I started on 56k. Probably 96 or 97. AOL naturally because of these. I did have an Amiga back in 1992 but never had a modem for it, so no mailing list or BBS access. I still remember the jump from ADSL to VDSL and thinking “we’ll never need anything faster”.
I remember doing the same and picking up Red Hat 6.something myself. Also my local PC World.