uhh... I don't really know. I'd used GNU on SunOS and Solaris on sparc for 5+ years before I "inherited" the volunteer sysadm position at a uni research lab that had some GNU/Linux PCs, but I have no recollection of what distro that was. that was in 199[56]. it might have been Red Hat [GNU/]Linux, because I recall reinstalling/upgrading lab machines with it later on, without thinking (or knowing) much about the issue. it was pretty much the same GNU I was used to, and that was what mattered to me. I even built myself most of the GNU packages on it, as I'd done on other base systems and arches while doing sysadmin work for the department, so that whatever the original base system was, I actually ran GNU on them ;-)