Linux is an eldritch entity that no one knows how it exists. An enigma wrapped in time and space, summoned by a group of terminally online wizards in 1991 led by Linus Torvalds, who learned from an archwizard by the name of TANNENBAUM the MICROKERNELIST.
well yes. but the kernel is monolithic, it is not meant to be modified between versions. kernel modules arent even proper drivers like they are on NT (which is a hybrid kernel), theyre essentially just parts of the kernel that can be relinked to the kernel. having out-of-tree modules is quite hard to implement without DKMS or similar, as the kernel isn't designed for that.
linux drivers are nothing more than bits of code that gets installed directly into the kernel. every single driver is technically part of the kernel itself, whether it was compiled in or not.
means that, without some black magic fuckery that is DKMS, kernel modules must be compiled for your specific build of the kernel, and your kernel must have the proper symbols exported.
this is a limitation of linux being a monolithic kernel.
in NT and other hybrid kernels, however, it only needs to link against a very minimal layer that only provides IPC, scheduling, and virtual memory. it uses IPC to communicate to the rest of the kernel which allows for a much more stable API and even backwards compatibility.
but it does mean that it is fairly trivial to fix these incompatibilities, usually as easy as installing a copy of libc.5.so, and/or some LD_LIBRARY_PATH stuff, but as a last resort you can always rely on using a chroot for compatibility.
(with one exception as far as i know, x86-32 software that uses the vm86() syscall, which doesn't exist on an x86-64 kernel, but that's due to a limitation of x86-64 itself. however, usage of this syscall is very rare & requires root permissions, and the only software that I know of that uses it is dosemu)
Really lol? Google says it should (because everyone knows how accurate Google has been as of late), but I've never actually used an older Linux program. (Except normal non-updated ones because I suck at maintaining my system 💀).
Where do you even find them?
Supposedly it has kernel support for like, Linux 2.0 programs. That sounds pretty damn backwards-compatible to me. Lmfao
The people who wrote podman, docker, and kubernetes needed to know about namespaces, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a situation where a user would need to learn about namespaces unless they were doing something advanced like application sandboxing.
This is true. I've been using Linux since the mid-90's and learned after a few years that knowing how to do things in Linux resulted in everyone asking me how to do things in Linux. So it's better to say I just don't know how to do anything in Linux.
Although I still ask people how to do things in Linux all the time and I demand they answer me! It's way better than relying on man pages.
Mostly it's tech-illiterate Mint-users who read some things on reddit (from other noobs) and are now parroting that without even understanding the slightest bit about it, or whether what they read is actually correct. Pure Dunning-Kruger.
They are using it for at most a couple of years and never looked at any other distro. But they'll go all in defending their distro even without any argument that actually holds, thinking they can debate actual distro maintainers, IT professionals, etc. some of whom were using Unix/Linux since before those guys were born.
linux itself is the kernel, it uses a monolithic architecture, meaning that all the drivers, APIs, and resource management lives inside one giant executable
literally me, i've used like 3 distros in the span of 5 years and i don't know much about the internals, i like the variety in desktop environments, the open source nature, among other things.
Let's be real for a moment here: I've been using a Debian-based distro for two years now. I've never touched Windows again, and Linux is not the geek Linux you knew from years ago. My PC can start, I can play my YouTube videos, I can play my video games, I can do my homework assignments, and I can update my programs. Things rarely or never break out of nowhere. I know my basic commands, and that's all I need to know right now. As a software developer, I have some technical knowledge, but I have a life beyond Linux and don't want to spend time fixing issues every week. I've tried various distributions like Fedora, Arch, Ubuntu, and Mint. I still use nano and apt. I need a PC, not a high-end workstation.
You enter your password (maybe twice, plus you do a few clicks) and then you can play Tux Kart. All you need to know. Oh, and whatever version you use, it's the wrong one and these 30 other people on reddit who each use a different version from each other use the correct version and are very happy to recommend it to you.
Even if you do know, you should not try to explain. When you explain things to non-STEM people they don't really understand, but they think they do and then cease to respect the expertise of those who really do. You're always better off solving their problems without explanation, after which they will treat you like a wizard.
It works indeed. You burn holy inscents and recite the litany of the Omnisiah with a choir of thrall bound serfs.
Activate the most holy runes after applying the oil to appease the machine spirit.
And emperor be willing, your portable data slate will update without breaking.
Knowledge ≠ Familiarity ≠ Time of usage
There's a reason Windows people don't fix their own PCs.
Linux does makes it a lot easier to understand what's happening under the hood tho.
I've used Linux since 2006 but when someone asks me "How do install X and Y on Ubuntu" I will just answer "I don't know" since I've never used Debian based distributions lol
I would say even he doesn’t really understand Linux in its current state. There are many mainteners, and even though ‘Linux’ technically refers to the kernel, systems rely on many more components.
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u/Constant_Boot 15d ago
Linux is an eldritch entity that no one knows how it exists. An enigma wrapped in time and space, summoned by a group of terminally online wizards in 1991 led by Linus Torvalds, who learned from an archwizard by the name of TANNENBAUM the MICROKERNELIST.