Wow, there are quite a lot of people who started GNU in 90s!...
I first tried GNU in 2009 in VirtualBox; installed Debian on a real machine several days before 2010.

I remember that it was at a Staples store in Clarion, PA that I first bought a copy (so I was new to this)of TurboLinux 4.0. I then dabbled with Linux for several years, but when I went back to school in 2009, I really started getting hooked on Linux (because my IT classes were introducing it to us) and my first distro I started using with any great regularity was LinuxMint 5. Currently I run CentOS 6.4 on an HP notebook. Love it!

I believe it was around 2005 with fedora. Not certain what version though

1992-93 here.

Steven

I started in 2001 using Red Hat as packaged with "Linux for Dummies" :-D.

2011 - started using Ubuntu VMs as an easy way to learn about Python and MySQL for postgrad research. I'm now using Debian VMs for this, and have an old laptop running a heavily customised Mint installation connected to TV and speakers as a media centre.

August 2002. Started with Caldera OpenLinux 2.3.

2008 with Fedora or Debian,

Unless you count UNIX 2004. If you count unix 2000/2001

I remember December 1991, a friend of mine told me "LJ, you have to come up and see this OS, it's seriously cool!" It turned out to be Linux. It had virtual desktops, no graphics, but I fell in love. Alas, I only had access to 8086, so I had to wait 7-8 months
before I got the option to start using it.

I started playing around with Caldera Linux (that has a new graphic installer, back in 1996). Then I tryed Mandrake and SuSE, good ones. But I got serious with Poseidon (Kurumin/Knoppix scientific variation), and then the Ubuntu family.
Today I use SolydXK (Debian testing branch) and PCLinuxOS (also rolling release), along with MiniNo for older hardware.
Cheers.

My first distro was Slackware, which I bought in boxed form from a CompUSA store in Houston, Tx.
I'm an SAP and Lawson developer. I've been writing on Unix systems since 1975 and wanted to have my own
386 based Unix for my very own. This boxed set of Slackware was about $120 as it included several 3.5 inch floppies and many manuals.
As I recall, I was just freaked out on the drive home with that stuff. I almost had an accident twice just looking over at the box.
This was I believe the spring of 1995 or maybe the fall of 1994 and I eventually settled on using Debian full time in 1997
Starting with Debian SARGE, I think... Then got stuck on Potato.

Hmm. Does that decline in uptaking linux from 1997 onwards mean, that linux adopters dwindle? Are we doomed to suffer extinction ? Or is this poll just skewed by enthusiasm, the number of participants in the poll, happenstance or something else? I'd like to hear your thoughts, Jeremy, after you think that enough or a suitable number of members have voted. P.S.: I started in 2000 (or 1999?) with SuSE and stayed with her ever since...

2006, Knoppix. Beginning of a very, very long way. Book + CD.

I started dual booting linux/window in 2005 then linux only in 2006