What was your Linux noob experience like?

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How long did you use Linux?

I'm new to Linux
5
5%
1-12 months
20
20%
1-5 years
24
24%
+5 years
49
50%
 
Total votes: 98

AdamMcC642

What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by AdamMcC642 »

The first distro I've ever used was Open-SUSE in early 2012. Since I used Windows 7 before I started using Linux, I thought that Linux would be just like Windows. I was using Windows for about a year, until I decided to switch to Ubuntu. Since my laptop had Windows pre-installed, I dual booted Ubuntu with the uninstalled Windows 8. I switched to just using Linux in mid October of 2014 after I installed Linux Mint 17 and upgraded to 17.1 on its release date. (Currently using Linux Mint 17.1) Around January 15, 2015, my laptop overheated, and I had to get it replaced. When I got that laptop, I replaced the built in Windows 8.1 with Linux Mint 17.1.
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karlchen
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by karlchen »

Hi, Adam.

Could it be that you have not cast your vote in your ow poll, yet? The only voter at this point in time seems to be me. 1 vote - 100% for 5 years plus. :wink:

"5 years+" means that the first Linux distribution which succeeded in surviving the "live system" phase was Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala.
The reasons for this success were:
+ It was one of the Linux distributions which would support my SATA II controller out of the box.
+ The installation of Karmic Koala went as smoothly as all the Windows installations that I had done before.
As much as I liked Karmic, there was one major problem which kept me busy searching for a solution during the first few weeks: configuring Karmic to make use of my dumb DSL modem so that I could connect to my ISP and to the internet. - Turned out my search strategy had been inefficient. pppoeconf had been on the disk all the time. Only I had managed not to detect it. :oops:
I really liked Karmic, its Gnome2 desktop, its Human Theme, basically everything. And I was surprised to experience how easy Ubuntu made it for a long term Windows user to get used to Linux. Therefore Karmic stayed on my disk till the very last day of its supported life.

To cut the Ubuntu only phase short: Karmic Koala (9.10) was followed by Lucid Lynx (10.04) and Lucid Lynx by Precise Pangolin (12.04).
Ubuntu 12.04 was kind of a break. Gnome2 was dead, Gnome3 was brand new and changed almost more rapidly than the repository maintainers could update their repositories. Ubuntu had created their own fork based on Gnome3, named Unity.
So Ubuntu 12.04 was a break for me in terms of the desktop it brought along. And it was a break in terms of what was under the hood. And when it was released in April 2012, it must have been one of the greenest bananas ever. :wink: But the Ubuntu guys were really quick in fixing the ton of bugs the initial release had brought along. And since it advanced from 12.04 to 12.04.1 (12.04 service pack 1) it has been rock solid on my machine. By now it is at service pack 5 and still running fine.
Should I mention that Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr somehow made its way onto my disk and somehow refuses to go away, too?

The funny thing about me running 2 Ubuntu releases with the Unity desktop is that I do not even particularly like the Unity desktop. :?
This finally brings me to the Linux Mint phase. My life as a Linux Mint user started when Ubuntu invented the Unity desktop.
The very first Linux Mint release which made it onto one of my machines was Linux Mint 12 "Lisa" with the MGSE desktop.
The rest of the story can be found in bits an pieces here in the forum. Just read all of my posts. - Hey, I do not expect anybody will actually do so. :wink:
But is a good way of saying, "I'll stop here before you're all bored stiff."

Cheers,
Karl
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by BigEasy »

+5 years.
First time I faced with Linux was in 2001. There was Red Hat (it was free those days). I was asked to fix one Linux computer (one partition with important data seems lost).
I bought a thick book about Red Hat then fixed and saved all data :) But I was not really noob. Before that I have years of experiens to work with Unix system at VAX family computers.
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by Pjotr »

Fulltime Linux user since 2006: with the unforgettable Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Dapper Drake. :mrgreen:

Dapper was a mighty good release, but required a lot of command line tweaking before it was complete. Thankfully there was this helpful Dutch Ubuntu forum, and thankfully I regularly made images with Acronis True Image.... After a couple of months I felt quite at home in Linux.

