I came from GnuWinII: http://riffwiki.com/GNUWin_II
which had a significant quantity of RMS articles and enough about the philosophy that I stuck around reading long after I'd filled up on free beer.
From there I went to Knoppix and other live CDs and then Mandrake, which was the newbie distro of the day, although i was excited about this new project called "Ubuntu" that was supposed to be released in another year or so.
The project was abandoned a long time ago because apparently I am weird in that way too. Most windows users will grab the free beer and run.
I do agree that we need some sort of a venue for people who have just discovered free software to talk, debrief, and prioritize. We also need a place for those who, like me, have benefited so much from the work of our developers that we want to share with others. The developers enjoy seeing the fruits of their labours too, but if we can teach each other, not only does it cement what we have learned in our own minds, it frees up our developers' time so they can make us more goodies. :)
I still have an account at Linux Questions and used to use a lot of forum boards. College classes didn't do as much for my daughter as peer support forums did for me. I would love to see a return to that culture. Those were the days!
Welcome here, new folks.
