Everything’s a file.
🙋♂️: “How does Linux work?”
👨💻: “…does it?”
24 years exclusively running it.
Short answer: magic.
Long answer: a stressful full week trying to get everything right, followed by a long, blissful period forgetting how hard it was to get it up and running like magic.
We don’t ask that question here
“It just does the job on any machine and good luck if you use a shared drive on a dual-boot system.” would be my answer. I settled for Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop after using Ubuntu and Cinnamon for 3 years. Windows and MacOS remain my primary OS because my main workflow only works on those two. Using Linux just for normal and shady stuff.
Communist nerds decided that computer programs should be free, so they made free computer programs for you. It’s better than corpo slop because all the most passionate nerds are sharing their code with each other, and judging every other nerd’s code.
There are also other socialist nerds who have decided they don’t want to obligate the corpos to give them code because it sucks. Welcome to BSD.
Two years and I’m still not completely sure how to correctly remove stuff from arch haha
Under the hood there is this thing in there called “systemd” that does a pretty good job making Linux work, and has made some people happy and some other people unhappy.
Before systemd there was something called “init” or maybe “system v” that wasn’t as good at systemd, especially not at restarting things if there was a problem, but it was real fast and less complicated.
This is not part of the Linux kernel though, i have no idea how that works.
Can i be dewey, but with the glasses?
Close—a few other people use a different unit system to be extra niche. There are tens of us! Tens!
I think most of the hate came from logging and that it went binary instead of just another file
Most of the hate came from people that don’t even read logs nor knowwhat they talk about. You can read journal with
stringsfrom binutils, you can forward to syslog server and store it in whatever format you prefer, you can do a lot of things with journal tbh. (Journalctl is horribly slow, that’s true)
I don’t know shit about Linux. I just know it’s fast and not Microsoft.
The more you know, the more you know that you don’t know a damn thing.
It’s monkeys all the way down
But seriously - if you do want to see the inner workings, perform a Gentoo stage 2 to dip your toes in. LFS after if you’re feeling dangerous. Then things will start to come together. But maybe do it on a spare machine… You can/will break things and you will need a fallback to do research. Don’t bother if you don’t care to read manuals, it’s not easy and can be frustrating.
This and some certification guide for sles or rhel (their documentation in general is very good and thorough).
Proud Gentoo user for the past 12ish years and this is the first I’ve heard of “stage 1” and “stage 2”. This explains the number for stage 3 I guess lol. Even with stage 3, and having dealt with gentoo (still my daily driver to date), I think I’ve learned more than I would have with many other distros.
I once tried Gentoo stage 1 because I felt bad ass and failed miserably. However that also taught me a lot.
Hahah. At least you learned some things. Took me a few goes after thinking I was slick having stage 2 down pat. Then tried some BSDs and was humbled again.
Heh, there was a guy on our local forums who daily drived FreeBSD 20 years ago. They probably still using it. 20 years later, I still don’t know any other people who daily drive a BSD.
i use freebsd on my desktop and server. it’s pretty good. linux emulation is also capable so everything just runs!
hardware compat isn’t as great tho. my laptop randomly stutters with freebsd so i use linux instead
I heard BSD is solid as a server. The person I know had to compile everything but that was many years ago. I would assume you have binary packages as well nowadays?
I never really used BSD and I only know NetBSD a little. I’m actually curious about a NetBSD server but I’m lazy even for my desktop. And I was considering switching my Debian server to Alpine but I haven’t touched that server since 2019 aside from occasional updates, so even that’s a big step for me. I guess the more realistic standpoint is I will install Alpine when my netbook finally dies and have to replace it with another hardware. :)
I’ve been running OpenBSD since 2.8. I’ve only met one other BSD user in real life and they were baffled to why I’d run it as a workstation OS. Sometimes I am too.
That’s fair I think :)
Comparing to Linux BSD is quite niche, and I even met a guy who uses Linux other than me in real life was like in 2011 for the first time. No one knew what BSD was.
Personally I only meddled with NetBSD for really old PCs.
I guess I can count you as the first person I know who uses OpenBSD now.
Masochism?
probably
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Tried LFS first. Stayed with Gentoo after for the maintainability.
I’ve been working with Linux since 1.1.98, I think, 1.2.13 for sure. That’s probably 32 years.
I’ve built kernels for enterprise distribution as part of a build group. I’ve worked to secure our distribution. I’ve led the security response team.
I’ve never run gentoo.
You think I should ?
I have somewhat similar experience (with far more recent kernels tho, 2.6 and newer) gentoo has some gentoo specific things, it won’t really teach you a lot when you have a certain level of knowledge, and how most parts interface with each other. It’s a fun exercise if you have time.
If you are happy with the distributions you use, there is no need to try Gentoo.
In my opinion, as a Gentoo user for the last 20 years, Gentoo is the most flexible distribution there is. Gentoo can be as stable as Debian or it can be as (or even more) cutting edge as Arch. Or it can be anything in between and you can even mix and match as you like.
The cost you pay for that flexibility is the compile time it takes to build the packages. And Gentoo is even providing you with prebuilt binaries for a very large amount of packages.
Not sure if you’d gain all that much with your level of experience. LFS might be a better starting point. However, after suggesting doing a stage 2 to a few that were eager to learn more (even though they’d been using it for a very long time), it was generally a positive experience. If you go through the guide I’m sure you’d be able to tell quickly whether it would be useful.
Honestly as a not-used-Gentoo person recklessly throwing around my opinion on the internet…
It sounds like either it can be “Really optimized and crazy performant if you know what you’re doing.”
Or “It’s a fun hobby because you think operating systems are fun.”
Personally it seems cool except I think I’d start to burn out fast if every package install means having to read compilation instructions and edit configs.
Maybe because my experience compiling stuff is always like “What’s your problem this time?! Okay where do I find that package version?!”
Package install doesn’t mean you have to read compilation instructions and edit configs. Usually you just install like in any other distro. (Except it takes a bit longer to finish.)
Nah, it’s not that bad. You don’t need to optimize the living hell out of it and they also have some ready-made binary packages. Plus you can also use flatpak for instance to make your life easier.
It’s just files, how hard could it be 🤷
Check out dbus and notify.
And then unpack your dracut initrd.I fucking wish
That killed a Plan9 (and 9front) fan.
Real
When Linux is working, one does not tempt fate by asking why.
One does not ask how the Linux is working, one only asks if.
