this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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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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I mean I feel stupid typing it now, but I've been using Windows since I was 5 years old, and Linux for about 30 days. It was not apparent to me that many of my folders were actually shortcuts to stuff in my user directory, and now that I know to look out for them the location of my applications make sooo much more sense.

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[–] krolden@lemmy.ml 15 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Wait until you learn about hard links

[–] lengau@midwest.social 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)
[–] taaz@biglemmowski.win 5 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

Uh I think you meant bind mounts lol

[–] lengau@midwest.social 1 points 15 minutes ago

Stupid autocorrect!

Err... I mean uhh... No, I mean bird mounts! Don't you like mounting birds in your filesystem?

[–] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

They might have but I certainly don't

[–] meyotch@slrpnk.net 5 points 5 hours ago

He said BIRD mounts and he meant it. It is up to us to rise to the level where we too can use bird mounts.

[–] hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 hours ago

came here for this

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Don't feel dumb! This is just normal learning!

Symlinks are possible in Windows (at least in NTFS filesystems) but to my knowledge they aren't used by anything official.

Windows's weird "psuedo folders" thing it does with "Documents" etc is something else entirely.

[–] ChickenAndRice@sh.itjust.works 7 points 16 hours ago

Adding on to Windows: There's no way (in the UI) to add symlinks. In Windows 10, symlinks must be created in an administrative command prompt. It is pretty damn clunky.

[–] ChickenAndRice@sh.itjust.works 21 points 19 hours ago (2 children)
[–] incogtino@lemmy.zip 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

That beginners guide says to avoid creating circular symlinks. What if, entirely hypothetically, I already have a circular symlink?

[–] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 57 minutes ago
[–] ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

"Overdoing it" doesn't exist when you understand what it can accomplish. Bedrock Linux for example is based on symlink abuse from what I understand

[–] ChickenAndRice@sh.itjust.works 5 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

I'll have to look into that distro later. Anything particularly noteworthy about it, besides the symlink abuse?

Edit: I did some rudimentary searching, apparently it's a meta distro that let's you mix and match stuff from multiple linux distros: https://bedrocklinux.org/

That's actually pretty wild. I might play around with this in the future

[–] JTskulk@lemmy.world 10 points 16 hours ago

protip: put bind -s 'set mark-symlinked-directories on' in your ~/.bashrc and also bind -s 'set completion-ignore-case on' because why not :)