“Everything is a file” is what made me start understanding linux few years ago and from there it got easier to use with each new concept.

Still this was really revolutionary to me when I first heard it. Made a bunch of things just click.

    • JayDee@lemmy.sdf.org
      16·
      6 days ago

      It’s more a philosophy for Unix systems. When we say that “everything is a file”, we’re saying that even devices should show up on the filesystem (/dev), even network ports should show up on the filesystem, even processes should show up on the filesystem(/proc), etc… and that is as opposed to having a different system abstraction handle those functions instead.

      Of course when you look deeper into it, linux does not explicitly follow that rule, it more just adheres to it. It’s more a guideline than an explicit statement of fact

        • verstra@programming.dev
          3·
          4 days ago

          Yea, but socket is not a file. Maybe if you stretch the definition.

          Well in any case, when people say that linux is great because everything is a file, they either mean that:

          • they can edit configuration of most things with a text editor, or that
          • in bash (and other shells) it is easy to work with byte streams, piping them from one process to another and compose complex behaviour from simple commands.