Unity isn't quite my cup of tea, though. After some years of almost exclusive Xfce use (Xubuntu and Linux Mint Xfce), I was agreeably surprised by the high quality of Cinnamon in Linux Mint 17. So I switched to mostly Linux Mint 17.x Cinnamon. 8)
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by DeMus »

I started in 2008 when Hardy Heron was just released. Little did I know about Linux and sometimes a funny feeling creeps up on me that I still know so little. When I look back at what I have done so far, I lose that feeling immediately: we now have 3 computers running Mint 17.1 KDE. Also my wife's computer has deleted Windows because of all the unwanted updates, not only from Windows it self, but several programs we needed to protect the computer at least a little. She now used Linux for 4 weeks and so far she is happy with it: it just runs, it does what it is supposed to do, it is fast, yes she is a happy wife and when she is happy ...... I don't have to re-install Windows.

I used the Gnome desktops till Ubuntu started with Unity and Gnome released Gnome 3. Happily I was used to Linux at that time, knew the basics and was able to skip to KDE, a step I never regretted. Wow, this looks so great. Now, 4 years later I am still discovering new things, things I can config to my needs and wishes. Great.

Two weeks ago I erased Mint and experimented with other distro's, but at the end of the weekend I returned to Mint KDE. A week later I started again and after trying OpenMandriva and OpenSuse (both had issues) I thought why not try Mint's flagship Cinnamon. Oh my god.
If this really is Mint's flagship then I am happy I sail on one of the smaller ships cause Cinnamon can't even stand in KDE's shade. I know it is my opinion, but it is so dull. Look in the file manager and what do you see: green envelopes representing folders. Look at what I have now:
snapshot2.png
Then, in the laptop I put the KDE version back on the USB stick, re-booted the main computer with it, erased the home folder to get rid of everything Cinnamon placed there and installed my version: LinuxMint 17.1 KDE-64.
For me it is KDE and hopefully will be for a long long time.
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by jimallyn »

I was absolutely elated as a Linux noob: hooray, there is an alternative to Microsoft! I had been unhappy with the quality of Microsoft's products since the DOS days, but didn't know there was an alternative until 2002 when a friend introduced me to Linux. I first started using Mandrake, then later in the year switched to Xandros when that came out. I dual booted for a long time, but my every day use computer now has only Linux on it.
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by karlchen »

Hey, I am really surprised that currently more longtime Linux users replied and voted here than newcomers to the Linux world.
Some of you switched to Linux more than 10 years ago, when at home I was still a satisfied Windows XP user. :-)
Though I admit at work I started playing around with commercial Unix distributions roundabout 1990. At that time Unix admins frowned upon the idea of using graphical user interfaces on their Unix servers. Some still do so even today. :?
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by Maik »

karlchen wrote:Hey, I am really surprised that currently more longtime Linux users replied and voted here than newcomers to the Linux world
OK, I voted. As a newb I find the Linux Mint forums a rather daunting place, think maybe I need a Boobie Questions forum as a lot of the stuff in Newbie Questions reads like rocket science to me. Happily, Linux Mint works OK for me so I don't need to ask (m)any questions. :)
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by xenopeek »

Pjotr wrote:Fulltime Linux user since 2006: with the unforgettable Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Dapper Drake. :mrgreen:
I also switched to Linux full time with Ubuntu Dapper Drake :)

My first encounter with Linux was with Red Hat and Debian around 2000. I never managed to get either to work properly with my CRT monitor...
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fraxinus_63

Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by fraxinus_63 »

Eleven years ago next month, encouraged by my brother, I bought SUSE 9.1 as a box set. I have used Linux every day since then, although I also retain Windows in a virtual install to run the Adobe Creative Suite.

I found SUSE hard going at first, partly as I just didn't have the Linux mindset - for months, I didn't understand how the kernel itself supports hardware (rather than having to download drivers manually) or how almost any package I wanted could be installed using a package manager (rather than downloading source code or RPMs from the web). But I stuck with it. Then, in 2006, SUSE 10 came along - with the 2.6 kernel, this provided a far better experience, and supported many more USB devices, which was great.

