Linux

1999, I think. I did attend a handful of packet radio workshops with a nearby HAM club.

Tinkered with a WRT54GL router since 2004, running OpenWRT

Then used SuSE on my work laptop from 2005 to 2010 or thereabouts and was forced to switch back to windows

My Dreambox 7000 satellite receiver also ran Linux.

After that it was 2 iterations of Western digital NASes with optware and some hacking.

Some Cisco/Linksys router with some usb hack as well to get a SSH access.

In parallel a virtual box VM with Opens use to cross compile my flavour of software to read my weather station data

Got in raspberry pi in 2017 with Octoprint and 3D printing. I have 3 running.

Began developing my home automation in Node Red on a Pi in 2018

I began self hosting in 2019, with a rack of raspberry pi on a DIN rail, nice compact setup.

Got a third WD NAS, à PI 4 with 8GB ram as a desktop computer

And finally consolidated everything with Proxmox running on a Aoostar R1, intel N100, 32GB ram, 1TB nvme and the pair of 14TB HDDs from the last NAS in raid1. All services as LXC containers.

Only VM is a Win11 desktop when I really need one with a remote access. Main remote desktop is a Debian LXC with XFCE, plain basic.

Last WD NAS got a pair of refurbished 12TB HDD and is used as a cold backup.

Over 25 years and, yes some Linux.