My underground software piracy crew ran Slackware.

Phrozencrew for Life!

In the mid 90's I can across a linux magazine that had a version of Mandrake linux 6.0 and I recall reading and becoming more interested and aware of open source software and linux as an alternative to Windows 95/98. Although I continued to use Windows up to XP, I continually read and played around with Mandrake and found it was more to my liking.

I was using cracked versions of Windows and software, and the ideal of an operating system with it's own software repos made perfect sense. I couldn't do all the things in linux at the time, that we take for granted nowadays, like gaming, and sound was hit and miss, but linux represented, for me, freedom from the shackles of Windows.

Fast forward a couple decades, and my evolution has taken me from Mandrake - Ubuntu - Vector/Slackware - antiX/Sidux - PCLinuxOS - Arch/Manjaro and back to my personal all time fave Slackware.

My my first college roommate introduced me to it in 1994 and I told him to keep it I'd continue using my Mac's. Then Jobs made Mac's PC's and I started delving into Linux while using my real Mac's. My real Mac's became to slow so I bought a Latitude instead