How long have you been using Linux?

TurtleMode

If I remember correctly, I started with Ubuntu 7.04, so about 12 years. But I didn't really use it consistently as my primary until around 2017 when I discovered Solus.

Unfortunately I'm currently taking classes that require Adobe software, and they're very fast-paced classes so I'm using Windows on the side for simplicity's sake, but once I'm done with school I'm hoping to be able to exclusively run Solus.

kdeleteme

Switched back in 2011. I was a teenager back then and a friend convinced me to switch from Windows to Linux. So, I Google'd "Linux" and stumbled upon Zorin OS and went with that. I thought I could partition my drives the same way I did it in Windows (C: and D: ) and lost all my data in the process. Those were fun days. I only recently made the full switch in 2016 though. I went back and forth in between.

retrowertz

long time linux user. went full time though when that ransomware worm attacked my pc sometime May a few years ago

jaw6565

I don't quite remember when it was but I do remember loading about 6 cds of Mandrake.

catfishsushi

January of 2018, i started with 18.3 Mint, after 24 reinstalls of windoze, that were ripped apart.

downhill

Switched full time almost 7 years ago. However, I started dabbling with Linux back in 1994.

Beastmilk

Depends on how you define "use", I suppose. I've dabbled in Linux fir the past 12 years, but Windows is still my main OS because of gaming. Which also means my Linux knowledge is still minimal.

Abhisht02

Haven't booted up windows for around 6 months now, so i guess 6 months of solely linux - but i've interested in it for like a couple of years

downhill

Bouquins Ubuntu rekindled my interest in Linux.

CraigMatze

It all started with installing GIMP on xp, and finding open-source to be a viable alternative. When Win 7 was coming out took the leap to Ubuntu 9.10, all the way to 16.04. I never game play so the jump was not that drastic. 😆
2 years ago this month moved to Solus and never looked back. 🙂

Drewfus

I've used Linux since 0.95 in some capacity, and Unix prior to then. Had a professor turn me on to Linux while taking some Unix sys admin courses in '92. I am finally windows free, now that I have converted my gaming rig to Solus.

Drewfus

Drewfus Just because I have used it since then, doesn't make me a wizard or anything. I have gone back and forth using versions of it for 20 years, and am adept with it. One correction though, I still have 1 windoze box, a 386dx that I still boot up from time to just keep myself connected to those good old days.

brent

Drewfus The faded cotton bond paper that bleeds through both sides during stacking of the printouts and the density of the ink make me smile. Courier font brings me back to my comfort zone. We are all dating ourselves in this thread...

Drewfus

brent I can still remember fetching this over my 1200 baud modem and printing it out off of a floppy at work the next day. I miss the BBS era...

texas

Summer of 2004, ₁₅ years.

dbarron

Hey, it occurred to me Drewfus that we can simulate the BBS and zmodem days. Do package installations from the repository on Sunday (determined some local maintenance causes massive slowdown), it took me more than an hour to download 51 megs.

donbright

In 1996 I tried Dragon linux which installed onto a DOS partition of a 486. The thrill of that first X11 bootup, weird gray background and funky X looking mouse pointer... and zero dollars. I learned some shell commands... and 20 years later i am still using those same shell commands. Bash awk grep sed find locate nano curl wget telnet/ssh . And in another 20 i will still be using them god willing.

dbarron

Nano didn't come about till the Pine project (it's editor) as I recall. Was that available in 1996? Oh god, I looked it up, it was in 1989. I feel so old. I well remember mail before that..and I thought pine (and it's editor) was super slick back in the day.

elfprince

dbarron Yeah, I remember using Pico (from Pine), and loved it. It saved me from having to use vi!

Jazzyboy1

I've been low-key following Linux communities since I was a kid in primary school(so about 9-10 years), and tried out random distros(Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Zorin OS) at various times throughout the years. I think the longest I had previously committed to a Linux distro was about a month before I switched back to Windows, because I was very much reliant on Windows software back then.

I've only switched full-time to Linux a couple months ago, because I realised that there's actually no software that I'll miss from Windows at this point. I still have Windows 10 on my gaming PC, but a surprising amount of my games library (of around 1000 games) works on Linux now. I also don't play games much anymore anyway. When I switched to Solus a couple months ago, I was surprised to see that I genuinely couldn't think of any software that I'll miss from Windows anymore for my main workstation. The only thing I almost missed was Microsoft Office, but then I started learning to use LaTeX and now have a love for it.

Now I honestly don't think I could ever go back to Windows. Solus is beautiful and it's stable. I also find that as a software engineering student, my workflow has improved considerably since making the switch. I do pretty much all my work in the terminal now, and I love doing so.

I still think there's some work to do on making Linux distros a little more accessible to people who aren't developers, but since I'm currently learning to become a developer myself; hopefully I can help contribute to that work in the coming years 🙂.

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