this post was submitted on 03 May 2024
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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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With Debian-based distros, it's actually a bit weirder. They use
dash
as the global default shell (i.e. for executingsh
scripts).dash
has basically no code for interactive use, so it's supposedly faster and more secure. It is POSIX-compliant, so the treatment of whitespace should be identical, but it doesn't support any of the added features ofbash
.If you open up a terminal emulator, they've got that set up to use
bash
by default, sodash
is supposed to be invisible to the user, but well, spoilers, it's not. If you switch to a TTY, for example, it launches there and makes the TTY look completely broken.Hehe thank you for the fun extra story:-).