Linux just turned twenty. I can’t decide how strange it is that Linux is only a little bit younger than I am yet still younger than me. To be fair, today is the twentieth anniversary of Linus Torvalds making a post asking what people would like to see in Linux, not the anniversary of releasing Linux to the public. Still, I consider today the birthday of Linux just as 7 January is the anniversary of my birth.
I’ve been using Linux for a small part of those twenty years, but I’m already a proud member of Team Penguin. Five distros and three desktop environments later, I think I’ve found a combo that really works for me. KDE is still taking some getting used to, and I’m trying to figure out how to do some things in KDE that I could do in GNOME (though I suspect Dolphin, not KDE itself, is to blame). Maybe a change in file manager is in order.
And this is exactly what I love about Linux: the configurability. It’s extremely difficult tp change the ever-present but some annoying parts of other popular operating systems like the way you manage files. But Linux lets you do it. Don’t like your file manager? Get another one. Don’t like your desktop environment? Get another one and join a holy war.
I love you, Linux. Please keep being the best OS out there and keep giving your users the power of freedom.