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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what caused you to get into Linux? (lemm.ee)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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What caused you to get into it, are you an evangel and are you obsessed?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Back when the world was young, I had to produce a fairly large chunk of documentation which I started to write in MS Word 2.0 (which ran in Windows 3.11 or Windows for Workgroups).

However, at around 100 pages, I started to have trouble with file corruption. So since the company I worked with had contacts with Microsoft, I got in touch with them. "yes that's a known bug, there's a new version on this FTP site" (we were in the nascent ISP business).

So I got Word 2.0c. Which promptly crapped all over my document. "Oh, yeah, I guess the bug isn't fixed then".

Around the same time, a coworker had been telling me about those guys who were busy writing a Unix from scratch (hah, so silly) and who had, already gotten a usable and stable system (wait, really? cool!). So I grabbed a copy and tested that. It ran fine (it did help that I already knew a bit of Unix). And I did my document there, I don't remember in what, if it was LaTeX or Applixware (maybe that came later).

Since then, Linux has always been on my desktop, with Windows coming and going on a secondary disk or partition, mostly relegated to the running of games.