This is reminiscent of my own experience with Linux, but I didn't go the developer route and instead ended up in product management via sysadmin and consulting. Through the years, the thousands of hours I spent experimenting with Linux in ~2004-2008 as a teenager has stuck with me. I fondly remember printing the Gentoo install guide out and installing it offline because I had some early Linksys wireless adapter that was super flaky.
Gentoo was the first distro I got working with internet access because it supported the little phone line based network my family had, so I could share dial-up via the parents windows computer. And, yes, I also printed off the install guide.
