I remember when this first came out. I was just about to start college. There was a sense at the time that anything related to Linux system administration was black magic, doubly so for anything involving game programming. So this was certainly only talked about in hushed whispers and euphemism.
I was actually a grad student at unm with Dennis Chao. Guy was bright, creative and knew how to tell a good joke. Interesting to see this still on the inter-tubes.
