this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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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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Now i've been considering moving to linux. I don't have much of a history using a computer and find it tougher to use than my phone. But I also really appreciate the foss movement. I've currently got an old laptop running windows 11 I think and it would prolly speed up with linux too. But I'm afraid I'd fuck smth up trying to download linux, understand it or while using it. Is it worth switching and how different is it to a windows experience.

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[–] gooeyglob@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Yes you'll fuck things up. Don't keep anything remotely important on it and screw around with it. That's how you learn. Blow your install away intentionally, try a different distribution the next time. There's a lot more variability between distros, and more customizability compared to Windows too.

If you want to learn something new and different anyway. It's definitely not like Windows except at the most surface level; you can get by in the GUI for almost everything until something goes wrong, but that's exactly when you want to have been learning cmdline stuff, so you can try to salvage it.