Proud 5 months! 
How long have you been using Linux?
Roughly almost 3 years. Half of it is Solus.
Since Knoppix 3.1, so over 17 years. Messed around with various distros until Ubuntu 5.04, stuck with that in one flavor or another until Ubuntu Studio 14.04. In the Summer of 2016 I started contributing to Solus and my machines were moved over one by one until all of my software requirements were met. Been Ubuntu free since early 2017.
We have used RHEL or CentOS for the Linux machines in Engineering at RIT for my entire time there (over 10 years), my workstation running Solus and some research machines running Ubuntu being the main exceptions. Turns out a lot of the tools used by Computer Engineers are faster on Linux or Linux-only because of the ease of software development for the engineers that write the tools.
My first experience was with GNU/Linux in University of Helsinki - Unix perusteet - Kesäopetus 1999. I have to admit I was not impressed compared to Windows. But some interest for Linux remained. Over the years I tried a distribution or two every now and then. Years passed and I was still unimpressed. My main complaint was poor performance. Even something as simple as dragging a selection rectangle on the desktop was lagging. Esthetics was another reasons holding me back. The user interfaces looked dated. Six years ago I made the switch from MSOffice to LibreOffice though. And my bad luck with distribution selection changed this year when stumbling upon Solus. I had finally discovered a linux distribution with looks and performance to rival Windows. PCs have been a dear hobby of mine for twenty years. So abandoning Windows altogether may not be possible anymore as I am highly productive with a plethora of proprietary programs (such as Xara Xtreme for vector graphics and Abbyy Finereader for optical character recognition) and diy-tools I make with VB.NET. But I have become an avid Solus evangelist among family and friends. I have three converts so far who were not as tied to Windows ecosystem as I am. My own quest with Solus and finding alternative programs continues.
I first dabbled in 2005 with Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog- I had just bought my first 64-bit computer and Windows had no 64-bit support at the time, and I was curious to try out Ubuntu which everyone was going on about at the time 
I liked it better than Windows but between a lack of games support, graphical issues, and no drivers for my audio interface, I switched back to Windows full time.
Fast forward to 2016 and I'm using Kubuntu at work and administering CentOS servers. Fast forward again to the start of 2019 and I realise Windows 7 is reaching end-of-life soon and I'll need to jump ship. Installed Linux Mint in a dual-boot setup, but I've only booted back into Windows maybe 2 or 3 times! Since then I discovered Solus and installed it on all my other computers, including at work, and I'm increasingly itching to put it on my home computer too
5 days later
- Edited
Jumpy Give PDF Studio a try as a replacement for Abbyy Finereader. As for vector graphics, have you tried Inkscape? It's available in the Solus repo.
MintSpider I have been using Linux since 2015.
The best part is that I have no regrets of ever switching to Linux.
downhill I greatly apreciate any application suggestions. Thank you. Will give a try at pdf studio. Incscape I have tried but the learning curve has proven to be steep. Unfortunately it is also very slow. I do have high hopes for https://www.vgc.io/ though.
October, 2009
Solus user since October 2019
9 days later
[deleted]
Three years approx. I used Mint as a kid but that's that
- Edited
It was summer of 2007. I'll never forget it. Computers and non-mainstream software always fascinated me, and somehow or another I developed a strong desire to explore worlds outside of my Windows bubble (which was enjoyable in the '90s, but was feeling a bit limited by '07). Did a little research, held my breath and installed Ubuntu. I was completely blown away by how functional and cool the world of free software was. The first time I experienced Compiz effects changed my life honestly, to see what a UI could do and what it could be to make computing more fun and beautiful and customizable. I haven't looked back since. It's still an incredible journey, and Solus has only made it a million times better since 2017.
JohannPopper I don't know why you feel the need to use green font on a white forum post which puts the readability of your post at the very least to an eye straining headache level, but black font is the ideal and default and it's what everyone else uses. I understand the need to feel different or stand out, so feel free to go ham with your display picture, but the green font is just impossible to read man. I can't believe I'm font shaming...
I struggled about halfway through the first sentence, skipped the rest. I have no idea what the message was about. Probably very few do.
Short answer: first touched a linux system over 15 years ago.
Long answer: I was a kid who would jump on my dad's work laptop which ran SuSE and play around with the operating system in middle school. I'm pretty sure the first time I booted in that I didn't even know there were other OS's besides Windows and Mac. I remember asking him a million questions about it and being fascinated that it was the driver of the huge supercomputers that he worked on. Had a lot of good times learning how to write simple Perl scripts with my dad back in those days.
Fast forward to 2008 and I was really getting into computers, programming, and starting my CS degree. I had just received a brand new laptop and absolutely hated Windows. My older brother helped me to setup and install Ubuntu on my computer and that was that. Haven't touched Windows outside of a VM since (well, not totally. still know a lot of people who run Windows). I stayed on Ubuntu for quite a while before I began distro hopping like crazy. I have run Debian, Kubuntu, Mint, Kali, Arch, Manjaro, Backbox, Fedora, openSUSE, Zorin, MX and many others that I'm forgetting through the years.
I'm happy to say that my days of distro hopping have been over since mid-2018. Right now, I have 3 machines that all run different flavors that work best for their use case:
My work/dev machine is running Pop_OS 19.10 (it's a system76 Oryx Pro), my "home machine" runs Solus (and it's by far my favorite to use!), and my old laptop has been condemned to a testing/tweaking machine that I play around with for fun running Gentoo (fairly successfully, actually!) for a little over 2 years.
It's been a crazy ride and I have always considered the larger linux community to be a bright spot in my life. I've been running Solus now for about a year and a half and love what I get from it. Some truly great engineering, design, and polish in this distro and I hope to enjoy it for many years to come!
This is the default Solus forums look when I'm logged in.
As you can see, it's black with white text by default. I find green easier to read on black, and it allows me to quickly scroll to my posts in long threads. It's only logical. However, since you apparently set your theme to white, I shall use the default font just for you from now on.
JohannPopper I was about to say. "The green on black looks good to me. What am I missing?"
6 months later
I'm using Linux since 2011.
I don't remember the date, but I DO remember a tall stack of openSUSE floppy disks that took forever to download over the phone line at 1200 bps.
And I remember paying a significant amount of money (in those days) for an official set of Red Hat disks that came with 90 days of support. As luck would have it, I ran into my first problem a little after those 90 days, and they refused to help unless I paid a lot more. I haven't looked at Red Hat since.
Started messing around with Linux back with Ubuntu 14, then took a break till Ubuntu 16 and only used that twice. Started back again last year and hopped through 8 distros before finding my forever distro in Solus Budgie.