My first contact with Unices was in 1990 or 1991, on a friend's machine (he'd connected a few modems to it and we all dialled in). My second one was in 1992, with Minix (the only *nix I could run on my 286 box). My third one was Linux in November 1993 (Linux 0.99.12, SLS distribution), and I haven't looked back since. These days, I make my living deploying and tending *nix boxen.