this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2025
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Linux
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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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i came here to say this. I was really frustrated for a while figuring this out and understanding how it really makes things more secure, even if you're the only one using the computer. At first it drove me nuts when my server would auto create a folder for media and I'd attempt to change some files within and not have permission, like, my account should have access to everything.
Changing access permissions without understanding how/why completely borked my first install by setting a user without sudo privileges as primary (or something, I still don't know what I did haha) but I couldn't sudo anything and was locked on that profile.
I started by just using Nautilus but this is not good practice so I learned the basics and it finally started making sense.
Yeah, I always bring this up because it's what I dealt with. Mind you, it was amplified because I set up a media server right away and got seriously confused.
What? Permissions don't get inherited? OK fine, so how do you set permissions? This site says 755 and this site says drwxr-xr-x. Can't I just get a straight answer?
It's a fundamental functioning difference between the OS's that not a lot of people talk about when talking about switching.
Even my Windows machine that is set up with an admin/user structure (as God intended) doesn't give me any fuss with file access.
Haha same thing for me. -R was a game changer