I was 15 in 1998 and had just worked our families root beer and popcorn concession stands for 12 days at the Minnesota State Fair. Every penny I earned was used to purchase a brand new iMac in bondi blue.
A year later I sold the iMac via the newspaper classifieds. I used that money to buy my first used laptop and proceeded to install Linux.
I got my Linux distro, Redhat, from a CD-rom inside a book purchased at Barnes & Noble. I must have reinstalled Linux 100x on that machine. I remember using it to take notes in my PSEO (college in high school) classes at the local tech school. Fond memories.
I’m sure Linux has come a long way. I still use it every day on the server, but switched back to mac on the desktop when apple went to Intel and could just run Linux/Windows in a VM when necessary.