice laptop, but the OS was boring and kinda bad
  2. (3 days) Linux Mint, secondary drive. Had random blackout crashes that were not hardware related (still use that SSD today). Also wasnt impressed by the UI, but a very interesting experience of "the Linux"
  3. (Few weeks) Manjaro, awesome KDE experience and theme, really really nice. But had a bad reputation, so went looking for other KDE Distros
  4. (Few months) MX Linux, damn Distrowatch rankings. Got an error and my University IT people told me my Nextcloud client was too old, but the conky manager was awesome.
  5. (Half a year) Kubuntu, with Backports, then switched to KDE Neon. Began nice, then went more and more unstable and broke
  6. (Few weeks) Fedora KDE, finally dared the move to a "less known OS", but it broke too. I guess that Plasma 5.2x phase was just messy
  7. (Over a year) Fedora Kinoite, uBlue, secureblue, Aurora. Tried the Kinoite prerelease for Plasma 6 and now for 6.1, finding some bugs.

Now happy part of the Fedora Community, rpm-ostree is just so good and makes Linux usable for me.

Also experimenting with GNOME, COSMIC, Kinoite-prerelease and CentOS-Stream in VMs or external drives. Also experimenting with minimal, bloat-free KDE Plasma, as it is actually really light and simply the best supported modular desktop environment.

[–] Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show 3 points 6 months ago

Windows (up until windows 8 came out) -> Ubuntu for about a year -> Manjaro for about 6 years -> Arch so far for 2 years.

[–] sirico@feddit.uk 3 points 6 months ago

Risc_os>win95-xp>Ubuntu>mint>Ubuntu>win8.1-10>manjaro>mint>popOs>fedora>fedora silverblue>bazzite/aurora

[–] turbowafflz@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Ubuntu -> OpenSuse -> Arch -> OpenSuse

I used ubuntu from when I got my first computer until like 2021 and then I realized I had no idea why I was using it because I didn't like it

[–] Kiuyn@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 months ago

For me it is like this: Window-->ubuntu(a month)-->kubuntu(a week)-->Opensuse tumbleweed

I also tried Nobara, zorinos, arch and bazzite but never actually use them

[–] LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Windows 95 -> 98 -> SuSE ...9? -> XP -> Ubuntu 10 -> Windows 7 -> Windows 10 (alongside a bunch of Debian servers) -> MX Linux -> Debian

Also went Windows 10 -> Kubuntu -> VanillaOS -> Kinoite on my laptop for what it's worth.

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