Started messing around with it some time in 2003, on Mandrake Linux when I was 21 years old. Experimented and ran servers with various distros in the years since but it didn't become my daily driver until about 2014-15, with Debian.
"American Spring" hahaha that's a good one. We're going to continue to collectively sit on our asses riding the wave of fascism right into hell while eating Wendy's and playing Xbox.
The world is going to be absolutely fucked when the older engineers and techies who built all this modern shit and/or maintain it and still understand it all retire or die off.
Careful, that meme is old enough to smoke and vote soon.