this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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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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From the beginning of computing there has been a problem with bootstrapping knowledge... the person creating a tool gives it a name, and describes it, but knowing that someone solved the problem you have and what the name of that tool was always a challenge.
But that is nothing new... you posted in English but if you were to learn a different language you would have a very similar problem, and one of the most universal strategies for making that transition is to drill on vocabulary. Once you have built a small vocabulary then you can expand it using a dictionary.
The real message behind someone saying RTFM is that there are so many educational and search resources now that asking some rando on the Internet to rewrite a Howto on the fly is lazy. Simply typing the exact same question into Google will bring up a kickstarter set of vocabulary and resources. If you actually do this your question will often answer itself, and if it doesn't and you start by pointing out why your efforts failed to help you with your specific problem and use the vocabulary (at least briefly) that your research turned up to guide the reader toward where your problem is, you should get less RTFM responses.