I know exactly when I started using Linux, as I was just doing some tidying up and found the original install disc. The label says:

The Internet's Favorite
32-bit Operating System

L I N U X

Slackware 3.2

April 1997

The label also says "In MSDOS type view to start". I did, and things were never the same again.

It came bundled with the book "Slackware Linux Unleashed" (Sams Publishing, ISBN 13: 9780672310126). The book was OK, but I had a hard time getting my head around the fact that this free OS could do routing and NAT just as well as the expensive Cisco routers I usually worked with.

Late 2004 or early 2005. More details (if anybody can bear to read it) in the first entry in my LQ blog.

Initially in 2002 with RedHat 8.0. Never could get it to work as it was supposed to so drifted back to the OEM Windows (back when Acer supplied an install disk). Found Ubuntu in April 2007 just after the release of Feisty Fawn (7.04 and it is still my sentimental favourite from Ubuntu) and have been a Linux user ever since. So I put 2007 because the 2002 efforts were unsuccessful.

In early 2007. Our college's UNIX lab assistant who was pretty uninformed about the difference/relation between UNIX and Linux and the history, kept calling one RHEL 4 box a UNIX box and told us not to ask any questions and GTFO right after some command line practices.
My best friend and I got pissed and installed RHEL 4 on our home PCs and started fiddling to configure Firefox with flash to watch p0rn. Tough times those were, but later on I got love in Fedora till 2011-12 till I found Slackware 13.37.

Regards.

I don't remember, 2001 or 2002 with Slackware

In 1997, was a Unix workstation during a practical class.
First scientific computing experience and never stop since then.
Thanks for remaining me that.

I made my first *nix installation in 1983. Im not sure when my first Linux installation was; late 90's, but I can't remember it. I was using SCO Unix at the time. Yes I am that old.

I bought NetBook that had linpuslight which failed much like x xp2 did on my HP 1230 NetBook got fedora 10 laptop got xubuntu 9.04. Now I'm just using Slackware on my desktop though my NetBook boots off the laptop harddrive lubuntu 12.04

2011

I was writing code for Unix at college in 1998, and looking after a VAX (not the vacuum cleaner!) at work, but never left Windows at home until I tried Mandrake in 2004. Soon moved on to Ubuntu and been there ever since, with forays into Puppy, Knoppix, Fedora and others.

I scraped the money together to mount my own PC in 2000, with a Duron CPU, but no way could I afford to buy THE system! I bought a book at the super market with a Mandrake installation included. Internet was out of the question then, and very slow too, where I live.
Best thing that ever happened to me, although times were hard! :D
The book was great, really going into Linux in depth.
When I had internet, eventually, ADSL had arrived here! I tried other systems of Linux, and now I use Puppy Linux, but I'm thinking about taking a tour into the Arch world for a server I've built recently. Or Ubuntu, as my Puppy is Ubuntu based.
Never been so pleased about being broke, and I've never used windoz since I started on Linux. ;)

I started in 2008 with Ubuntu 7.10 it was I think and in dualboot with WinXP. I've been moving on since and tried at least 14 Linuxes and Solaris and PCBSD as well. Just love it and don't use WinXP that much anymore but still keep it as a backup.

1994 - Slackware, then moved to FreeBSD until RedHat came out.

The first Linux I used was RedHat in end of 2007 and start of 2008, can't really remember.

First time...
 

Back in the day, there only a few distros around. The one I chose was RedHat (it was still free back then). I still have the media I got it on. Since then, I have installed so many, it's hard to remember them all. I was working with UNIX at the time (HPUX, AIX,& Solaris) and wanted something to hone my skills on, so then, RedHat fit the bill. I have had a distro of one sort or another up and running ever since.