A friend sent me a link with a short introduction: they had ported Linux to his phone.
The device was one of the Windows-powered pocket computers that passed for a smartphone in 2006. It had a small screen, a stylus, a cellular connection, and just enough computing power to make people wonder what else it could run. Somebody had answered that question by getting Linux onto it.
I did not need Linux on a phone for work. I already had plenty of Linux on servers, along with Windows systems, networks, mail, monitoring, and the equipment required to keep all of that running. The phone project was interesting for the opposite reason: it did not need a business case before it could teach us something.
That was how a lot of technical learning circulated then. A friend found a wiki, a strange port, a new utility, or a piece of hardware and forwarded the link. There was no formal course and usually no polished product. The documentation was part instruction manual and part field report from whoever had made it work first.
The timing also catches me between jobs. I had accepted a systems position in July, but by the end of August recruiters were already contacting me about other infrastructure roles. On September 5 I would send a large batch of applications for Windows, Unix, VMware, network, and systems-administration jobs.
The phone link is a quieter record of what I was looking for. I wanted environments where curiosity was useful. I liked production systems and real responsibility, but I also liked the unnecessary experiment that exposed how the machine actually worked.
I cannot tell from the message whether I installed the port myself. The archive gives me only the link and my friend's certainty that I would enjoy it. He was right about that part.
Linux on a phone was not the future I was planning around. It was simply an excellent way to spend some time finding out whether the thing could be done.