How long have you been using linux?

[andil]

Well I'm pretty much a newbie. I've been using linux since August of this year, and if there is any reason I like linux it's the same reason why others love it: the ability to modify software to suit individual needs. I've messed up my computer so many times trying out random stuff and in due process I've learned a lot. I still use windows quite often though but I can honestly say it's much more fun using linux.

Linux = BRILLIANT.

[bazoukas]

2 years.
One year off and on because I couldnt unlearn windows. Then I got mad, really mad and I just went in heads first for the last year. I changed more distros than underwear and finally found knoppix. I think I am going to marry it.

[carbon-12]

hmmm lets see:

5 months on and off
3 months Dual booting /w WinXP
3 months Linux Only

[Satanic Atheist]

3.5 Years, give or take. I was introduced to it by a friend and now I've been badgered into keeping it. I started off dual-booting but never used it so I flattened it and used the space.

I went back to it a few weeks later and installed a server system just for fun. I had access to the Internet sporadically, mostly at work where I printed off huge quantities of HowTos to try at home. I was pleased when I had a really decent system running.

Since the machine was on a private LAN, I could take my time setting up secure systems and learning my way around. I had an integrated Windows/Linux network and it worked really well.

It was only earlier this year that I installed Linux (Mandrake) and when I lost the discs (left in Wales somewhere) and I needed to reinstall, that I downloaded Slackware (only one CD) and played around with that. After upgrading to Slackware 9.1 I've decided to stick with it. Why kill a perfectly good build?

James

[lamatop]

9 years

My first distro came in a plastic bag with 60 (!) floppy disks.

So I'm a old-timer, I guess...

[Ryochan7]

I have only been using Linux for about 7 months, but I have learned so much and I am enjoying using Linux. Right now, I am using Windows more just because I am really into playing FFXI.

[ZAmodeo]

1 year end of this month!
Started with Mandrake 9, hated it because it cough*unknowing me*cough killed my XP installation. Tried RedHat 8 mid-January and liked it better. Eventually moved to SuSE March this year. Decided I hated Linux and wanted a fresh Windows computer, so I bought a laptop. Got pissed at XP for slowness and other reasons so killed it for RH 8. Dual booted XP and RH for a while... Went to SuSE again on my laptop, now primary computer. Eventually discovered Knoppix and I've been hdd installing it ever since. Got an O2 yesterday and need an OS for it (ideas? got a separate thread :)) I still use windows now and then but Linux is my main OS now.

[bae127]

Almost 1 year now. I was using Win98 on my laptop and it finally reached the point where it would lock up 2-3 times a week. I was only using it maybe 1 hour a day to check email and read the news online, so the crashes were getting out of hand. I started out with RH8, upgraded to RH9 and eventually switched to Slackware. My system has only crashed 1 time since and it was right after an install (actually only X crashed b/c I had set something improperly during the install). I love the stability of linux. I also love that I can still use my older hardware with linux.

[voidinit]

Wow, this will be my first post on this forum.

I've been using Linux for about 4 years now. I still keep the winXP partition around for games though. I started out in RedHat 6.2, but soon found a home in Slackware. I like the BSD style init and down and dirty configuration. Slackware really helped me learn linux from the inside out by not helping me configure anything. Slack comes with one configuration tool, and that tool is vi.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Two and a half years.

I always thought that I was a "guru" when it came to using computers. Reason being: I knew the most about computers compared to everyone I knew, including my teachers, family, and friends. I was brought up on Macs, being that Nashville public schools seem to be locked in with Apple, so I was always really anti-Microsoft. So, when I heard about Linux, a non-Microsoft OS that could be run on PCs, I was stoked.

The first opportunity I had to run Linux was back in February 2001, on a hand-me-down 233mhz AMD k6-2 box that used to belong to my wife. I only had access to Mandrake 7.2 install CDs, so I went ahead with it. I HATED IT. It didn't like my video card, didn't like my sound, and it wouldn't work with my NIC. What could I do with the box? Not much, I thought, so I just wiped it and put a fresh Win98 install on it.

