Note #3 — How I Went from Dial-Up Caveman to Linux

In 1995, I got my first computer, and it took me approximately five seconds to throw myself at the internet like it was the gates of a new civilization.

The connection was dial-up, through a US Robotics modem, screaming along at a blistering 56 kbps on a very good day. Which is to say: it was slow, noisy, unreliable, and somehow completely magical. Every time that modem started making its demon-summoning noises, it felt like I was plugging my bedroom straight into the future. With a little help from a friend, I learned some IRC and started wandering around that weird digital frontier.

There was just one problem: almost everyone there was a foreigner, and I didn’t speak English. So when ICQ showed up, it felt like destiny. I jumped ship immediately and became completely addicted to the search feature. I started adding people from my city, then nearby cities, and before long, basically half the planet. It was social networking before social networking had figured out how to monetize your soul.

Around that same time, I developed a sudden fascination with what we used to call “hacking stuff.” I dove headfirst into forums, made friends, and started hanging around that whole scene. I got mixed up with trojans and keyloggers, although to be fair, I was much more of a spectator than some criminal mastermind. Most of the time I was consuming what my friends were making, because my programming skills were still very much in the “confidently breaking things I didn’t understand” phase.

At school, ICQ became a full-blown epidemic. All my friends started using it, and Friday nights turned into a ritual: everyone waiting for midnight so we could connect when the phone rates dropped and spend the night online without financially destroying our parents. It was basically a weekly social event, just with more beige computers and worse posture.

But for me, even that started to feel too small. I wanted more. Then, in 1997, I found BRASnet, an amazing IRC network built for Brazilian users. That was the moment I finally felt at home online. I made dozens of friends there, and some of those friendships were so real they’re still part of my life now, in 2026.

Back then, I was probably running some version of Windows—most likely Windows 95 with internet support bolted on—but the change was coming. I just didn’t know it yet. Soon I’d leave that behind, because the next step was unavoidable:

I was going to GNU/Linux.