I do think its a valid question.
I have been using Lazarus for a few months now, was a Delphi 2 user long ago. So, first impression, wow, look at that ! Then I found a very helpful forum, lots of knowledgeable people very keen to help. So, 'yes' a good impression.
But not perfect ! (I am not trying to beat anyone up here but if we don't look at what needs improving, nothing will improve.) I found the Ubuntu package version difficult. Later I grabbed the 1.8rcX series and that was heaps better. I had trouble getting the "F1" help system working and think its a pity its seen as an add on. But I do acknowledge its not great anyway, very slow and incomplete. I do remember the Delphi version to be a lot better.
And I guess the general level of documentation is Lazaru's weak point if it has one. Scroll through the wiki and see how many pages talk about very, very old issues. How many things simply are not documented at all !
An example ? I spent a fair while this morning trying to get a function in "FileUtil" working in a console app. Turns out its a LCL component, F1 cannot tell me that. And I sort of got hints I should use LazFileUtils instead. OK, where is LazFileUtils documented ? Wait the 60 seconds or so for F1 to tell me it found an almost blank page in 27ms. Google cannot do any better.
(Now, if you are about to say, "if you don't like whats on the wiki, fix it" - be assured I have already added quite a bit to various Lazarus wiki pages. But a drop in the ocean compared to whats needed.)
But back to original question ? Yes, overall, a very good first (and subsequent) impression. And I will keep hacking at the wiki.