In the late 2000s I used and supported PClinuxOS for a couple of years. This was (and is ...) a very good distro and I learned a lot from their forums. Eventually, however, I realised that a rolling distro was not ideal for me - I use Linux for work of all kinds, and it can be a big problem for me if a routine update brings in a "surprise" of some kind that breaks my workflow. I realised then that Mint's LTS releases would be perfect for me. You have the vast package repositories and PPAs that go with Ubuntu, but at the same time you can feel pretty confident that once a package works, it will always work! I am still committed to them and I am doing my best to encourage others to use them too.
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by Pjotr »

xenopeek wrote:
Pjotr wrote:Fulltime Linux user since 2006: with the unforgettable Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Dapper Drake. :mrgreen:
I also switched to Linux full time with Ubuntu Dapper Drake :)
Dapper was superb.... Just for fun: I have an audio file for you, which will give you that authentic Dapper Drake feeling again. The login sound of the great Dapper itself:
https://sites.google.com/site/computert ... ects=0&d=1

:mrgreen:

I have used it as login sound on many newer releases, but it's simply too long nowadays. Logging into Linux has become so much faster. 8)
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by tdockery97 »

My noob experience was very smooth. I started right off with Linux Mint 8 Helena. With the help of the forums here I was able to easily solve the very few glitches I ran into. It's really hard to believe it's been a little over 5 years since then.
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crust

What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by crust »

Changed in 2008 to a windows XP/ ubuntu dual boot on my desktop, bought a new desktop that was pre-installed with windows 7, directly uninstalled windows and went on with Fedora, build my latest desktop self and imeadietly installed Mint, this was in 2014. Had a laptop for my university once, chugged out Vista after 2 damaged hard drives and installed damn small, Mandriva, Ubuntu and Fedora on it (I was testing some different distro's, stuck with Fedora), recently donated the laptop to a woman who has no money for a computer and installed Ubuntu on it, two days ago I set up some missing packages for her and now she also uses Linux. :D
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by deleted »

I've been using Linux since 2005.
I started with Kanotix when it was based on Debian sid.
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by zoli62 »

I started using of Linux, even when there were only four major distro such as Debian, Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake. I think many people still remember these days. This was the beginning of the 2000s.
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by Fuzzy Penquin »

I am on my second year of Linux use, officially started with Mint 14. I was in bad need of a new desktop, as my then-fiance's watercooled desktop had leaked and caught fire. My desktop became a donar for what was destroyed in his. This household needs two computers, not one. So I was going to build a new one. At the time, Win7 was out and I think Win8 had JUST been released extremely recently or was about to be released (can't remember). I didn't like what MS had done with Win7 and especially 8. So I began looking for alternatives. I would have been ok with Apple's OSX, but I like to scratch-build computers and you can't do that with Macs. I remembered a very long time ago, when I was a child my uncle tried to switch my family to Linux with Red Hat (very early build, like version 1 or 2, maybe 3). My parents hadn't been ready for that, as they were just trying to come to grips with Windows. But the memory of a "red hat" OS had stuck with me, in the back of my brain, all these years. Remembering this, I looked up "Linux" and found that there was more than just Red Hat these days. Did some reading, bought a Linux for Dummies book that came with a multi-distro CD. Then life got in the way and nothing happened on the computer front for a while. Eventually, the topic came back up and I was ready to go buy parts. I had a spare ancient laptop that was super slow, so I figured it would make a good test bed. If I broke it with Linux, who cares. If I hated Linux in the end, then there is always Win7 and Mac options. Took the CD from the Dummies book and tried out the distros that came with it**. Only Mandriva 2010 worked out of the box with the graphics chip, so that's what I tried to live with for a week to see if I could live with Linux. It was a now-old and unsupported version, so I couldn't update anything, try out the software repositories, or anything. But I tinkered with it anyway; broke it once & reinstalled to try again. After a week I desided that I liked Linux enough to ditch Windows. Went distro shopping, and found this Mint-thing. Screenshots looked nice, no insane Metro-like stuff going on. Ordered computer parts, built it, and installed Mint 14. Everything worked out of the box and I was happy. I'm still here today! :D I do have a Win7 drive on this computer, for things that don't run in Linux (many games, although that is changing fast). I live 99% of the time in Mint, though. My now-husband also uses Mint, because his Franken-computer finally became obviously too old for gaming these days. I bought him parts for his birthday, and we found that WinXP will not work on today's hardware. It refused to boot. So I offered him Mint and he took it. He's in his first year of Linux usage.



