I was in my second year of university when it came out. I was still using Mandrake Linux if I recall.
Ubuntu was so clean and had everything I needed right out of the box. It was also my introduction to a Debian based distro. No more dependency hell with my packages.
I eventually switched to the KDE flavor but went back to Gnome when KDE 4 came out because of all the problems. Then to XFCE and MATE when they went with Unity.
Today I'm back in Kubuntu and I'm about to install it as my only OS. No more dual boot.