Ubuntu 10.10 was my first linux. Though 11.04 was released soon after my switch.

My first experience with 10.10 was as a virtual machine on my school issued Dell Latitude D505 laptop with Windows XP, a dual core 32-bit processor and 512 megs of RAM. And boy, let me tell you, it ran like shit. But I knew that it was because I was virtualizing it and didn't hold that against it.

I can't remember what it was called, but I eventually installed this OS on my flash drive that was meant to be eco-friendly for old devices. It had a very green wallpaper. And just used that instead of ever booting into windows by changing the boot order and leaving the flash drive plugged in at all times.

Edit: I remember now. It was called Watt OS.