[anezch]

I live in Indonesia and have a very similar experience and situation (99.99% pirated Windows) with you. From Mandrake 8 to Fedora to Ubuntu 6. I remembered the time when I got my Ubuntu and Kubuntu CDs posted. The experience of using apt to download and update packages were a mindblowing experience at that time. That and the simplicity of Ubuntu was the main reason that I managed to persuade the management in the company where i work to migrate from win98 to ubuntu.

[terrywang]

Good to know, it was enlightening to have the opportunity to see, think and experience different than the majority (others). I didn't realise back then it would have such an impact on me and the journey forward.

I wrote this at Linux's 30th birthday: Building a skill tree around Linux has been the best investment I've ever made for the past 18 years. I believe it is likewise for you ;-)

[solmich]

I got Mandrake 8 from InfoLinux magazine during their roadshows among universities in early 2000s, along with Rusmanto and Onno Purbo. Good old days.

[terrywang]

I dug out the 3 CDs and box Mandrake Linux 8.1 came with (2 are Mandrake 8.1 and 1 for fonts + input method framework) in the attic last time I visited my parents house ;-)

For those who are interested to see how properly copyrighted Linux were sold in the 2000s in China -> [https://twitter.com/terrywang/status/1108847424498331648]