this post was submitted on 08 Mar 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 really like them. They give us a reliable application that doesn't depend the distro building a version for specific platform. For example if the newest versions are compiled for Ubuntu 24.04 but you're on 22.04 it might take a while to get the update.
It does come at a cost though, it'll have to package all the dependencies for 24.04 in a layer of the package so it'll take a long time to start up and take a lot more memory than necessary.
This is mitigated by flatpaks using same base for their application (like Ubuntu with Electron) but it still isn't the same as just starting up a proper
aptprogram.I really like it since we can have a modern version of a program for small distros and in general the barrier to entry so much lower so companies can't just say "oh we can't support all Linux distros, not feasible".
Aur you compile yourself for your own distro instead of it being done already by
aptand the like.Nix is a super cool since you can just setup and configure pretty much everything so that you just press "install" and you'll have your Gimp, VPN and whatever apps all done for you. You'll have to do some heavy configuration so programming knowledge is not necessary but really helps.