[Cboldt]

-- IMO, Gentoo is the only one on that list worth trying. --

;-)

Started with Redhat, around 1997, Mandrivia a couple years later. Got into dependency hell after not very long.

On to Gentoo. Was not a terribly difficult transition, but I'd been fiddling under the hood for more than a decade by then. Not trivial, it takes a lttle bit of understanding and patience to work through technical jargon.

Still on Gentoo - and still working in the FVWM environment I'd spent time on since RedHat. Even then I had lots of navigation habits useful to me.

[usconservative]

IIRC, I started with RedHat sometime before 1997, tried Slackware, Caldera Open Linux, and some more I can't even remember right now it's been so long. I gave Gentoo a run for a bit, liked it, then moved on to Ubuntu, where I've been for about 8 years now. I ran both Windows and Ubuntu in my lab environment at home until about two years ago when I threw Microsoft out of my home. The only Microsoft based computer I have is my work laptop, which I'm giving back soon as I'll be using a hosted Windows VM ant work and my personal Ubuntu workstation to connect to it. (The number of Linux users in Tech at the bank I work for far outnumbers the Windows users by at least 6:1. It's about damn' time they accommodated us.)

I'm not a Linux "purist" when it comes to the versions people run. I'm just a Linux fan and given what I do for a living, I'm far more productive on this platform than I ever was with Windows.

For those reliant on MS Office/Office365 and Windows-specific functionality I've no gripes. That's their use case and it works for them.