I keep hearing that Chrome OS is Gentoo-based but is it really? I mean can you actually run portage on it or was it just built from scratch using Gentoo? How does Google handle system updates? I highly doubt they expect users to compile everything.
Sorry for being a little off-topic.

I suppose I better contribute here. I think my first experience with Linux was trying to install Redhat back when you could still freely download the binary distribution. I was only young back then and missed Windows and my games too much. If I remember correctly it was a little but more difficult to dual-boot back then (maybe because of hard drive sizes?).

I started to seriously use Linux and dump Windows altogether in about 2007 when I discovered Arch Linux. No idea why I chose that particular distro at the time but I did and I learned a lot. Now I'm too lazy to fix things so I prefer "easier" distros like Debian or Ubuntu derivatives.