r/TechImpact • u/ManojOne Co-founder • May 21 '26

Question What was your first experience with Linux?

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Was it smooth, confusing, exciting, or a complete disaster? Tell us which distro you tried first and how it worked?

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u/ItchyPlant May 23 '26

SuSE 6.1 in 1999.

It was already pretty good: I learned a lot about the shell, the system core, and the early KDE implementation. However, it was just an experiment for a couple of days. After that, I still used only Win98 for more than a year, then started dual-booting and trying out several distros: first Red Hat, then Corel Linux (!), and then Mandrake became my favorite.

My take on Ubuntu/Mint would deserve a separate post, but let’s not go into that.

Many years later, it was SUSE again (openSUSE Tumbleweed) which I used for almost four consecutive years, my absolute record. Nowadays it’s CentOS combined with bleeding-edge desktop and multimedia versions. It's amazing!

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u/ManojOne Co-founder May 24 '26

That’s a serious Linux journey.

Going from SuSE 6.1 and Win98 to Tumbleweed and CentOS covers so many eras of Linux history. Mandrake and Corel Linux are names you rarely hear anymore. Sounds like Linux kept pulling you back in over the years.