Not quite ... I got my first home Unix machine (it ran a beta Unix System V/R2) around Thanksgiving 1985. I've been a Unix user since September 1981.
Modern Linux is something is something I worked much of my adult life to see happen (I've contributed code to dozens of different Open Source software packages, from glibc and the Linux kernel to sendmail to PostgreSQL), I signed on to the Open Source movement when I got introduced to Emacs in 1987, which of course, was before Open Source got its proper name.
I think I started playing with it after 2003.
That's a pretty good time, actually. Linux distros started picking up polish 2001/2002.
Of course, the burning question is ... Emacs or VI?
I use Emacs, vi, nedit, and sometimes good ol' ed. Whatever is most appropriate, and available under the circumstances.
Today's Helpful Hint: When your company server won't boot because of problems in /etc/fstab, you can't get fsck to act sanely, and you're in a single-user shell with your boss staring at you -- even vi is not available -- use ed. Growing up with a line editor in the 70's has saved my butt more than once.
You've got me beat by a couple years as a user.
In 1981 I was working on DEC RSX-11/M on a PDP-11 with a VT-100 and a 9600-baud line. As I recall the hardware was an LSI-11/23 with RL02 10MB disk packs.
Man, those were the days.... (cough). :)
Didn’t you and I have a chat about Unix/OSes/design a while back?