Still remember that as well. Though I was in school and had plenty time at my hand. Was a very rewarding experience. Not necessarily easy by any means. But it was so much more capable than any Windows 98 or ME. Didn't crash like the latter. There was a million things to explore. Software to just install which I'd never have been able to afford as a school kid. Also way easier to customize, or read some log files and fix things once I understood how the filesystem is laid out.

And the CRT monitor was fine. Ours just displayed an error message if the frequency was wrong. At some point I grabbed a permanent marker and wrote the mode line onto the back if the monitor. Problem solved.