I think i paid $30.00 for disk and book.

Redhat 6.0 bought shrinkwrap from Staples in 1998

Loaded it on an old computer. Too slow and I wasn't enticed. A year later I tried Slackware and never looked back.

I don't remember, it's been soooooooo loooong. Just kidding....

Mandrake

pclinuxos

I started with Mandrake some time between 2003 and 2004 (don't remember the exact year). Shortly after that, I switched to Suse for a while, then began distrohoping for some time, and finally settled down with Debian Sid around 3 years ago (though I also have openSuse and Ubuntu installed in my main PC, and LMDE on a secondary PC).

knoppix 3.5 from a linux magazine

I came across Red Hat (version 5 something) tried to load dual boot with Windows and make a complete hash of it. Found a copy of Knoppix on a magazine and tried it a as Live Floppy. It worked. Impressed. Since than many distros tried, but now keep OpenSUSE as main Linux system (I am a fan of the control YAST program) with of course Knoppix on a USB key or DVD now.

I started with Fedora 6, but tried Debian, Ubuntu for a long time, Knoppix, Linspire, Zorin, Bodhi, Puppy Linux (great for quick fixes). I switched from Ubuntu, when desktop changed , to Linux Mint (Cinnamon), but I like openSUSE too which I use at work.

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The firm I was working for "promised" they were going Unix, so I installed Mandrake on a small - 1.8 GB ? left over drive to mug up on *nix. I couldn't get much of it work, and the "promise" turned out to be the usual flummery so I sidelined it. A year or so later I bought a bigger drive and loaded up Fedora Core 4, which worked!
I needed a text editor with a variety of functions, including a word count, and Kate was the only one that fitted the bill (then but not now, alas), so I soon went KDE, on Fedora Core 4, Kubuntu (disaster), SUSE (nice but a few serious problems), Vector (words fail me), Kubuntu (a good one), Debian (Etch and Lenny), Mepis (nice but a bit behind the times), Mint, and now Netrunner (dedicated KDE).
Netrunner is, for me, great, I'm about to install the new Enigma.

Slackware on the floppy diskette. Now I can't believe the size of my Slackware64 14.0 on the DVD. Cheers.

Ubuntu 6.06 8.04,8.10,9.04,9.10,10.04,10.10 all dual boot with other distro's opensuse,mepis,linux mint, and now only fedora 18 kde.

Enigma? Oh in Netrunner ok: http://www.netrunner-os.com/about/

My first was ubuntu 9.04 in 2009 ,got a copy from a classmate college.I have been using mostly Linux ever since but have moved to Linux mint since advent of unity.unfortunately I dual boot with windows 7 because I can't get a driver for my zte tu25 4g wimax modem

I started with Ubuntu - the version before Hardy - but moved sideways to Kubuntu and am still there. Puppy is loaded onto another partition
as it is very useful for resolving problems. I have a couple of spare partitions for trying other distros but most of the work is done
in Kubuntu - the latest LTS version.

TuxfordC

I started with Ubuntu 7.10 in 2008 it was I think. I installed it as a dual boot with WinXP and was sweating it out until the end but but worked. Since then I have been using Fedora,LinuxMint, OpenSuse,Debian,Slackware,Sabayon,Centos,Mandriva,Mepis. After that I also installed PCBSD and Solaris (that's a hard one) just for fun. Running 13 linuxes now and winXP but my main is Ubuntu 10.10.