thank you so much for sharing your experience. I am about 6 years younger than you but followed pretty much the same path. I also ran Linux when the kernel was pre .2 etc (Redhat 1.0 was the first commercially linux product I remember.) I think I remember getting Redhat Linux on 10 floppy disks.
I was lucky enough to live in a geographic area where there were a few universities, and my father had access that allowed me accounts on several Unix workstations.
Again thanks for sharing this, this was a really nice read.
I think I'm a little younger than you as well, but my first unix was Red Hat Linux 7. It came on a CD and was so buggy[0] I gave up on it after 6 months. I wouldn't touch another unix until my sophomore year at college, when a roommate convinced me to try Gentoo. That worked for two years before I got fed up with it (I wiped out my /etc one time too many). Then I bought a TiBook from same said roommate and haven't looked back since.
Wow yes, I think with Redhat 7 you still had to make your own kernel source code, which would generally take the better part of an afternoon. Wow great slashdot reference!
I was lucky enough to live in a geographic area where there were a few universities, and my father had access that allowed me accounts on several Unix workstations.
Again thanks for sharing this, this was a really nice read.