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Linux for the Airheaded Layman?
(lemm.ee)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
I'd give it a try! It has been quite fun to have a Linux system and to finally feel more comfortable with the Unix-like way of using a computer. It has greatly simplified a lot of things I needed to do when I was in uni, such as uploading and processing data from a DAC as well as the simplified way of managing packages and CLI workflows. I never knew how many times the task just needed a solution with a Regex in it, but it takes one awhile to learn it.
It feels weird to go from being a lifelong Windows user to using Linux. Unfortunately, I chose Arch to be the distribution I'd struggle with because I was too stubborn to give up. Now that I'm a little more comfortable with systems, I've been hopping around tinkering in different virtual machines. It took quite some time before I felt I got fluid enough with the CLI, but it makes everything feel like a text adventure game! It's so nice to be more comfortable with Vim when I need to do systems work, access servers remotely via SSH, or navigate the system more easily. I never thought you could agnostically open files, so that was nice to learn. It's impressive the beast of programming problems that needed to be solved before one could have a seamless in-home system. I can't imagine shuffling magnetic tape through a dinosaur, or the hoops you'd have to jump through and technical knowledge to use a PDP-10 or older computer. Lots of respect for the gurus who can speak in tongues for those machines :) Thanks for the advice, never knew immutable OSs were a thing.