About a month after that install, Windows started to bog down, BSOD, and corruption seeped into my install. I got fed up with it, and I once again turned to Linux, this time Red Hat 7.3.

It turns out that I was just a dummy-- I didn't know as much as I thought I did. The reason why none of my devices worked was because I had no idea how to configure them!!! :eek: Once I started to RTFM, I found out that every single one of my devices was supported quite well, provided I knew how to get them working. :cool:

[Seph64]

I have been using Linux for about 1 year and 10 months now. My first Distro was Mandrake 8.2. Now I still consider myself relatively new to Linux, and I am still dual booting with Windows. But I know that I will find a time when I will not need Windows.

[robotralph]

I use linux as my only system in the house, i have a windows box in the work shop i use to guide my telescope and use my dyhno programs on. i hate the window box butr untill i go to win for lin i will have to use it. for those programs.

[DMR]

3+ years, starting with Redhat 6.2.

A geek friend of mine played drug pusher on me ("here, try this- you'll like it) with a version of RH 5.1, but it was already dated so I just went out and bought a boxed version of 6.2. Having been an avid command-line fan since DOS 3.3, I saw how much more powerful the *NIX command set was, and I got hooked. It wasn't easy, because RH 6.2 was not exactly user-friendly, and it lacked hardware support for some of my components, but once I found the huge amounts of online resources that were available, I just gobbled them up until I understood how to configure hardware, compile from source, etc.

At this point, I have a quad-boot win98/win2k/Mandrake 8.0/RH 7.3 box, a RH9 box serving as the network jukebox, a RH9/Win XP/Win2k box, and a "crash and burn" box which never knows what OS I'm going to throw at it on any given day. Except for the need to deal with MS-only software and file formats, and cross-platform interoperability testing, I never work in Windows anymore- I'm much happier having Linux do the job, thank you. :)

This site (LNO at that time) was actually one of the most valuable resources I found in terms of answering the myriad questions I had as I was learning. I lurked as a guest for a number of months before joining; browsing the forums, reading the help files, and using the search function gave me all of the answers I needed. Since I've registered, I think I've posted less than five technical questions; the answers to almost all of my questions were already archived here, or links to the solutions had already been posted in the threads I searched through.

[satchmo]

i am counting the research hours at work trying to decide which distro.

i guess i chose slack 9.1 cause i read that it is the distro that will force you to learn linux...and they weren't lying. i have installed and configured my kde. currently working on:
1. navigating with the command line
2. getting winmodem operational
3. installing some cool wallpaper and themes for KDE

i never knew frustration could be so much fun. i research at work on windows, copy files to a floppy on windows, and go home to my linux box with no internet connection:(

luckily, my windows laptop next to it allows me to do more reading on the net, when my reading material produced on company time and material, fails me.

anyways it's like a big puzzle that seems to come together little by little.

[pezplaya]

Just about 1 year

I started a while back. I remember hearing about linux and woundering exactly what it was. I bought myself a copy of redhat 7.1 and I tried installing it. I had 2 hard drives, so I said why not. The installation went fine and I had it running, but I never really took the time to play around with it and see what it was like. I thought it was useless so I eventually formatted the linux drive and used the second drive as extra hard drive space. After a while I then started to think about linux again... I was visiting these forums and I wanted to give it a try again. I downloaded a copy of redhat8 and installed it. Thats when I knew I loved linux. Right now im running redhat 9. I have dual boot with windows, but I havent used my windows installation in more then 3 months or so.

[Drago]

1 year this month and proud of it!:D :D

[Oaki]

I'm not too sure how long it's been. Maybe 4 or 5 years. I started off with RedHat 5.2 (still have the manuals for it actually), and pretty much went from there. Two years ago I started in with Slackware. Then I experimented with other distros. I tried Debian, Gentoo, Mandrake, and RedHat. Also tried out FreeBSD and i think NetBSD. I came back to slackware, I guess i'm just a happy slacker.

