The first Linux I tried was Red Hat.
This was around 2000 – 2001, just before the end of my M.A. studies.
It was Red Hat 6.1 or 6.2, which I got on a CD-ROM with a Linux book. I think I stil have this CD with the book.
It is Peter Norton Linux book translated to Hebrew:
נורטון, פיטר
LINUX : המדריך השלם / של פיטר נורטון ; (תרגום ועריכה: ענת קדם [בן–צבי] ; עריכה מקצועית: אייל אייזנשטיין).
(ר“ג) : פוקוס מחשבים, 2000. רמת גן
Around 2002-2003 I played furthermore with later RedHat distributions and got used to work with the Gnome desktop.
I do think that KDE is nice and easy desktop, and it’s very rich and flexible – but for me Gnome was the first so I still keep it as my favorite.
The last Red Hat I tried was Red Hat 8, in 2003 or 2004. I think I tried to have a dual-boot PC and it ruined the Windows partition.
So I had to recover it. It was also my mother’s PC …
Than I used Mandrake which was close enough to Red Hat (using RPM) but also had nice GUI for editing partitions.