I had a premed roomate in the towers at OSU my first year there (1995) that introduced me to a lot of things one of which was Linux. I didn't use anything x86 so my GaS meter didn't move much. 11 years later Apple jumped shark so I started using x86 so played around in Linux but nothing more. FF a few more years and Lion hits and all the paradigms changed and I didn't like it much, ML dropped support for one of my machines and Apple killed the 17" MacBook Pro the last actually flexible Mac portable let's not even get into the iTube. I've sold all my Mac Pros I still keep a couple MBP's around and I really hope that Apple will make a computer that appeals to me before those die. I still use Mac's at work and will do so until SW is up for replacement but that's pretty far into the future.

Back in January 2001 Readers Digest published an excellent article on the young Linus Thorvald. odp presentation type file of Readers Digest Jan 2001 article.
http://rapidshare.com/share/DDA808FF...FC7F16F7D4CF87

I see a meme starting.

In 2000 I was in a bed, recovering from an illness, not very active and completely naive concerning PC's. I was also relatively broke...but I did lots of reading, mainly computer and electronics magazines, books, it really got to me
I scraped together enough to build a PC with an Athlon 1300 Duran (hard to remember the names )
Then I relized I'd never be able to afford an OS like Windows, so I bought a cheap Mandrve Book with the installation CD included. Wow, my first ordy, working on an OS I knew nothing about.
But the book was really detailed, just up to writing Bash scripts, a wonderful intro to Linux, and I loved it. I read the enormous book from front to back.
At the time though, there was no Internet in the village, except slow telephone type...then we got ADSL, which not gives a whopping 2mb/sec! f you knew the isolated village I live in, you'd be over the moon with it, just like me.
Then, with ADSL, the search for a really great Linux flavor commenced.
I'm now on a Ubuntu based Puppy Lucid, although, as I'm in the process of getting a server/client system up and going for the house I'm in, I'm still searching, and seriously thinking of making a 64bits Puppy for server and virtulisation purposes.
Time is a factor that seems to be flying past at a speed, and nothing's left for PC development, but I'll slow down when the house is finished, and get a good informatic system up and running every where.
I fell for Puppy hook line and sinker. It's very versatile, bug proof and virus proof, easy, compact, yet you can put as much or as little you want to into your system, nack-up regularly, and really good to work on.
And there you have my story of falling in love with Linux, and never using any other system (nor intending to ). Linux is not just an OS it's a way of living your informatic experience, with complete control.

That's what I have now...and my parents recently upgraded. It used to be 100 KB/sec...a 750MB ISO took a few hours to download. Now I think I'm living in a dream when I can get the same size ISO in under an hour.

I might start a poll about what people's Internet speeds are...

2mb a second here too! Also rural area. Sometimes when I install Xubuntu it says it can't connect but it always does if I install from live. As a newbie I found Puppy Linux a bit confusing sometimes - but have really fallen for Bodhi Linux - also light and you can fit it on a 4GB netbook with Firefox, Adobe Flash, VLC and Mirage, plus a pdf reader, and still have 1GB free! And it's fast and looks lovely and easy to use - when you get the hang of it.

I switched to Linux mainly because I got frustrated when Windows kept crashing on me. Before that, I regarded Linux as a rubish freebee.

Toutou Linux france was my first distro (Found in web downloading sites in France).
I was working all day long wih Windows at the office, so i was curious to see something else.
But they are 1700 puppy linux. I have not yet finished my visit !

My first genuine job in the tech industry was working for a small software company. We ran RHEL 7.3 and RHEL 2.1 when I joined. We hung onto them WAY too friggin long, but by the time I left they were transitioning to RHEL 6 (7 years later).

It was a mixed environment of Windows server and Linux by the time I left, unfortunately. Some dev got it in his head that Windows was the way to accomplish his vision, it seemed.

Tired with endless reinstalling WinXP, and unintentionally tried something different. Some flavour of Ubuntu with a complete office suite, installed in 15 minutes and recognized all of the devices was the first bell.

[SIZE="3"]When I broke my Windows 7, I searched for a way to rescue Windows and found a distributionpromising to rescue Linux or Windows 98. After much reading and rereading, I used Wubi to install YLMF inside a factory restored Windows 7, then turned to partition editing and hard drive installs of Linux. That was three or more years ago. I now use thirteen Linux distros 90 % of the time, from the HD, and numerous others from USB or CD/DVD. I don't ever want to go back to 100% Windows, and at one point used Linux exclusively for two years straight. I recovered my Windows most recently from a DVD I bought online. I want to be able to use my computer and decide for myself which OS to use each time I power up. I'm a big fan of Zorin, LXLE, and Netrunner.

"....from a DVD I bought online."

OK -- What is the name of the DVD???
Help the rest of those with same problem.

Norseman01

I don't really have a one reason, but I wanted something different.
Also, Open Source is generally safer from malware than Windows, I heard, and I wanted to update from Win 7, minus the hefty price tag.

So there I discovered Linux...

A guy at work suggested I give it a try. I installed it on my laptop and it overwrote the MBR, leaving me unable to boot into Windows. Being totally incompetent at the time, I was unable to fix the MBR or set up a working dual boot, so I used Linux. That's how it all started.

Two things:

1.) Open source is free, stable; Make a program do one thing very very well!

2.) The unergonomic feel of Windows OS. The first thing that comes to mind is that I can't wheel-scroll a browser that doesn't have active focus in Windows.