E16 was the hook that caught me and landed me, flopping and writhing, on the decks of Linux - I saw a black and white printout of someone’s desktop, and immediately set about figuring out how to get this unbelievable coolness working on my laptop. By the time I was done I was muttering modelines in my sleep, and had already committed my first patches to a kernel module.
I wonder how many other teenagers got catfished into becoming software devs and sysadmins by the siren song of rasterman.
Yeah that was the reason for me too, in order to get the distro CD ROMS I had to mail $10 to some random address and wait 4 weeks for them to be mailed back!
I tell people you used to have to post a cheque when you bought stuff online and they just look at me like I’m nuts. It was basically just mail order, but on the web.
Modelines are one of those skills that I thought would get obsoleted, but in fact taught me the mechanics of video timing that I was able to use in unrelated contexts. Such as years later where I was asked to fix a driver for a point of sale system which had a 1024x200 (or thereabouts, extremely wide nonstandard ratio) secondary screen.
I wonder how many other teenagers got catfished into becoming software devs and sysadmins by the siren song of rasterman.