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?