In the early days of my Linux use I was on Mandrake 7.2 and loved it. All the "just in case" random packages were very entertaining and educational to me, although they were probably a distraction from whatever I was meant to be doing!

Still, the experience seems to have served me well in the end. I do miss that feeling of discovering all the weird themes and window managers they packaged by default, I don't get the same vibes of "any UI is possible" these days (even though the UX is probably much better by conventional criteria).