[mhc2001]

2.5 years. I started with Mandrake, moved to Red Hat 8 and now I'm using Fedora. Overall I've been happy with all of the distos I've used.
I use Linux most of the time when I'm not at work.

My wife still uses XP, but mostly for games.

[fatTrav]

I dual booted for about a year starting in October of 2001 with RH 7.2 and have experienced everything RH has offered (and Fedora) as well as Slackware, Mandrake, and even Free BSD Unix. Good stuff.

Yeah, a few years of Linux use has given me a lot of fun.. But in about a month I'm buying a dual 1.8 G5 and switching over to Max OS X. Who knows how this will change me about Linux...


travis

[micro]

I started to experiment from the times BeOS was still alive, then I got to Linux, tested Winlinu, PhatLinux, Slackware (March 2002) Debian Mandrake, everything I got into my hands.

At first I couldn't get Slackware to to anything, not even to work my wheel mouse, but I liked it's manual characteristics. So, I started to install every "easy" "plug'n'play" Distro that got in my hand and see how they did it and started to do it by hand in Slackware.

In march 2003 I brought up a finally working Linux SMB server for my Windows machine and guest laptops, just by understanding what on earth does smb.conf and things started to go smoothly. Linux was finally a backbone!

When I found how to make my scanner recognizable (it was an adventure) and my printer working, I got totally MS Windows independent. and this was by the start of this summer.

Then started to compile and install, to be finally distro independent considering new projects.

Then came Alsa (compiled) and my graphics card's module from Nvidia, and then I got bored!

Then I started to write my linux pages, to finally share the things I learned (the hard way, not the automated one) and .in a way this page describes my adventures with Linux.

http://users.hol.gr/~micro

Now I use Linux for everything and I have Linux and FreeBSD in my home network.

Some games that I love from the past also work using:
ScummVM for Lucasarts Scumm based adventures,
Wine for Starcraft etc.
Dosbox for some other games

I think I need to put a page about gaming.
I will do so.

See you...

[MartinB]

About 1 and a half years total.
About 1 year of which Linux-only.

I'd actually used Linux about 3 years ago, but I really didn't do much with it besides playing with the different desktops, window managers and games, as it seemed that it was lacking support for most of my hardware.

So far, I've gone through (in order) Corel Linux 1.0, Mandrake 7.0, Mandrake 8.2 PowerPack, Mandrake 9.0, Everyone's Linux, Debian 3.3 (Well, not really, I didn't actually manage to get past the installation) and finally settled on Gentoo 1.4-rc2.

I immediatly knew that Linux would eventually become my main OS as I watched Mandrake 8.2 dial out and successfully connect to the Internet. :)

[voidinit]

Originally posted by satchmo
i am counting the research hours at work trying to decide which distro.

i guess i chose slack 9.1 cause i read that it is the distro that will force you to learn linux...and they weren't lying. i have installed and configured my kde. currently working on:
1. navigating with the command line
2. getting winmodem operational
3. installing some cool wallpaper and themes for KDE

i never knew frustration could be so much fun. i research at work on windows, copy files to a floppy on windows, and go home to my linux box with no internet connection:(

luckily, my windows laptop next to it allows me to do more reading on the net, when my reading material produced on company time and material, fails me.

anyways it's like a big puzzle that seems to come together little by little.

A linux newbie with a box and no net connection is a sad thing indeed. I never encourage anyone to spend their hard earned money on books about linux, or classes on linux. Everything you'll ever need to know is on the net somewhere.

I think you made the right choice in daring to Slack. It's very tough and frustrating. I always got so excited because I wanted my box to do 'x', then I realized I had to learn how to do 'p', 'd', 'q' and 'r' first.

Do yourself a favor and learn how to power use vi.

Also, I don't know if you've been sent to the The Linux Documentation Project Before, but it really helped me learn the OS.

http://www.tldp.org

[mrBen]

Hmmm - it's about 4 years now I think.

