this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2026
263 points (99.3% liked)

Linux

68009 readers
933 users here now

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.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It took my old laptop dying on me for me to finally ask my geeky neighbor to install Mint on another laptop I had around.
It's been a few hours and Omigod. Why did I waste so much time? It works. It's easy and intuitive. It makes sense. There's no bullshit.
I still have to make Antidote talk to Libre Office, but whatever. The rest feels good and natural.
So please whoever is here because you're contemplating switching: do it yesterday.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] strawberry_enjoyer42@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

So will nerds with too much time on their hands :3 (me)

[–] 3abas@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

When the existing information isn't super helpful, and the problem requires deep understanding of Linux, there are two choices:

  1. Find an active Linux forum and ask your question, ignore the assholes telling you to RTFM and wait a few days for someone to ask you to provide the output of a command you never knew existed, go through several rounds of remote asynchronous troubleshooting over a few days and eventually maybe you figure out what's wrong. You are amazing, you make the community amazing, but meanwhile my computer is unstable and I can't use it.

  2. Tell AI what symptoms you're experiencing, it gives you basic troubleshooting steps and explains them, and what took days now takes minutes.

Or, a better example, say you know what you want to do: deploy some docker containers including caddy and cloudflared, you want to deploy them through a CI process so it's repeatable, you want to segment their networks. Say you're well versed in all these topics but don't have much docker or compose experience, you can wade through the documentation to figure out the best way to set it up, and it'll take you a few days. Or describe the end state and have a solid starting point and enough explanation to correct bad AI assumptions and skip the first few weeks of regretting a decision because no one highlighted where it could go wrong.

AI makes reading the manual for many integrated systems possible.

Nah but like if someone DMs me on matrix I'll respond pretty quick. I don't have much of a life.

Also, personally, reading the manual and fixing and tinkering are the lowkey fun part.

[–] khanh@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

i'd love to volunteer for some kind of unix-like helpline! it would be lowkey fun