It’s like owning a car for 20 years. Even if you don’t want to, you’ll eventually understand more and more.
The more you know about computers the more you realize its just magic rocks, and that magic, rocks.
its all transistors man all transistors
It’s magic
libmagic is just one tiny part of the linux ecosystem
Lemme just fully quote the Arpaci-Dusseaus OSTEP real quick
What I tell people: “When you get used to using an operating system that respects your rights, you don’t wanna go back.”
I’ve been on Arch full time for 6 years, I still get frustrated, sometimes I get stumped, but I NEVER want to go back to windows
It’s like asking “How does toilet paper work?” Meaning to say you don’t have to know all the details about how it comes to be but can just use it and appreciate it does work. And you also know it would be really messy and with poor hygiene without.
Maybe not the best metaphor but I approve your message
I tried slackware when win 3.1 was hot. I would have went a lot further a lot sooner if I could have gotten my modem working
I guess it’s been about 16 years for me! Seeing as I first rolled up my sleeves to Linux as a Mac native around 2010. Though it’s been my personal PC daily driver for only about 3. It was all work and projects stuff until then. I learned Linux nuts and bolts on the job in-person from a very good mentor.
There is a book called how Linux works.
But the short answer is. Linux provides the kernel that includes a lot of functionality out of the box. Drivers so all hardware can be abstracted away, scheduling of tasks, a filesystem with privileges, processmanagement etc. This lives in the kernel.
In userland, there is more or less the GUI stuff (not entirely true). You can interact with higher privileges if you have the rights / sudo.
Linux makes you hardware run and abstracts it away in Operating System.
Long answer. Read the book. It is very good.
I don’t really understand how software translates to hardware.
Like, I do… I understand that a driver takes a software value of {0,1} and converts it into a concrete voltage for that device… I just don’t understand how a voltage rail can just be fiddled with like that without someone mechanically restricting the flow.
Like, I do… I understand how a transistor can regulate the flow of electricity to another circuit, by using a base to restrict the emitter to collector flow… I just don’t understand how that “switch” mechanism isn’t pre-determined from some beginning sequence. A timing sequence instead of an event-driven one.
Like, I do… I understand how a simple ratchet / flip flop works in terms of constructing chaotic or aperiodic cyclic flows… I just don’t see how they were initialised in the first place to force them into specific branches of computation.
Like, I do… I understand how a CPU is made up millions/billions of such devices, reacting off external device voltages to drive software paths, all initialised in such a way to allow for any number of configurations… I just don’t understand how we can do it in such a formalized relatively error-free way that appears to defy entropy
Great comment, took me back to computer architecture. Not sure I can answer. Just a postulate, is it because the electric forces are a billion times stronger than gravity so they both neutralize quicker, but also can more reliably and precisely cause electricity to flow because when you do disturb that balance, it’s much stronger than the interactions with massive systems we’re used to visualizing?
That, as well as how computers will run the same computation multiple times and select output bits by majority rules to correct errors from say cosmic rays causing some bits to flip part way through one (but not all) of the fault tolerant circuits?
My last one was more of a joke, but my other statements hold. I think what I’m essentially asking is:
I understand how a pendulum works, I understand how a Newton’s swing works, I understand how Newton’s swing can start off another swing elsewhere… I’m just not clear on the nature of the finger that started off the first swing
All I know is I survived the Debian installer. But at what cost?
Has it been a while since you used it? I know the nonfree firmware thing used to trip people up if they weren’t already aware of it, but that’s a nonissue now. Debian isn’t any harder to install than any other graphical distro.
… And there are a lot more of those random guys around now.
Statistically yes, but also you’re noticing a lot more because Lemmy creates those guys. Source: random guy. (Although I’m actually the low end “who the fuck knows” on the IQ chart version of this meme.)
I think M$ has had a lot to do with it recently, although lemmy certainly offers a helping hand
Microsoft makes you want to leave, Lemmy tells you it’s not so bad and pushes you to do it.
because Lemmy creates those guys
I confess, I’m perhaps complicit in that.
It translates what you tell it to the hardware.
We’ve cracked the code! Lol
The idea was that each component was supposed to do one thing really well and forward its output as text to the next component.
It is something about all the files being wildebeests, right ?
Wtf. My files are dolphins. Did I do something wrong?
And the user is a hippo…
… Wait…