I started on a copy of Slackware that came off a disk from my Uni - 2.0.36 kernel IIRC. Spent hours getting it installed on my 486, with decidedly esoteric hardware, and finally got X up and running. I even had KDE 1.1 at one point, from the 'KDE 1.1 in 24 hours' book that I bought. Problem was that I had a winmodem, and Linux without a net connection, particularly in those days, was a bit pointless.

I had some dodgy memory :( and managed to fry my motherboard trying to work out which stick was faulty........

Went back to Windows for a wee while.

Then back in 2000 I got right back into it. Went through the usual swathe of distros. Found myself needing to boot into Windows for less and less.

Have now been completely Windows free for just over 6 months.

[canon006]

A little over 2 years, initially tried Corel Linux Second Edition and could never get it to work on any system I tried. Gave Mandrake(8.1 I think) a shot and I've been hooked ever since...

[Elijah]

I figure about 2 years now. After getting fed up of WinME(which is my first OS for about a year) I tried Redhat, then Mandrake > Slackware > back to Redhat again > A few assorted distros (knoppix, lycoris, etc) > Debian > Gentoo

[soda_popstar]

I've been on and off for about a year. It wasn't until around March this year that I started to use Linux as my main operating system. I've been learning slowly after much distribution-hopping, but I think I'm settling down with Gentoo. The initial install is a pain, but it's worth it. I'm currently reinstalling it because I totally hosed my partition somehow (:() but I used to have it running very quickly and smoothly, with VMWare to do the few Windows-only tasks that I need.

[bones996]

I've used linux for almost 2 years now, with a very short period of dual booting win 98se for drivers, & have been happy ever since. I even got a friend of mine who was learning c++ to start using it & now he's an assisstant admin on a novell/windows network in a hospital & we trade usefull tips all the time.

Now if I could only get my other friends to try :D . It's a sad shame that one of them is running XP after having his computer worked on at a shop & it is acting up even worse than it was before they installed a new hd & XP. Never had that problem with linux ;)

[Xkenichi]

2,5 years.

Bought a copy of SuSe 9.0 just recently, and haven't booted windows since.

[sclebo05]

4 years, and things have really come a long way since then. the community has gotten more 'newbie friendly' recently which i think is a good thing. In that time i have gone from RedHat 6 to Slackware 9.1.

can't wait for the next 4 years!

[SeT]

I've been using Linux off and on for almost 3 years. I started with Red Hat 6.2 at school and loved it. When I was almost finished with school and working on building a computer, Linux was the first OS I installed on the new PC. Since then I've used lots of different distros(knoppix is awesome) but most of the time I have been without a pc due to hardware failures. Just recenctly got my pc back up and working and have a tripple/almost quad boot with xp(games)/slack9.1/knoppix/working on lfs for the hell of it.

[rtr]

about 4 years, started w/ RH 6.0.

[mm-sources]

About 1 year off and on, mostly off...then I met Gentoo and fell in love...:D
so only about 3 months without windows

[hard candy]

3hours and 29 minutes so far today!:)

[sclebo05]

haha, welcome aboard, you are the newest JL user that i know of :)

[mengle]

About 5 months. Started with Mandrake 9.1 but I really didn't like 9.2. It felt more like a downgrade. A freind talked me into installing Gentoo from Stage 1 with my own configured kernel. I'm quite happy with Gentoo. :)

[twilli227]

About 15 months. Bought RH7.3 and dual booted with XP. Bought another hd and have RH9 and XP. 95% linux and 5% XP. Have to keep up with XP because of family members and some classes. Still trying to get some of my other comps up and running, they lack ram, so they only work in the cli. Although without Xwindows, it is a good way to learn the command line.

[ozdream]

Hmm, about six months or so and I am responsible for over 10 people moving to Linux and I have made 5 Linux box's for people:cool:

[Zoist]

9 years and I never stop learning. So much to learn and I enjoy how Linux can do so much.

