@kev a lab instructor where I went to university named Kees den Hartigh was (is?) a Linux enthusiast and encouraged students to use it as an affordable way to have a UNIX like environment similar tho what was used in classes. When kernel v1.0 was released on 1994 I installed it alongside Windows 3.1 and have used it ever since.
I went Linux full time around the time I'd had it with XP and SQL 2000 suffering massive worm attacks and DCOM vulnerabilities about 15 years ago.