Why did you start using linux? it was the 80s/90s, windows didn’t exist, I used un*x at uni, of course I couldn’t install HPUX, AIX, Solaris or IRIX on my 386, so I installed Linux. There was minix but it was not free. Also BSD was tempting.
Origin? A couple of floppy images downloaded from usenet :) there was no distro really.
End of 80s was un*x, I started using Linux as a main OS with kernel 0.99