That's how far back I go, to 1994. I was then a Red Hat person, that is until it became bloatware around Version 8. I went on to SuSE, until ditto, and since then, then I've been all over the place. Currently I am running Vector with XFCE, my first stab at a Slackware derivative, and I like it very much! It is slick, spare in size and very fast, both on my Turion 64X2 laptop and on Semprons. I also run PCBSD, the only system that I have yet seen which is as efficient, and Red Hat 7.2 on an old 1997 Maxvision Alpha workstation with a PC164 motherboard.
I am a long time *nix person, retired for eleven years and decidedly rusty as a sysop ( formerly, HP-1000 A990s running RTE-A, HP-9000s running HP-UX and my old Alpha on Tru64), but these days I write a whole lot more literary fiction than C or Fortran. My current project is trying to resurrect a Micron Millenia TransPort (40MB, 133 Pentium) for sentimental reasons. It was the machine on which I wrote my first novel, using, believe it or not, vi as my editor, but I have not yet found a modern 'light' Linux which will run acceptably.
Anyway, that's me, other than for my login name, Commiercam. I photograph, preferring film to digital, and most of my equipment is Russian and Ukranian because of its sturdiness and the superb lenses, true 'Commie' cameras. Glad to be here!