In the early 90's a startup I joined changed direction and I had to learn
DEC Unix on the Alpha's for the hardward/software products we made.  Really
nice OS and hardware.  The great thing is I learned enough to get started on
a Linux server on my own.

I wanted some kind of file and printer server, so, after that ride, sometime
in 1999 I bought a very used PC from my first consulting customer for $25
(they were unloading a lot of hardware).  I added a new big harddrive
(10G!).  Naturally (as it was free and I sort of knew Unix enough) I
installed Red Hat and went from there.  For the first few years I upgraded
until RH7, then ran that version until last fall when a board failure
occurred.  So that little box ran flawlessly for 10 years!