**Just took the Dummies book back out, and I see Mint 8 listed as one of the included distros! I had forgotten that. It wouldn't boot on my test laptop, so I never did see it. None of the distros booted on that laptop except Ubuntu (stuck in a 600x600 screen res because it didn't like the graphics chip) and Mandriva (flawless). Now I'll have to try Mint 8 in a virtual machine just for kicks, lol.
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by BenTrabetere »

My computer will hit 10-yo this year - I had to replace all of the caps on the m-board in July 2014, which forced me to think about whether to stick with XP (which would its first reinstall in four years), upgrade to W7 (and hope that everthing would work), or try Linux again. Trying Linux was the path of least resistance. I had tried Linux several times starting with RH 5.0, so success was not assured. I figured a dual-boot arrangement was the least threatening.

Eight months later and if I knew then what I know now I have spent more time thinking about how to set up the system, like putting /home in a separate partition on the second hdd, and less time on trying to understand things like the intracacies of the file system structure.

I am still tied to some Windows applications, and that is unlikely to change. The two that are the most important, Photoshop and Acrobat Pro, run well under Wine. I recently bumped to 4MB RAM, and then installed Virtualbox and set up W7. It runs, but it is far from functional. It needs tweaking.

I am now at that wonderful "fixing to think about doing something" stage where everything works well enough to leave alone, but there is enough room for improvement to get me to consider making some changes. Kill XP and reinstall just Linux? Install W7 over XP and continue to have the ability to dual-boot or keep working until I have W7 set up in a fully-functional virtual machine? Move /home or reinstall Linux? If I reinstall, should I stick with 32-bit or move to 64-bit?. Stay with Mate or try Cinnamon? Or do nothing....

In short, my Linux experience has been much better and much smoother than I anticipated. My biggest obstacles along the way were ones that I created.
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by Pierre »

it was Mandrake on some English magazine from the local newsagent.
8) they became Mandriva, eventually.

Then it was with the unforgettable Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Dapper Drake :D
( which is still installed on an old Laptop )

the best ever was Felicia AKA Mint 07, & Helena AKA Mint 08 was nice, too.

re-installing stuff was 8) but usually it was from necessity - broke something again.
- then made my first "Test PC" - especially built to "break stuff" coz it wasn't the production PC any-more :lol:

along the way - was Ubuntu 8.04, OpenSuse, PCLos, Puppy, & SysRecCd - coz things got broken so often. ..
- who remembers getting Ubuntu CDs via SnailMail - direct from Ubuntu ShipIT ??
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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by WinterTroubles »

My introduction to Linux was with Mint 16 last year, I found it to be a revelation after switching from XP. Some of my excellent experience can, of course, be put down to comparing a modern OS with XP.. but, that isn't the whole story as I also found the change in culture from Windows to Linux to be a liberating one and a generally intuitive one, for me at least. That's not to say there haven't been problems or things that didn't work exactly as hoped,but as that is true of every OS I see no reason to expect perfection or complain when I don't get it.

Switching to Linux Mint was the best computing decision I've ever made.

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Re: What was your Linux noob experience like?

Post by Chemical_Ali »

Since the early/mid 2000s, I tried a couple of distros, such as Red Hat, Mandrake, Turbo Linux, and a couple of versions of Ubuntu when they were giving away CDs. But, I didn't last very long with Linux, because I managed to break them all and retreat back to Windows. I doubt I lasted more than a week or two for each distro.

Then in 2008, I decided to give Ununtu another try, and I managed to use Ubuntu as my main OS for just over a year. But, I had to go back to Windows sometime in 2009 due to my multimedia course. I am sure I still have Ubuntu sitting on my hard drive somewhere.

Sometime in 2012, I decided to go back to Linux. But, rather than go back to using Ubuntu, I decided to try Mint. And, for the first time, I managed to get MythTV to work, which was one of my greatest problem solving achievement! :) I kept using Mint as my main OS until a major MythTV update broke my MythTV in 2013. So, in frustration, I went back to Windows again.

Then sometime in 2014, I decided to reinstall Mint. It is currently my main OS.

My overall Linux experience has had plenty of up's and down's. But, I still love using Mint. Linux has come a long way.
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