this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2025
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Linux
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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.
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Linux was exciting but time consuming and not all that useful.
I used to bike into University, spend half the night downloading disk images of SLS, spend hours more installing, and spend hours more getting the X config timings working for my monitor. But when I was finally able to use the same window manager config as the Sun workstations at school I felt like King of the World! But what was I actually doing with it? Xterm and an ancient version of GCC.
That said, I created my own basic Shell in the early days and a few little utilities. So I learned a lot. I do not think I would even have attempted many things without the technical confidence that just being a Linux user brought. There was the feeling that you could do anything even though you were hardly doing anything. And new capabilities were constantly arriving so that feeling lasted years.