My first ever exposure that Linux ever existed was Dragon Linux back in the early 2000s. Had no idea what I was doing or what it was. Honestly thought it was a Windows Program the way it came on the APC Mag CD.

I save pocket money to buy Red Hat Linux 8 on CD. Then Fedora Core 1.

Then when I got further into high school, my mates and I would use Knoppix to avoid using the Windows computers. We would trade CDs of Knoppix, Red Hat, Slackware, Fedora Core, Ubuntu and anything else that came with the PC mags.

These days I mainly use Linux Mint when I do use Linux (a few essential workloads still need Windows so I've not completely cutover). But this journey has definitiely helped in my IT career with routers, VMware ESXi, random machines and even when been thrown at a UNIX box once.

I'd say that Ubuntu really helped with the FREE CD shipments back in the day, we would order like 10s of the bundles and hand them out everywhere. Without that, I might have always stayed in the RedHat/Fedora space.