In general I have to agree on the review Philipp gave, probably because our biographies seem to match up pretty well. I similarly was brought up by a 386 and on the Keen games et al. So. I also felt lots of good nostalgia during the read (editing DOS config files, first network gaming experiences on Duke3D - complete with the search for the damn terminator plugs - and hell, even my first Linux experiences came because I wanted to run a Quake or Half-Life dedicated server on an old machine).

But nostalgia only gets you so far. Some more technical background would have been nice (though I also get that neither Philipp nor I will probably be the typical reader in that aspect) but what really bugged me was that for large parts the book boils down to 'id: The Soap Opera' or maybe 'Bad Business Decisions 101: How Your Larger-Than-Life Ego Will Ruin You'.

Yes, I get that this stuff happened (apparently all the time) but every other page turns out to be a lesson in how one of the two John's did something stupid because they thought of themselves as so important. It's a nice lesson in humility, but after the first couple of instances a brief summary would have worked as well I think.