Me and a few friends started an IT consulting business in 1999, prior to that we were using Linux at home (I liked slackware, they liked redhat). After we had the business going, we set up all-in-one machines for companies that ran Linux. These machines did SMB filesharing, squid caching (most clients shared a 56k dial-up for internet at the time), pop & imap email. They all ran slimmed down installs of Slackware.

Fast forward to now, and I've parted ways with the company I founded to work in IT at a shop that's a mix of Linux and Windows (zimbra mail server, linux dns and etc servers). I still run Linux at home and carry an Android powered phone (SGS3).

None of us had formal schooling, we just hacked together the OS the best we could to make it work (OMG apache+mod_ssl+php+rewrite compiling by hand I don't miss those ./configure lines). We used it for everything and learned it via hands on using manpages and talking to other Unix professionals at the time (that turned their noses up at us because they were using HP/UX, AIX, Solaris, FreeBSD)

Great breakdown of how things were in your state. One of the perks of having a state the size of RI, everyone in your online community could actually know each other!