Thanks for the insight. I never found Mercurial slow for anything I needed to do. So honestly I didn't recall. (update: I had an impression it was, since I remember reading the kernel team needed something fast, but I never 'felt' the slowness)

What do you mean by "there"?

If you mean you've been working that long my first VCS experience was with MS SourceSafe and quickly moving to CVS. So...

The first I heard of Git (as best I recall) I definitely knew it was from Linus.