My first introduction to linux was SuSE 7.2. Got it in the physical box from a local Borders bookstore. I think I was about 12-13 years old. Installed it on the family Gateway computer (PIII, 128mb ram).
SuSE 6.3 for me. With the handbook and everything on CDs it's the sort of introduction to Linux as physical artifacts that you had to deal with. It defined a life-changing experience that's near impossible to avoid. Because you sure weren't able to pull a Docker container of any size in two seconds flat, you weren't able to Google for whatever (Linux Documentation Project was the only website worth visiting), and what you had was what you had, none of this having the latest from github at any time.
It was nice to have these limitations that forced you to sit down and just be with it, free of all the distractions and doubts that arise from always seeing the latest on Hacker News. You knew it was good, you knew you had it all, and you could make the world your oyster with ancient Perl and PHP, documentation and all included right there on those CDs.
My first PC was a used IBM PS/2 Model 70. 2 MB RAM, 60 MB HD. It could not run Linux due to the MCA bus. I lost one year of Linux use because of it, until I bought a Pentium 75.
I remember fondly my first brush with SuSE around 2005, and I was blown away how polished and professional it was. I was a Red Hat user then and later moved on to Ubuntu so I found the YaST based bit foreign to my taste. Those were the days of wild distro-hopping.
I played around with slackware a ton. And mandrake (before mandriva). And OG fedora (still have some Fedora 1 DVD's somewhere, from a magazine)
All of them sucked imho. Switched to Debian when lenny was released and haven't looked back. My current workstation is Debian 12 and it is a rock solid workhorse.
