Although I'd fooled around with some other distros before then, my first serious affair with Linux was the 1998 v6.0 of openSuSE. It came on a buttload of discs. openSUSE was my favorite for many years after that.
How long have you been using Linux?
2009, When HDD went bad, I started using Ubuntu with persistence on an 4GB usb, months later I brought a new HDD, and installed windows 7, dual boot with ubuntu, later when windows 8 was released, I admittedly loved it, but for three months... never got back to it, 98% of my time was ubuntu... until an upgrade gave me headache, then I ventured trough Arch world and uninstalled windows officially.
As I started to be sweet on a girl from school, and saw how time consuming Arch was for me, and started using fedora, distro hopped to openSUSE, then manjaro. As distro hopping is time consuming too, I was searching for something new and worries free, with no sucess. And later when budgie began it's first steps toward the end of the tree, I got into Solus... never got back...
If it wasn't for Solus I wouldn't be married with that girl, and wouldn't have kids, because I would be using arch or distro hopping like crazy... I recommend! Solus is good for your life! 
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2004 dual boot of Windows with Suse 9.0
Since about 2014 I boot Windows only seldom.
Since end of 2019 Solus, before that Gentoo (longest time), Ubuntu (4 years maybe), Suse (2 years maybe)
I've switched to Linux in 2014, because windows XP was nearing its end of support and I didn't want to be forced into either using an unsupported system or switching to Windows 7.
Ubuntu 14.04 was my introduction to Linux. I distrohopped for a fair while, I've tried out Ubuntu (back then with Unity) and it's various spins (Kubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Xubuntu), Linux Mint XFCE, elementary OS, Manjaro, Antergos and some others.
I think some time in 2017 (or maybe 2016) I've settled on Antergos (it was an Arch based distro that used stock arch repositories, similar as to what endevour OS is today).
I've used it for around a year or two, but having been forced to reinstall it every 3-4 months after having imminent post-update breakage, I've decided to try out Solus some time in 2018 in an effort to find a distro that's rolling like Arch, but offers a more stable experience.
That's exactly what I've found. I've been using it ever since as my main OS. Solus has managed to stop my distrohopping tendencies in its tracks.
It's rock solid. My current install is over 2 years old.
Operation #1: repository update
Date: 2019-05-18 16:47
* Solus repository is updated.That's the Solus stability for ya!
I started using linux with souls in early 2020. It is my 1st Linux operating system that I test.
Mandrake 10.0 2004
My first contact with linux was at school, with ubuntu 12.04, since then I learn to love it and I've been with solus since version 1 I guess.
YuriTheHenrique If it wasn't for Solus I wouldn't be married with that girl, and wouldn't have kids, because I would be using arch or distro hopping like crazy... I recommend! Solus is good for your life!
Wait, a case of Linux being of help with the ladies? Is this Bizarro World? ^^
- Edited
I used windows growing up as most people, but when Windows 10 came it became a headache, they have made customization and system access extremely hard to navigate. And then in 2017 when i started college I jumped into Ubuntu as it was the most popular Linux I heard most of my friends were using. But one day my laptop hanged during an update and there was no roll back option, the OS was corrupted and I had to wipe and reinstall. So, I quit on Ubuntu that day. I friend of mine who was using Solus introduced me to it. And I have been loving it since. There has never been an issue on Solus that i couldn't find a solution to. And the Community is so much better and active than any I have ever experienced.
I installed this OS in 2017 and Its still working no matter what happened, even when I couldn't boot into it I always found a solution to my issue. That's the Stability of Solus.
9 months later
Since '98 miracle cure(second disaster)
I ran into Ian Murdock at a Botanical garden and haven't touched BGOS since
Typing on Solus now(learning it).
Main OS is Crunchbang ++ 2021- sid,another ssd carries Sparky rolling(bookworm) Openbox Noir
Wow, this brings back memories! I bought a red hat 5.0 box set (released December 1997) from the local Micro Center. I brought it home and I did what everyone else did and still does ... I installed it on an old Gateway i486 machine that was beginning to gather dust. My primary machine at the time was a shiny new Pentium, running OS/2 Warp. With Warp, I was anxious to learn something about Ethernet and networking, so I jammed a 3COM card into everything that moved and over time the i486 morphed into a combination router, print server and NAS. A second i386 machine acted as my gateway/firewall, which had a US Robotics 56K modem attached.
It was a fun time of exploration and kernel compiling ... which on a i486 took most of an afternoon! I must have read that Red Hat Linux Unleashed book, cover to cover, at least three times!!! 
If I'm truthful, I was late to the desktop Linux party. I didn't begin to use desktop Linux with any regularity, until Linux Mint 6 was released (December 2008). I remember installing it and then about a month later, Mint 7 was released. Since then I've used Linux on the desktop nearly exclusively, keeping a copy of Windows around only to play a few old favorite Windows games from time to time.
GumbyDamnIt I bought a red hat 5.0 box set (released December 1997)
I did the same. For what I paid, I was supposed to have 90 days of support. But I didn't NEED any support from them for a while, but it was barely more than 90 days later when I had my first question for them, and they refused to answer me.
I haven't installed any Red Hat product since then. I believe that was when I first tried openSuSE, and stayed with them for many years ... all the way up to Tumbleweed.
For me it was Apple Forever, from 1982 till 2006. At that time my iBook hard drive crashed. I refused to pay massive $$ for another Apple hardware product. Tried out several Linux distros, including Mandrake, Suse and Ubuntu, which were interesting but not desktop ready yet. Then I stayed with FreeBSD on my desktop, until I found Linux Lite around 2013. I was happy with Linux Lite, and then I found Solus in 2018. Never looked back since. 
Since back in the day when forum creators only had one page per topic that was 117 KM long 
That was about 2 days after Al Gore invented internet....HEY ! That's why they're galled algorerythms
Since 1995. I was hyped back in the days about OS/2 and later Windows 95 and the drummer of my then band told me about Linux. So the next thing i did was buying the DLD ("Deutsche Linux Distribution") which was not very easy to handle for n00bs like myself. So the next day, i went back to the store and got myself my first SuSE Linux.
Linux, BeOS, and other OSes became kind of my hobby for about 20 years. When I became a full on Mac user in 2015, i took a "OS hiatus" until recently. 