I have always been interested in computers, and would find myself hanging out with the Computer Science students instead of the Aviation Management or Business Management students I was a part of. At home and at work I have been largely self-teaching myself using computers starting with Excel and Access with VBA through ASP and SQL at work. Thankfully my current employer values education, and so I have been taking classes and not only learning the technology, but un-learning what I have been doing wrong over the years. At home, though, I have been teaching myself Linux, system administration, networking and the overall method of migrating our system from Windows to Linux. I am involved in the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS.org) I have the opportunity to take what I've learned the hard way and hopefully help others.. I have been enjoying Open Source for a while now, and I am hoping to get a better understanding of the entire model and application.
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Great story, and I laugh at your college-age experience because we had Vax VT100 mainframe server and one Windows 3.1 the lab assistants (only) were allowed to use. I graduated 1994 too, but took a different route. I didn't get into IT or Linux until 2000s but now sort-of am using Linux at work.
Great story! I like seeing how people get to where they are!
In early 2002-2003 I was using an older Windows 98 machine which was dog-slow and unstable. At the time my thoughts were either to get a new Window or Mac computer. Then a friend kept telling me about Linux.
I liked moving to it because it was more up-to-date than Windows (98, not even XP) and looked and felt a lot better than a Mac.
Since then I have picked up a number of computers second-hand and if I didn't have the media, product keys, etc. I always knew I had Linux as a fallback. So I received a lot of machines over the years (heck, haven't bought a new computer for myself since 2000 which was the one I converted to Linux) without too much worry since "if all else fails, install Linux and be done with it".
Even now, my main computer used to be my Mom's from about 2010. It works alright and while I did upgrade from the Windows 7 it had to 10 when it was made available for free, I am currently running Pop! OS Linux on it and considering whether I should switch it to Fedora (LXDE spin) to eek out just a little more "ooomph!".
I even was exploring Docker on it for a while, which is something on Windows requires Windows Pro which I don't have.
So Linux not only refreshes my old, aging machines. It also allows me access to technology that Windows bars me against using. Plus, even things like thin clients, web servers and more are available to try without a "limited time trial" or "x number of seats" limitations!