[andycrofts]

..first Distro. was SUSE 7.2 (I think...) found in the company library!! Suse sticker that came with it's on the (windows!) machine - forgot that.
lot of frustration with installation (eventually traced to faulty RAM)
Now Fedora, wish I could afford RH Enterprise, but not any more (sob!)

Just been given new responsibility teaching new product, Linux-based (Thought it was Solaris, but they've changed tack), right down to creating a 3-day admin. course! Nirvana! (No, I'm not good enough to teach 3-day admin of Linux. But when I've written the course, given 6 monthsI will be. Red Hat based 'company-built' disti. Now I can spend my office hours legit. playing with Linux)

Currently setting up new webserver/mailserver, also simultaneously reloading Fedora on an IBM T20 (finally got cheesed off with Ximian Desktop load time) and trying to get remote - X working. Busy day - wife's away. Yesssss!
-Andy

[DMR]

DO check my homepage, especially the blog. I'm journalling everything I do Linux-wise there (and anything else). Might be something useful.
Um, Andy... you might want to give us a little linkage there, so we don't have to go browsing through your user profile to find the URL for your homepage.

;)

[GlennaclawZ]

Ive been on linux for about a week now and already learned so much from all the errors I have had to fix such as getting my mouse to work and fixing screen resolution... I actually look forward to getting errors so I can learn my way around even more...

they say the best way to learn a place is to get lost... I guess its the same senario.

[GlennaclawZ]

Originally posted by hard candy
3hours and 29 minutes so far today!

if thats the case... y do u have over 1500 posts?

[raz0rblade]

He meant just today :p

I've used Linux for the past 6 years.

7 years April 2004. :D

[nothingbutlinux]

Originally posted by lamatop
9 years

My first distro came in a plastic bag with 60 (!) floppy disks.

So I'm a old-timer, I guess...
60 floppies ... that is just too cool. How long did it take to install???

I've been using Linux for about a year, I guess. I started with SuSE 8.0 which was great for a beginner, it did a lot of the hard stuff for you. Some may argue that having things done for you is not necessarilly good, but if it keeps a person from getting so frustrated they drop Linux, then it's not all bad.

From SuSE I went to Debian, but quickly upgraded to unstable because stable was SO out of date. Then I discovered Knoppix, and installed that on a few machines. Now I'm running Morphix, which is basically a specialized version of Knoppix, but has a better installer.

I still dual boot at home (with Win ME) mostly for the kids, and use Win NT at work (ugh!). I'd love to go LInux full time, I use it for most everything now, finances, games, research, etc. Nothing compares! GO LINUX.

[wizard479]

Roughly 7 weeks now. A friend of mine had red hat 7.3 (i know...) so i installed it on a dual-boot with win98. After i got my winmodem, printer and vidcard going by day 5 (or 6?) i was hooked. So much better and faster than windows, plus i could do whatever i wanted!! :) The only reason i still keep windows around is for my games and my girlfriend because she just can't live without windows. Trust me, i've tried. I'm considering switching distro's to slackware or debian or maybe even gentoo. I'm still using red hat to experiment, once i get down what i think i need to know (:rolleyes: ) i'll try another distro, so for now just having fun experimenting. Linux rules, M$ drools!!

[psi42]

About eight months. :)

Since mid-april 2003...


I only wish I had started earlier....

[OmarSerenity]

About 2 years. Since Mandrake 8.1. Now using MDK 9.2 and I'm completely Windows-free since about two months ago.

[Suminigashi]

I first tried it back in 98, but did take the time to really mess with it. Around 2000 I got a new computer, wiped the hard disk and installed RedHat. Ever since then I've learned a lot about Linux and used my Linux computers to do everything.

