My first install was L-Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on an old IBM laptop. It installed without a hitch, unlike every windoz installation. Every windoz installation from win3 to win7 blue screened during installation (I now do not have a win10 machine). In fact, the laptop STILL works!
However, yesterday's Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installation (another, not so old win7 laptop) died with a disk error (new disk right out of the box). One sentence from the process said it failed, no help as to why or what to do. I ran "Disks" but it was absolutely NO help. It ran for 3 hours and all was good except the last test (what ever that was). Again, no information, no details except it failed. I ran gParted to delete all the partitions created by the installation. Re-ran the install and it seemed to work. Sad to say, the installation looked a lot like a windoz installation. Lots of pretty pictures scrolling by, but the important stuff (installation) failed. So much for progress (14 to 20).

I remember being amazed at how much nore control I had than using windows then I remember how easy it was to mess up my system

I got my first Linux in a 4 CD set called Slackware in 1995 (I think)at the Dayton Hamfest. I took it to my shop and spent hours getting it installed but within a few days I had 4 bonded telephone lines hooked to a Linux server and 4 Linux workstations able to access the new fangled World Wide Web. I had sandwiches, candy, coffee and soft drinks for sale and charged $1 for 20 minutes on the Web. Lets see Windows 95 do that.

It was a very exciting experience. I had interest in Linux for a few years and was interested in a version called Lindows, until MS killed it. Then after a few years I loaded Ubuntu from a disk that was included with a Ubuntu Linux manual. Loved the system almost immediately. Then I tried OpenSUSE, liked that a lot too. Then tried Bodhi for a while until my laptop pooped out on me. The next stop was Mint, about 2016, and have use it since then.

My first GNU/Linux install was in Feb-2008. It was 'Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon'. I recall the excitement of finally leaving M$ and looking to learn a new OS.

I remember it was time to upgrade Windows 98 to the new version, the SE, well after this my top of the line awe 64 gold soundblaster card would only play a midi file in windows. Downgrading did no good it was the same no sounds except midi. I went to the same store I bought the card in as I had seen this box for Redhat 5.2 for sale. I had been reading all about this linux thing on the web so I bought it took it home and did an install, once I got to the sound section running configuration utility they had allowed me to have sound once more. That was the last day I used windows on a daily basis more than couple of decades ago.

Debian Etch! (2007)

Windows/Office was expensive and buggy. Also we're big on recycling and won't scrap ageing computers just because they get impossibly slow trying to run windows with its long list of processes, and having to try and stop the redundant ones running in order to just get on with stuff. Debian was (and is) great for old hardware.

Since then its been Ubuntu, Fedora, Opensuse and now Zorin, with regular revisits to Debian.

Loved the software repositories right from the start.

Also the ability to try a source build and if it caused conflicts, no bother... just do a clean install.

It was IIRC 1992. FTP. 20 floppies. It didn't even have "man". I tried to install man, and that demanded "groff", groff demanded other stuff, and I finally gave up. As a DOS programmer, I found the list of Linux features impressive. Multi-tasking, multi-user, unlimited virtual memory, etc.

We went on a trip to Moscow, and I took a set of "SLS" floppies. My programmer friend there didn't think there would be much interest in Linux there because "Nobody had a 386". He was wrong. I gave him the 50 floppies, he gave them to a friend, who copied them, that friend gave them to another friend who copied them, and it was quickly all over Moscow. So I guess I introduced Linux to Russia.

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My First Linux install was Manjaro KDE about 2 years ago, I found it super easy to setup other than making space for the distro otherwise I dual boot Manjaro For Everything and Windows For Some Gaming and Adobe Software

Late '90s and early 2000's I went thru a distro a year or so. Recall spending the most time with GenToo and RedHat. Then work started using SLES, so I've ran just OpenSUSE at home for the last 15 years. Dual booted Win2000 for a while until the only application I ran with it (TaxAct) stopped working with it, so my home desktop has been purely Linux for the last 6 years.

My first Distro was ... Slackware 8
I had the old DSL box from US West in Colorado...
It took a week to get online but I was Ecstatic when it finally worked.

Mine was Slackware 9.0 - have good memories.

diskettes, nothing but diskettes. I had to boot a 1.2mb diskette and then load from B: as 1.44 diskettes. That took ages with running into bad sectors.

Was slackware 2.1 BTW

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I think mine was ZipSlack, the slackware that fitted on one of those 120mb zip floppy disks. I remember it being somewhere around the time of early Windows 95. It booted in using a dos loader. Eventually i installed BigSlack and got X and Gnome running. but the first one was ZipSlack with pico editor and mc. i think the first thing i ever did after I logged in was type help and for anyone who ever typed help into a shell, you will know how unhelpful it is. Eventually i read the slackbook and that was the start of the journey. Timewise, it was in the mid to late 90s for sure. I didnt use it full time until several years later. i kind of played with BigSlack for some years, did dumb things got rooted a couple of times, reinstalled a lot, then I think I installed Redhat after that, then Mandrake, then Turbo, then Slackware, did LFS, did a lot of source compiling and got a handle on it and patches. Then after that it was a rollercoaster of fedora, debian, arch, centos, gentoo, slackware and finally devuan.

I will always remember having to recompile kernels to get certain graphic card drivers to work, or getting firefox to support some feature that was never enabled by default, which in turn required about 20 source packages to be installed and failed most of the time when compiling.

Linux is a lot easier nowadays for newbs. Nothing like the old days when you logged in, got a console and spent a week trying to get X to work, then another week trying to get something to run on X. Nowadays it boots into a gui and pretty much hands you everything on a plate.

I'm pretty sure it was SUSE.