I’m the same generation and think that time has passed and won’t come back. There’s a difference between tinkering because you’re interested and the need to get something running (that’s why customers always run into different problems than testers because they have an actual use case).

However, I felt that setting up Arch Linux felt pretty similar to installing and configuring DOS back in the 80/90s. Only now you have an awesome wiki to guide you and don’t need to look for books or rely on friends already having solved your problem.