How did you first got into GNU/Linux?

The first free software system I used was NetBSD on an old Mac computer that I was given. My motivation was to have a Unix-like sytem, because this is what I used as a student and things like windows or mac looked so inflexible in comparison. I can't remember the detail but configuration was a pain, it took a long time just to get rather basic things to work, I did not know how to get help, at some point I gave up.

After that, I used a windows PC and eventually switched to a Mac. During covid, I had more time to spend online, I read more on the GNU and FSF website and decided to get rid of non-free software. First, I switched to free software programmes on the Mac, then I bought a RYF-certified computer with Trisquel pre-installed. Now, I am also using Parabola. I tried GuixSD but did not really use it so far. It looks interesting but much more difficult to understand.

I should have gotten into PCs when they first came out (yeah, I'm that old) but I didn't. I don't imagine it would have been a lot easier to learn back then but what one learned would really illuminate all the things that came to be developed and it's easier to learn when you're young.

I was given a computer with Windows 95. I kept getting messages when I was trying to do stuff. Rude messages (when you see them over and over they get to be rude) messages telling me I wasn't allowed to do whatever I was trying to do. I couldn't find understandable explanations. Being hard headed and obstinate I saw it like an issue of control; a little paranoid I was in those days. I felt Microsoft had developed all this tech to control us all, tell us what we can and can't do. I look back and on some level my attitude seems silly, but maybe kind of intuitive. And 'the love of money is the root of all evil.'

I don't know where I heard about GnuLinux but I was excited by what I heard. Open sourcing was a more democratic way to develop things and would be more about what is good for people. I came close to installing GnuLinux one time but I couldn't get past the part where it kept telling me I had to have a root partition /. What? What does that mean? Then Red Hat Server 8 just handled the partitioning and I finally had a Linux running. It was beautiful. I have never looked back. I feel much freer.

>I tried GuixSD but did not really use it so far. It looks interesting but much more difficult to understand.

It looks hard but it is really easy: it's like thinking of installing arch when you are an Ubuntu user: it looks very difficult, but when you actually install it, it's not harder than installing Debian.
I also recently installed Parabola GNU/Linux-Libre and I'm finding myself very well, pacman is the only package manager I am very familiar with (even if I used apt and apt-get for a long time).

The moment I heard about GNU/Linux distros in 1998 I ran to the book store and bought books and magazines that had CDs with distros on them. I initially tried Turbolinux, RedHat, and SuSE, and I stayed with SuSE until I started to explore fully free distros sometime around 8 years ago.

I used Windows 95 for a couple of years before that, but I did not like that Microsoft was removing the ability to interact with the OS from the MS-DOS command line. GNU/Linux distros were my way of continuing to interact with the underbelly of the OS via the command line.

Prior to that I used a time-sharing computer at my university which was running some form of Unix. We had a spaceship fighting game that you could play against other students that were using the same timeshare computer on the various terminals in the computer rooms around campus.

My first computer experiences were on a friend's Apple II and on the IBM PC clone computer that my dad bought for the work that he would bring home from the office. Our first game among my friends was a text-based Dungeons & Dragons game on the Apple II. We spent hours in that game walking into walls in dark caverns - very boring.

I used Windows since 1998. When Windows 8 came out I hated it and stayed on 7. Then the Snowden leaks came. Then Windows 10 released and I hated that as well. By then I had already been dipping my toes into Linux to back up data at work. I decided to switch to Linux full time as my daily driver in 2015 and switched to Linux Mint. From there I tried different distros and eventually learned that the Linux kernel wasn't fully open and had closed source blobs. I discovered Trisquel around three years ago and have switched all but one system over to it.

First used it when I was forced to "upgrade" to Windows Vista. Couldn't stand it, and couldn't stand the fact that I couldn't change anything about it. Haven't used anything Windows (outside of when required at work) since then.

Went down the rabbithole with Free Software. I tend to be all or nothing with principles like these. Trisquel is by far the best Free operating system I've used.

>Which graphical environment are you using with GuixSD?
I am using i3 with the same config file as Parabola

>Do you install software by updating /etc/config.scm, by "guix install" or some other way?
I do guix package -i PACKAGE to install software

Everythink works completely fine on my t420. Maybe it's an hardware problem (very unlikely), what computer do you use?

