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How long have you been using Unix/Linux for?

Since I know there are quite a few knowledgeable people here that have used Unix/Linux, I'm curious to know when you first started, and what distro you used?

<-- started in September of 1996 using slackware.
 
On and off for about 5 years, first distro was Red Hat. I was on Gentoo for quite a while (while trying Lindows, Xandros, FC2 before that), and now use Ubuntu. I would definitely not call myself knowledgeable, at least as far as Linux is concerned. 😛
 
First Linux was Red Hat about 5 years ago. I was running it on a P2 350.
But I was totally lost. When I would get bored with Windows I would mess with Red Hat.
Eventually it starting getting easier.
Then next was Suse 9.3 and things started clicking with this distro.
Looking back I have come a long ways in the last few years with Linux.
I have tried some other distro's also

Currently I am running Suse 10.2 64bit on my main Linux box.
Have another box with Ubuntu and Sled installed.
I hope to install Fedora here one of this days.
 
On and Off for about 6 years. Like in that time perhaps about 2% of the time

Now a couple of years quite a bit.

Linux EXCLUSIVELY for about 1.5 years...by exclusively I mean 95% of the time or greater.
 
Must be since '99. I bought a boxed copy of Mandrake 6.0 when it first came out and apparently (did a bit of googling) that's when it was released. Still got it sitting on my shelf.

Installed it on a P75/16MB box and had lots of fun trying to get the modem to work, IIRC. 😉

I played around with Floppix and ZipSlack a bit before that, but that doesn't really count. 😛
 
Originally posted by: xcript
Must be since '99. I bought a boxed copy of Mandrake 6.0 when it first came out and apparently (did a bit of googling) that's when it was released. Still got it sitting on my shelf.

Installed it on a P75/16MB box and had lots of fun trying to get the modem to work, IIRC. 😉

I played around with Floppix and ZipSlack a bit before that, but that doesn't really count. 😛

LOL @ sig 😀
 
I really can't remember exactly how long, I started sometime in '97 with RedHat but had pretty much no clue so that was really just a install/break/reinstall cycle for a while. Eventually I did get it all settled in and dualbooted but I stayed in Windows most of the time because of long downloads over dialup and the need to play QWTF.

I don't think Debian created any installation logs or reports back then so it's hard to nail it down to a date but I see some files with dates as early as 6/10/1999 so I guess somewhere around then is I would consider myself a "Linux user" since that's when I finally got the hang of installing and maintaining Debian and after that happened I went nuts putting Debian on everything I had and ordering odd architectures off of eBay to play with. =)
 
I've tried various distros on and off for about 5-6 years, but never used it for that long. When Ubuntu 7.04 came out recently I installed that and now I only boot into windows for games. I just wish I could get my Logitech MX510's cruise buttons to work, then it would be perfect.
 
trmiv - i got the mx510 to work fine...what was what you wanted specifically? I switched to a razor in january, but I'm pretty sure the mx510 didn't have a problem...
 
Originally posted by: magomago
trmiv - i got the mx510 to work fine...what was what you wanted specifically? I switched to a razor in january, but I'm pretty sure the mx510 didn't have a problem...

I want the cruise buttons above and below the scroll wheel to work how they do in windows (fast scrolling). I followed this howto and got the side buttons working, but even after I followed what the guide said, the cruise buttons still don't work.
 
Don't know...
I poked around with DEC UNIX in...95 or 96.
I didn't understand much of it, but it made me curious, so I got my hands on Slackware shortly after, then Redhat(4.x I think).
Then *NIX-hiatus for a while, some occasional playing with it, but nothing serious.

Then I got a job where Linux was starting to invade the company slowly but surely, so I started to pick up more again, along with Solaris which was also used.
So I guess you could say I've been a relatively frequent user for some 6-7 years, though for the last year or so, it's been more Solaris than Linux.
 
Originally posted by: trmiv
Originally posted by: magomago
trmiv - i got the mx510 to work fine...what was what you wanted specifically? I switched to a razor in january, but I'm pretty sure the mx510 didn't have a problem...

I want the cruise buttons above and below the scroll wheel to work how they do in windows (fast scrolling). I followed this howto and got the side buttons working, but even after I followed what the guide said, the cruise buttons still don't work.

If you have your mouse setup in xorg.conf to be ran through the evdev drivers then you can enable/disable special features on logitech mice with the lomoco application, including smart scroll.








I've been using Linux since 2000 or so.
 
I'm on day two of an install of Ubuntu 7.04 and wow, is it humbling coming from being very "fluent" in Windows. I'm prepared to stick with it as my main box and learn how to be a power user (except the times I need to play my games and then jump back to the Windows box 😉
 
I've been using Ubuntu for about a month now. It's on one of my computers which is really nothing more than a Folding@Home box. I do play with it now and again to become a little more familiar with it.
 
I started tinkering with Linux in 1998.
There was a distro of Slackware where you could launch it directly from Dos and not need to Partition anything ... It's what I learned the very basics on. In 1999 after I upgraded to a Celeron 300a, I set up Redhat on my AMD K6 233 machine. that was the first time I actually had a true dedicated Linux machine. I've had one ever since.
 
I started using linux full time with Redhat 7.3. Before that, I had played around with Mandrake, earlier redhat versions, suse, caldera, and slackware, but nothing really stuck.

Since then, I used Redhat 9 before switching to Debian unstable for several years. About 6 months ago, I switched to Ubuntu.

I've also played with Gentoo, LFS, and several BSDs on secondary partitions and in VMs.

I also have two servers running Debian Woody, which I plan to update to Etch this summer.
 
Used it (DG/UX, Solaris, Red Hat) at several jobs for about 10 years but didn't really know what I was doing - just followed a series of commands to accomplish tasks. If something went wrong I had no idea how to troubleshoot let alone fix it. Actual using it (Ubuntu) as my main OS of choice for about 18 months now.
 
I've started playing around with linux in '96 or '97. I've been running linux distros exclusively in my home environment (VM's don't count) for 3.5 years. I just switched my wife over to a complete linux-install on her laptop a few months ago.
 
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