Not Shareware exactly, but once I started earning money in the mid 90s, I purchased physical copies of Slackware on CD-ROM to support the distro that taught me

Not Shareware exactly, but once I started earning money in the mid 90s, I purchased physical copies of Slackware on CD-ROM to support the distro that taught me Linux. It was also much more convenient than downloading dozens of floppies from ftp.funet.fi or whatever FTP server I was using at the time. As for my Amiga and C64 days, I was too young to have a lot of money, and piracy was rampant in Europe, where I lived. Even if I had wanted to pay I wouldn't have known how to send money overseas.