I got to know UNIX (or rather Linux) about 12 years later. And TBH, I wasn't very impressed. I was like "oh, you have to do all that on the console". That's how green I was :D But then it caught me, and about a month later it was more "WOW, you can really do everything on the conole!"

What eventually helped me to really get into things was Linux From Scratch. If anyone wants to learn how a modern system works under the hood, and like those guys in the article know the very basic, minimal things that keep a system running, I can recommend it very much: https://linuxfromscratch.org/