this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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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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I don't have a ton of experience with Windows lately, but from trying to troubleshoot family members' PCs, it usually ends up being corrupted drivers or bricked bootloaders/failed updates.
As for documentation, the Arch wiki (and Gentoo wiki, Debian wiki, etc. etc.) is usually a good source of information for general topics, but there's also decades of forums and stackexchange posts on various problems if you're just using a search engine. Every program also has extensive official
man
pages on how to use them (example), and you can even use something liketldr
to shorten the man pages into something usable right now (example). If you're willing to read documentation, everything you use on Linux probably has a manual behind it.With regards to paying for support, it's not really my wheelhouse but to my understanding that's what companies like Canonical, SUSE, and Red Hat offer.