The distro family trees are like different pantheons.
Distros are like individual gods. Community developers are priests and end-users are the commoners who pray for blessings, good fortune, and happy lives. Priests direct the prayers of commoners to their respective gods.
There is the Debian pantheon, ancient gods of peace and stillness.
The Arch pantheon, progressive gods that bring revolution along with a bit of chaos.
The Red Hat pantheon, gods tha- wtf am I writing?
The great Umberto Eco once wrote some wonderful musings about the similarities between different then popular personal computer operating systems and different branches of Christianity. I see that’s now 30 years ago this year so now might be a good time for a repost, English translations and Italian original can be found here: https://www.simongrant.org/web/eco.html
It’s too good not to be posted here :
The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the “ratio studiorum” of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach – if not the Kingdom of Heaven – the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.
DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.
You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counterreformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It’s true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions…
And machine code, which lies beneath both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that is to do with the Old Testament, and is Talmudic and cabalistic.
Be sure to click the link to a fuller version provided beneath this one. Eco is just excellent.
If this is your take after your annual Xmas Magic Mushrooms trip, you need to take more shrooms
Don’t be silly, the Linux community has never told me to hate someone just because they’re differen… Oh.
And besides, there’s no arcane practices or secret knowledg… Oh.
Carry on.
What are arch commoners pray?
We pray for pacman to deliver as he often does.
All hail to pacman!
I already knew it basically was a religion, haha
Unconditional belief in OpenSuSE supremacy, Gut für Alle!
No keep going, I like what you’re cooking.
Linux produces actual results. Linux hate is the religion.
Idk why but I love this post haha
With Linux you’re either in hell or in heaven. With Windows you’re in purgatory. /S
I like how you realized part way through that you were typing out nonsense, and decided to post it anyway lol
Also: how high are you right now?
Hi how are you? 🤣🖖
based
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Foss for the Foss God!
Forks for the fork throne!
The one true way is TempleOS.
It is too bad his mental health overtook him, with proper medicine that guy could have been such a much more amazing computer science dude. Although maybe the meds would have taken away his inner insight. It amazing that singled handedly he built his own OS. It is a wacky system, but still amazing
Dude sounds like he could’ve been the Phillip K. Dick of computing.
It is an incredible solo-effort, with largely simplistic features.
As a usable OS, it’s a fever-dream curiosity.
Yeah, I meant amazing that he created all that while struggling with schizophrenia, I can only imageline the accomplishments if he was well.
Monotheism finds a way.
No but there is an ideological basis for free software though it is firmly based on practical experiences dealing with the consequences of close source devices.
Red Hat and Ubuntu are business. Debian and Arch are communities. Some of the smaller distros are basically that one guy in Nebraska.
People promote them for various reasons. An IBM employee will have different reasons to the supporter types who latch on to a distro and mascot like it was a football team. Now football, there is a religion. Its all ritual, nothing they do has any practical use, people congregate once a week and in some parts of the world it turns violent.
When the deb users start committing genocide on the rpm users I’ll call it a religion. Until then its just a bunch of anime convention fans arguing about their favourite isekai.
The Red Hat pantheon, gods tha- wtf am I writing?
scripture
amen
We do willingly summon daemons to inhabit our magic crystals.
Can we change
systemctl starttosystemctl summonpls??It sounds like you want to bring Sorcerer Linux back.
The packages were kept in the Grimore and you cast spells to build, install, etc.
https://distrowatch.com/table-mobile.php?distribution=sorcerer
It was a very early source-based distro.
summon daemons
