So, I started with Debian Linux (server). I had a forum that was racking up massive hosting bills back in ~ 1999/2000. My father was on my case because I was using funds from my salary with an IT company to keep the forums alive. It was hosted on Windows either IIS 4 or 5.
But in my search to bring hosting costs down. I had my first Linux distro experience. Moved from off Windows server to LAMP and then eventually replaced Apache with Lighttpd. Most importantly, it cut costs by more than 1/2!
On desktop, Mint briefly (excluding Linux servers at work with DEs, RHEL, openSUSE, etc). But I almost immediately jumped into Arch Linux and enjoyed the steep learning curve. So Arch always felt like my beginnings. So many times I would wipe and start over back then. Lol Sometimes 10+ times in one day.
Now after fully exploring many distros on server and desktop, I prefer Debian (and Debian based) in almost every scenario.
I considered merging this topic but it’s not quite a duplicate. And honestly, unless both topics are currently active its not a big deal. But for a similar discussion, also see: What was your first Linux experience?