Personally, I began switching to Linux around 1997 or so.
By then, I was fairly certain that MoonBase Alpha and the Eagle transports were not going to appear even though getting to Space in 1999 was not that far away calender-wise. :(
(Obscure SciFi reference for some of us oldsters to comment about, in case you were wondering :) _ )
Yup, I’m definitely old enough to remember that stuff. Major SciFi fan here. Lifelong.
I started playing with Linux on a 5 1/4” floppy and a 386SX back in about ‘92. DL’d it off some newsgroup or BBS. (remember those? {grin}) I ran a computer sales and repair shop then, so I got a “used” SX to try this newfangled operating system on. Couldn’t spare a REAL 386 to play with.
Was fun hearing (reading online) about Linus doing his development of this new Minix experiment. ‘Course that was over 300 baud modem dialups for a while until we got the 4800 and then the 9600 baud ones. Wow! Such blazing speed. Wish I could remember how long it took me to download the linux files onto that floppy disk.
Such fun times.