My first encounter with Linux was a video I saw on youtube when I was 13 years old where they had the song "here comes the hotsteppper" and a bunch of window effects done with compiz fusion.
I couldn't believe this was possible with a computer, I installed Ubuntu on my laptop and managed to get a bunch of effects going. It was a really great time, it also gave my laptop a second life as it was a very old machine and it would just not run properly under windows.
All these are available today as Gnome extensions!
I have wobbly windows, transparency, desktop cube, and burning windows. Desktop Cube is by far the most useless yet most fascinating. If you turn the cube to where your desktop is on the far side, you can see your video still playing mirrored. I'm not sure why that fascinates me so much...
Same here, except I think I might be older than you because it was still called "Beryl" back then for me. It's amazing how much impact a video showing windows wobbling around on Ubuntu had on me. I also installed Ubuntu, I remember doing it through wubi.
I couldn't believe this was possible with a computer, I installed Ubuntu on my laptop and managed to get a bunch of effects going. It was a really great time, it also gave my laptop a second life as it was a very old machine and it would just not run properly under windows.