The particulars of how I discovered GNU/Linux is a bit vague, but I think it was completely by accident. I first started using GNU/Linux back in March 2003 when I bought Mandrake distribution 9.1. I was very excited about using "Linux" because I could not imagine how my computer could operate without Windows! It was as if I thought "PC's" were made only for Windows. I used Mandrake distribution for four months and then decided to go back to Windows XP, because the dial-up modem was a soft modem. Mandrake GNU/Linux was unable to use the modem! Back at that time, I was unaware that Free Software existed, and was ignorant about my rights and freedoms as a Free Software user.
My next experience with GNU/Linux was on February, 2005 when I discovered the Linspire distribution. It wasn't until December of the same year when I installed Linspire on my laptop. To be completely honest, the only reason I installed Linspire is because a computer virus corrupted an essential system file on windows, rendering it unable to boot! In the years I used Linspire, I repeatedly saw references to "RMS" on their forum! I later discovered that "RMS" is Richard Matthew Stallman, the creator of the GNU OS and the Free Software Foundation! For the most part, Linspire GNU/Linux users subscribed to the Open Source movement, and did not associate themselves to the ideals of Free Software. Linspire was not liked in the Free Software community because it included non-free software! During this time and afterward, I tried many other GNU/Linux distribution including Debian, Damn Small Linux, Fedora, etc. I used Linspire GNU/Linux until 2009.
In the summer of 2009, I switched to Linux Mint distribution. I liked it because it had features that I thought was cool and innovative! While the main version includes non-free software, the community version does not! While I am using Linux Mint now, I am seriously thinking about switching to Trisquel GNU/Linux, a fully Free Software Operating System. It includes absolutely no non-free propietary software! This means there is no flash player or any other non-free multimedia codecs. While this will limit the functionality of the Operating System, the new HTML5 standard will soon render it moot! We all know how bad youtube videos are. This is because Youtube encodes the uploaded videos in the .swf flash codec, which is non-free!
That is my story of how I got started using GNU/Linux
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