I found out about linux in 2001 while using mIRC on Windows 98 and telling someone about all the crashes and BSOD I was getting. They recommended I try linux. Someone offered to burn Mandrake 8.0 cd’s and mail them to me. I used it for about 2 years before I first started distro hopping.

At the time, I bought a boxed copy of 7.0 at Wal-Mart of all places. That was my first introduction to Linux. Mandrake was easy enough that I could fumble through and learned a ton in the process. Grateful for its existence and the fact that they had a retail version for someone without reliable Internet access at the time

@amoroso My first linux! Around 2001 it was the only thing that would run on my laptop with no issues.

Definitely my first distro. My S3 graphic card was partially supported so I spent a lot of time tweaking X86Config in tty which for sure contributed to build my comfort in the terminal.

While I for sure tried many distros, my 20+ years path of daily drivers was quite straightforward

Mandrake SuSE Debian Arch (probably Server only?) Ubuntu NixOS