Linux didn’t exist until I was 25.

But are we talking earliest age, or length of time using it? I’ve been running Linux on PCs for over 30 years.

Debian and Mandrake in the late 1990s. And I was already almost three times as old as you were when you started. These days I’m happy with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for daily use. I tried NixOS but it threatened to break my old brain.

in 2002 when my windows me computer start looping on the blue screen of death, with all of my college papers/essays/tests/assignments trapped in it.

the recovery media refused to work because i had upgraded the computer several times and i couldn’t afford the $180 windows xp cd. so i bought a linux magazine for $5 that included a copy of mandrake linux installation media and used paper printouts from my college’s computer labs to help me rescue my work from the computer.

I first dipped my toes in when I was probably around 14, messed with Ubuntu and damn small Linux but that was about it. I stuck with Mac as I didn’t enjoy windows and needed something “mainstream” back then. It wasn’t until apple made hackintosh’s somewhat obsolete and Microsoft started cramming AI into windows that I made the switch. I now run NixOS on my gaming rig and personal laptop

I started using linux Slackware in 1996. First time I was paid to install linux on a server in 1998. It was Red Hat 5.2 way before they switch to Enterprise Linux.

Been my desktop daily driver since 1999.

Yes, I’m old.

I first experimented with Linux in 1999, but didn’t stay with it for long as I never got X11 working. I started using it more seriously in 2001 / 2002 and by the time Windows XP was established, I was a full time Linux user. I was a lot older than you though being in my mid-thirties.

I have a physical CD of Ubuntu 6.10, back then they were distributing those over the mail and a friend of mine ordered some and gave me. I still keep it.

I think it was about year 2000 +/- I was about 23 yrs old… I’ve tried a most of the big distros, and was using Ubuntu for the longest time. Now it’s Mint I use…

Just to put you all on notice: I started my kids on Linux from day 1 of their computing lives. I’m playing the long game here. In another 80 years they’re going to be in the longest living users category.

They mostly use Linux as their daily drivers. Any time they have to use windows for school work they also rage at the terrible UI and lack of ease of use. <Insert evil laughter here>

Around 2014 I had hacker phase so I’ve installed BackTrack(Kali Linux), ofcourse I didn’t knew a thing about Linux but hey it was a start :D

Since then I had dual boot with Windows until 2020 when Ubuntu 20.04 dropped and Windows never touched my computers again.

about a decade ago i used to mess around with some debian based distros on dual boot, mostly as a toy
then used xenialpup for a bit when my drives got toasted
then used mint for a year ish as my daily driver before moving to arch which i’ve been on ever since

Only since last July. It’s Arch btw. I love it, but wifey doesn’t understand it and therefore I still have windows. ☹️

Around '99 or '00. A friend of mine was gifted a Linux Magazine subscription and made me a copy of the CD. It was noteworthy at the time because it didn’t have any copy protection and we were neck deep in piracy, keeping our friend group supplied with copies of games that we pulled off of IRC.

Getting a CD full of software that made no effort to prevent copying was intriguing enough that we sacrificed a spare machine one weekend (giving up the ability to play LAN StarCraft!) to see what another operating system looked like.

We tinkered on and off for a year, once we could get dual boot working (thanks to the IRC crowd) we used it a bit more often. Mostly ricing, though that wasn’t a term at the time, and playing with the hacking tools (for educational purposes only, of course).

I think there was some copy protection mode that was annoying to write on Windows but trivially easy on Linux, which was the first time that I can remember where it was just better than Windows. That, and ARP poisoning our LAN parties to packet capture and read people’s AIM and ICQ conversations because we were little shits.

about 20 years ago. Early 2000s I started messing around with Redhat and was suprised that a full OS that did most of the windows things was available for free. when Ubuntu gained traction I jumped on that and tried distro hopping a bit before landing aolidly on Debian derivatives as my linux of choice. I remember catching a ban in WoW because WINE was detected by their anti cheat for a while.

In my early teens, I got really into computers, built my first PC when I was about 13, started learning Windows batch scripting and using GameMaker to make goofy PC games.

Along the way, I found Trinity Rescue Kit and was also introduced to Fedora Core by a nerdy guy who worked at my local YMCA.

I didn’t actually enjoy it too much back then, so I left it alone for years until about 5 years ago when I started to get back into the free software movement and related interests.

I’ve been 100% on Linux for about 4 years now and never looked back.