It was at the 00's. I had an, already deprecated, used pentium pro with 64mb of ram. At the time I was trying to "demicrosoft" windows XP, not only by replacing ie with Netscape and media player with winamp. I was trying to delete dll by dll to see when windows will crash and start again from scratch.
One day I bought a bulk FM PCI card which later I found that lacked drivers for XP.
Searching at the ancient internet I found that someone in China made drivers for something called gnu/linux. I didn't even imagine at the time that another OS even existed.
I went to the bookstore and used all my money to buy a redhat 9.3 disk.
For days I tried installing it. It took me weeks to write chars in my native language (Greek). There were days that I didn't sleep loading modules and modprobing the kernel until my FM card one day played music through my speakers!
After all this years I still feel the same excitement as that day.
I am writing this post as I am in the bus, on my way to take another bus, then an airplane and then a train to go to Free Software Mecca for a day, Bien/Biel to speak and celebrate GNU's 40 year birthday.
Maybe the person who wrote the driver for the FM card will be there also but most probably not.
Even then, the driver she/he wrote back then will be there in my heart.
Happy GNU to all!!!

Deleted (double post)

Very nice story.

>It was the 00's
WOW! I never saw a time traveler!
How is the Roman Empire? Is Marco Emilio Scauro still alive (I doubt)
And also you are giving historians a very big piece of information: GNU/Linux existed at that time, did you buy it at your local tavernae?
That also means that GNU is not 40 but 2023 years old.

It is all in the books!

Behold, the great St. Stallman!
Saviour of the humans, he has descended from the sky for sharing his knowdoledge with us!

The first time I heard about Red Hat was way back when I bought Windows game to run on my brother's computer. He suggested that because he wanted me off his computer that he would install the Red Hat operating system.

It stuck with me for a few years that there was something else out there... on WOE 98 my games would crash; on MS WOE XP it was still hard to acquire software that I wanted whether it was for security purposes, school or games. It just happened that I picked up a book by Rob Limo on Point and Click Simply MEPIS. I could have bought the fedora book, but I guess the blue book seemed more flashy as well has had the CD that I needed to boot the system. I had a hard enough time with Ubuntu before that in that I couldn't figure out how to get a working CD with the software I had (Nero something).

Anyways it took me a few years of reading on GNU/Linux to feel that it was right for me and that I too could help out. Here and there I stuck my head out to help, but I haven't done much in my personal opinion.

It's interesting that many of you have started with Red Hat Linux.
Was it (actually) easier to use than Debian or Ubuntu?

https://trisquel.info/en/forum/missing-program-and-other-problems

Has text about how I switched from Windows 8 (non-floss), to Debian (now non-floss), than to Trisquel.

Seeing it was posted there, I was just placing a link here, so I do not put duplicate text here as well.

I started using Linux while fixing computers for a living. I used it to make backups of customer data before doing anything that could lose files. Linux gave me far less issues than copying data from within Windows. I had used Ubuntu. When Windows finally wore out it's welcome with me as a daily driver in 2015 I gave Linux Mint a try and that got me started on my personal systems. I hopped from Mint to Manjaro to Solus to Garuda. I learned of Trisquel; the FSF; the libre kernel; Libreboot; etc around 2020 or so. I have put Trisquel on everything except my gaming system but am even trying to make a go of that as well with mixed results.

Changed from windows 8 to 8.1 and noticed ram usage tripled and did research about more secure hardware/OS and talked to a family friend briefly about more secure windows or google systems, this family friend mentioned neither are secure.

Said he was at an IBM meeting and asked if there was a backdoor and everyone was silent.

He told me this and I searched for answers to leave windows in the past.

Took me a few years, but I did it.

Distrohopping/going back to windows happened during that time and after two years did a lot of distro hopping till 2018 when I settled on a distro I actually enjoy. Although I did hop around less around 2015+

And that is the history of my experiences.

In 2020, I got tired of W10, google, ads, garbage software and spying. It started with setting up PI hole on a RP Zero and then flashing GrapheneOS on a Pixel 4a. Then I started to go down the rabbit hole, learned about Free Software, GNU/ Linux, Libreboot. I started with Mint on a old laptop, then bought a Thinkpad T60 to run Libreboot. Heard about Trisquel and found home with my everyday OS.