My family got our 1st PC soon after 2002-2003 NY. I was 12.
Heck, I still keep the warranty paper - so fond is the memory of us getting a computer!
Celeron 1100, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD, NVidia 64 MB, a tube monitor and a dial-up modem hooking us to pricey internet.
My elder brother was very proud of this buy, I remember he said that only a few years ago this powerful machine could only be afforded by some alphabet, and now we have it at home!
IIRC, at the time most consumers were running Windows 98, in our location at least. We were not. A sysadmin friend of us recommended and installed Windows 2000, for better stability than 98.
Thus, I learned that there are better versions in existence than the general public uses, you just need to know where to ask.
Windows XP was already released, but that same friend sysadmin recommended against it, for being almost same as 2000 but bloatier.
Thus, I learned of bloat and that "latest and greatest" is not always a true claim.
Movies and games consumption and how to use MS Windows and Office with a textbook, nothing more for years.
Only with advent of broadband unlimited internet my techy journey began. I got means to grind information, not sip it.
Thus, I learned that unrestricted information availability is crucial to advancement.
Same PC, RAM maxed to 512 MB, Windows XP. Good old Opera browser on Presto engine. They should have open-sourced it when they dumped it, bastards. With Opera I could easily have so many tabs open that I couldn't distinguish even the icons - I remembered positions of tabs and clicked to respective position. No other browser let me do it. Firefox, Maxthon, any - and I checked out probably any single one back then - without reaching 10 open tabs thay kneeled my PC. Opera was like from another world - it just worked, whatever the load. Oh, Presto Opera, RIP my dear!
Thus, I learned that if your software is designed wisely, you can outperform.
My family got another and better machine, so I got rights for exclusive use of this one. Finally, I could experiment without fear of breaking someone's configuration or erasing someone's documents.
Thus, I learned that a shared device is no fun at all, in comparison.
Installed a stylish theme - had to run some scary system change to unlock theming XP. It payed off.
Thus I learned if you dig into, you can get more.
Was trying out misc warez.
Thus, I learned licensed products can be cracked, cool!
On warez websites, I sometimes stumbled upon free open source software. Appealing. Often no worse than commercial, but as a gift. Inspirative.
Thus, I learned of a new paradigm.
I tended to prefer FOSS whenever I could, and delved deeper into its world. The farther the more often I heard the word "Linux". And words of praise about it.
Finally downloaded an .iso, burned a CD, booted and - blast! - it was awesome!
Thus, I learned there are very interesting things just around you which barely anyone notices.
Dual-booting Windows&Linux. Less Windows, more Linux. Everything on my PC just worked, apps were abundant - Opera was there too! - and GNOME 2 allowed to tune it way finer than Explorer. I wondered why the world hasn't switched to Linux.
Distro and DE hopping. LXDE became my favorite - and still is - but it isn't packaged for OpenBSD. Damn!
For me, LXDE was more fine-tunable than GNOME 2 while also being less RAM, less CPU and snappier.
Thus, I learned again - wink, Presto Opera - that competent design beats corpo-cash and horde manpower.
While indulging in Linux, it turned out it isn't perfect.
Encountered some nasty bugs. Recalled my smooth 1st experience with Linux and came to conclusion that "I would never have switched to Linux had I encountered this back then!".
Thus I learned tests may be deceptive, you need long periods of time to truly evaluate something.
Computing isn't only about Windows vs Linux, there are other OSes, and dozens! Unimaginable! Indeed, in the mass media "Windows computer" is synonymous to "computer" and vice versa, and a consumer is brainwashed to think there is only one true OS.
I looked for a better distro, but there were hardly any. So I looked for an alternative OS. The next promising platforms were *BSD. I read reviews about all of libre *BSD, and I liked that OpenBSD emphasized correctness. So I headed to http://openbsd.org and it was a shock. Nobody had such websites by then. Everyone had facelifted their websites, made them snazzy and feel oh, I wanna lick them. But not OpenBSD. My impression was that the project was abandoned and unmaintained, and seeing there is a fresh release I thought perhaps they are doing some maintenance bug-fixes for their clique, but they obviously don't cater to people like me.
So I closed the website and moved on to alternatives. But there were not many great alternatives. Over and over, OpenBSD popped before me.
For the 2nd attempt, my eyes were already braced, and the shock was not as strong. I overcame my aesthetic disgust and managed to get through hours and days and months of manpages, confusing installation and as confusing and painful configuring. To never return. It took some 8 years from getting a PC for the 1st time in 2003 to running OpenBSD as my main OS in 2011.
There were severe unsolvable problems back then, mainly flash player absent, so no youtube, and no drivers for our printer.
Now, flash is gone and youtube is html5, printer - another one - works via Windows, and if I were to get a printer for OpenBSD, I would get a network-capable one, and print via nc(1).
Why OpenBSD and no return. 2 main issues are bloat (read above) and trust. Talking trust, macOS is the worst, Windows is not too much better, Linux is an endless carousel of upgrading to a "better" audio/graphical/installation/packaging/init subsystem, systemd and telemetry, bar a few militant distros like antiX and PCLinuxOS, which are good IMHO, but *BSD are cleaner. I don't say I ultimately trust OpenBSD, but rather yes. With bigger players - rather no to definitely no.
I am not entirely off other OSes, e.g. my 2nd machine is running Windows 10 - primarily for AAA gaming and for apps that don't run on OpenBSD, although you can, sort of. And my 2nd machine - Dell Precision M4800 - is newer and more powerful, better screen and sound.
Yet my main machine - ThinkPad "crap" T530 - is wholeheartedly OpenBSD.
OpenBSD website - it is a shame. Even the recent and implemented proposal got discarded. It is beyond me.
Thus, I learned to not be fooled by website looks.
Although OpenBSD deserves a better website. And issue tracker. And media coverage. Many "And"s...
Maybe an OS like plan9 can win my heart, some people do use it as their main OS. I have only read/watched reviews.
Thus, I learned of elegance from extra-compactness.
I haven't tinkered with plan9 yet.