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ELI5: What the heck is linux?
(lazysoci.al)
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this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
205 points (100.0% liked)
Explain Like I'm Five
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Your computer is a bunch of parts that need software to make them work. The "operating system" handles talking to the hardware directly, while the programs you run only talk to the operating system. Talking to the operating system is easy, talking to the hardware is difficult, since you may need to speak a hundred different languages to work with every possible network card, sound card, graphics card, etc.
The operating systems you have probably heard of are windows and macOS. Linux is a 3rd one.
Windows is owned by Microsoft, macOS is owned by Apple, and Linux is developed by the community and (typically) released for free. Since anyone can work on Linux, there are tons of different versions of it floating around, that are all slightly different from one another.
Omg this us an amazing explanation thanks
4/10. No mention of TempleOS.
Nah, this is a really good explanation.
Dude may have been nuts, but he did do something quite impressive for his time.
TempleOS is not Linux!
Have you heard of Stallman's new project TNL?