Hey, I had a very similar experience. Growing up in Bombay in the late 90s, chip and digit were literally my introduction to computing. Though I was not that much into gaming, they made me a fan of computer architecture, of graphics cards and so on. I guess being a nerd hanging around lamington road, almost harassing the shopkeepers for deeper tech specs of every component was more education than any university could ever provide.
Then came Linux for you, and made me try my first Linux distro - xandros 2003. Then there was the complete 3 DVD Debian distro on LFY made me create an openmpi HPC in college among so many other things completely ignored by the formal education system.
I think there is a real value to limited, quality information like these magazines that the internet ruined. Devs these days have unlimited information at their fingertips - the internet and now chatgpt. But now the onus is on us - are we asking the right questions?
This stirred memories for me. My introduction to Indian computing magazines came later and my first Linux distro was a version of SuSe in 2007. I also fondly remember the free Linux CDs and DVDs that were around at the time. The magazines were one source, Ubuntu was another. The free Linux CD project was yet another.
You raise a good question about drowning in the flood of info on the internet. The lack of gatekeepers has upsides as well as downsides. One of those downsides is the lack of quality control. The Linux and computing magazines in India were very high quality and they got a lot of people interested in computing.
Then came Linux for you, and made me try my first Linux distro - xandros 2003. Then there was the complete 3 DVD Debian distro on LFY made me create an openmpi HPC in college among so many other things completely ignored by the formal education system.
I think there is a real value to limited, quality information like these magazines that the internet ruined. Devs these days have unlimited information at their fingertips - the internet and now chatgpt. But now the onus is on us - are we asking the right questions?