My three Linux comps:
1 RedHat Fileserver
1 Slackware Laptop
1 Mandrake Desktop

*edit* O ya, and I've never duel booted with windows :D

[nugget15]

As of today I have been using linux for 2 weeks and one day. I did my install November 23rd, but before that I had been messing around with Knoppix.
Oh I have a dual boot with Windows Xp, but that is because its not just my computer. But after X-mas that will change because I'm building a computer. YAY :D

[hardcore]

Our family bought our first computer about 7 yrs ago, and for a good 4.5 years, it was win95 and 98. I had heard about linux, and it interested me, but lacking tons of knowledge I had to wait until I built my own computer for college. So I started out with Mandrake 8.0->8.1->8.2->9.0->9.1, then LFS for a brief stint, and now i'm a happy Gentoo user. And on the same time line there is a diminishing usuage of win9x and XP. Right now i still dual-boot mostly because i need to get my *** around to gettting a IPX networked printer setup. But i'd say 99% linux, <1% win. So about 2.5 yrs of linuxness.

[GlennaclawZ]

I know your pain... it is hard convincing parents to put linux on the computer... not enough online proof to show anyone anything because u dont know just how its really gonna be so I too had to wait to build my own comp...

[automatic]

10 months and counting ...

Started with RedHat back in Feb 2003, still dual boot at that time. Then single boot using knoppix. Installing and learning Slackware from mid nov, and two days ago install win and slackware dual boot (need windows outlook to open my old outlook database and convert to linux Evolution) keeping my win partition for testing compatibilities between win and lin.

Now gathering info on lin database (mysql) and database front-end. Next year my office project will be switching all win application to linux, been testing many application now ... not having much luck with video editing and desktop publishing yet, but linux works well for most office needs. Maybe next year I will learn scribus for desktop publishing.

Linux is fun, no matter what distro you are using ...

Joe-L

[liquidfx13]

got introduced to it by a friend....he brought over RH 5.2 and we spent the next 3 days installing it and getting it configured on my POS system. I haven't totally gotten rid of windows and probably won't til game support is better (i just like my games on windows better), but everything else is linux......

[rdeschene2]

The above is the first date I have on file (yes, I have kept a record of the various hardware and software installations I have used for years now. Teaches you to use ASCII files !) with my first Linux installation: SuSE 6.3

Since then I tried Caldera OpenDesktop once at home, and worked on the RedHat Linux installations at the plant where I work a bit, but kept on coming back to SuSE: 7.0, 7.2, 8.1

I have found that SuSE always provided something for the (little) money spent - browser plugins that work and minutae like that.

A common theme in the above posts was that many people did not come into Linux at first with any well-defined ideas of what they wanted from it. So consequently, and understandably, they play around with desktop settings, etc. but get bored and left it for awhile.

Comparatively, if you make a list of what functions you use your PC for BEFORE you select a distro, and use that to guide you'll learn a lot more, and a lot faster. First you'll learn a lot about what you actually use your PC for -- and oftentimes we aren't aware of all the things we're using it for, and take them for granted. Secondly, you've got a plan of attack for selecting a new OS and apps.

So my first step was making a detailed list of the apps/functionality I use: scanning for electronic and print copies (the make and model of scanner), printing (resolution needed), word processor and what functions I used, spreadsheet and what functions I used, browser - for browsing but also want 128bit encryption for banking, playing audio CD's while I work, and on and on the list went.

So I ran a dual-boot SuSE/Win98 system for about 4months as I spent my evenings and weekends and evenings booting into Linux and checking things off my list. When I was confident on the Linux setup, I asked my wife (the household's primary computer user) to try it out and because of this approach there were only a few outstanding items I hadn't thought of. Making a little manual (e.g. how to use top and killing an errant process, or burn a backup of /home) helped here too.

I can see myself trying out Libranet this winter - since Novell is buying SuSE and Novell has grossly mismanaged product lines in the past. apt-get also sounds very promising ! :-o

[gofigr]

not long, off and on. trying to get the necessary hardware together to have another windows box. everybody else uses it and if i wipe it out i'll feel the wrath of my folks. i'm more familiar with slackware, don't like red hat (at least not back when i tried it - ver 7), mandrake was to focused on the gui, trying to make it more user friendly. i haven't had a chance to dabble in any others, but i like experimenting.