It was exactly like the movie Hackers. 😅

Due to the nature of how the ARPAnet was born (lots of academic influence and the view of free sharing of information) outside the DOD infosec wasnt a thing, even then it was an after thought.

There was a healthy phone hacking community coming out of the 70s and into the 80s. Their techniques for getting free calls helped with exploiting the ARPAnet

There were pretty significant technology changes in the 90s with the WWW and the number of people and companies online leading to more opportunities and ways to exploit.

Wargames and Sneakers are pretty entertaining and while movies will give you a bit of a vibe.

If you can highly recommend you read

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo's_Egg_(book)

Really easy read and amazing true story

Long kiss goodnight

As a new user GPT said it would be best to install a beginner level distro like arch.

I plug the error into ChatGPT usually get pointed in the right direction, I mean I no longer have a functional laptop and was given instructions on how to build a really good toaster. But hey I’m learning!

Had to create dummy emails, fake info for my 8 year old just so they could have their own kids logon. Despite it being a kids account MS still thought it was fine to show news and photos from Gaza. Spent an hour before nuking win 11. Running Linux mint, just works for us.