Checked a bit, the figure I could find was an ubuntu employee estimating the figure to half a million in 2004, so at the beginning of the programme -> https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1691&page=2&p=3255...
So yeah, lot of people got those.
we installed ubuntu with friends in freakin junior high school. it's not like it's rocket science...
OTOH the village where I grew up as a child only got DSL > 512k around 2008 iirc.