this post was submitted on 03 May 2024
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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 know that there are ten different alternatives. Why don't we simply improve the basic stuff?

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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

a quick search suggests that Mint, Ubuntu, and NixOS all use bash by default

With Debian-based distros, it's actually a bit weirder. They use dash as the global default shell (i.e. for executing sh 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 of bash.

If you open up a terminal emulator, they've got that set up to use bash by default, so dash 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.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 3 points 6 months ago

Hehe thank you for the fun extra story:-).