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Discussion on: Let's talk about Linux

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Ghost • Edited

You can borrow Windows or iOS, you can learn how to use them, the overlords may even let you change somethings like the wallpaper, maybe tell you what is inside and how it works, maybe. Is never yours, you paid for a house with locked closets, a car with a GPS you don't control and a engine you cannot see. Try to open a panel, to open the trunk or look at it from below and you are breaking the law.

Linux and BSD (and others like Haiku and Redox) are, currently, the only way to own your computer and the only way to really learn about it, free to do what you want with it, others praise themselves because the can change fonts and UI colors; we know better.

I used MS OS from DOS 6.0 to Win XP and after all those years I learned close to nothing, I was very proficient with Windows yet I knew nothing, just the "cute" "user friendly" pseudo-technical terms given by MS, I knew the location of every checkbox and icon, even knew a bunch of useful registry entries; I knew nothing. After a week using Mandrake Linux my world opened, not longer after I installed Gentoo, a week banging my head against the desk (it was in the dark ages) I messed up the installation 6 times, but after that week I learned so much, not Linux stuff, real technical knowledge, no more "home networks" or internet thingies: LANs, TCP/IP stack, DNS, etc. No more useless computer baby talk. I would still use computers as microwaves, as appliances and I would still be frightful of them like mysterious blackboxes if it hadn't been for Linux.