Simple question. Which distribution was your introduction?
For me, it was SLS Linux in '92-93, followed relatively naturally by Slackware, which was followed by Redhat.
RedHat here in the late 90s, back when you could still find yourself writing a “modeline.”
Then Debian in the early 00s when apt was still a major discriminator. Finally, Ubuntu around 2008 just so I was running the same thing I was recommending to family members for ease of use. (At the time, Ubuntu sported the same ease of installation and hardware detection I’d found with Knoppix.)
Now on Xubuntu, but seriously eyeing a return to Debian.
RedHat in the mid-late 90s here too. It wasn’t a great time for the linux desktop haha. I think I used afterstep or windowmaker back then. RPM hell was bad and hosed my system enough that Debian was like a savior with apt-get. Never really looked back from debian based systems since.
Slackware, 1996. I had a hand-me-down 486 that didn’t have a CD-ROM drive. It was cheaper for me to sit in a Uni computer lab with a case of 3.5" floppies, than it was to buy a drive. Slackware got me through my systems programming course at the time without me having to find time to get to the Unix lab (only open during regular classroom hours) or Telnet in (yes, really.) I was living on campus and the dorms only had time-limited dialup.
I did my first distribution download via the modem pool at the University where I worked. Next time I used my head and just brought a stack of floppies in with me and set one of the SunOS boxes running a script writing disks. It would write one, eject it, then beep to tell me to feed it the next disk.
It wasn’t long after that that I replaced the main server in the research lab (a Microvax II) with a 486 running Redhat.
OpenBSD on the Amiga in 95-96 or so.
My first distro was Manjaro. It was really cool, but also I remember having some trouble getting things to work on it without super extensive troubleshooting.
Slackware, installed with floppies on a 486.I tried debian red hat suse coral linux but always came back to Slackware.There was a bunch more, that I cant remember the names of, one I do remember was Stampede linux, Daniel Robbins put it out, he then dumped it and made Gentoo, I used Gentoo for a year or so, on an original AMD Athlon, it was night and day different from un optimised Slackware. I saw an announcement for a new distro on the gentoo forums for Arch, 686 optimisations, no need to compile!. I installed that and used it for about 9 years. I got sick of all the breakages, the systemd adoption drama, briefly went back to Gentoo( or Funtoo, actually), then discovered Void. I have been using Void since 2010, I also use Openbsd, reminds me of the ‘old days’ of linux before the tech bros and corporations.