Of Red Hats and Mints
I've been using Linux since about 1998, when I started my first "real" job at PCI Geomatics. At the time, most of PCI's workstations ran a version of Red Hat Linux. The standard setup revolved around FVWM and Emacs.
I did not find Linux easy. But it was fun.
I installed Linux for the first time in 2000, on a computer I built from scratch (my first one). It was Red Hat 6.2. That installation was not what you'd call "smooth", but I did eventually get it working.
Over the past 12 years, I've used 3 distributions. So that means, on average, I tend to stick with a distribution for about 4 years.