this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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Fucking DLLs
Shared objects on Linux.
I've been using Linux for longer than I've been an adult, I've worked in the field for around fifteen years, and TIL what .so means. Thanks!
We're probably pretty similar. I haven't been a Linux user as long as I've been an adult (close), but if you include BSDs, then I have, since I dabbled w/ FreeBSD as a kid.
I'm a SW engineer and I like compiled languages, so linking in C libraries comes w/ the territory. If it wasn't for that, I would probably just call them DLLs (dynamic-link library, FWIW), since they do the same thing at the end of the day.
I was a sysadmin, now I'm nominally devops. I haven't done real development for probably 21 years, so I didn't interact with SO's or DLL's much. (I actually did know what DLL means, but I have no clue why. Thanks though!)
I didn't use pure BSD until I was eighteen - I think I used Macs a time or two before then. In fact, I'm pretty sure the first time I used BSD was installing it on an iMac I bought off of Craigslist and I did so to experiment with its firewall functionality. What did you do with it as a kid?
Honestly, not much. I took a programming class at the local community college during high school, and an older gentlemen gave me an install disk. So I installed it on an old PC and tinkered a bit, but it didn't have internet so I only had the base install.
I switched to Ubuntu my freshmen year at college because windows broke on my rented computer and I didn't want to deal with IT. I tried switching to FreeBSD on my laptop a couple years later, but it wouldn't sleep properly, so I went back to Linux (Arch at this point). I still used FreeBSD on my toy servers and NAS, which ended a few years later when I switched everything to openSUSE (Leap on server/NAS first, then Tumbleweed later on my desktop and laptop).
That said, my kids haven't really used Windows, they either use my computers running Tumbleweed or ChromeOS at school.
I still really like FreeBSD, but I don't use it because I had issues getting Docker to work (need for self-hosted LibreOffice Online), and I prefer everything to be same family, and having openSUSE work everywhere is nice. It still holds a place in heart though, so I make sure my personal projects work properly on FreeBSD. Who knows, maybe I'll use it if I ever replace my router with a DIY setup (currently use Mikrotik).
You sound like someone with whom I'd get along well. My Linux origin story isn't terribly dissimilar to your BSD one; I hosted a file server on a Windows server when I went to college. I met another, somewhat older as I went to college early, nerd there and he recommended replacing my Windows server with Linux. I don't recall if he gave me the install disk. I think my first Linux system was Red Hat before they became Enterprise and my friend was right - it worked better than a Windows server. I tried to convert all of my systems to Linux at that point, but I still lived with my parents and they paid for AOL for Internet, which (so far as I could tell at the time) had no Linux compatibility. Also, I gamed a lot and back then there was nothing like proton or even (so far as I knew) WINE.
I had to look up what Tumbleweed was after reading your post. I haven't used any form of SUSE for years and years. I use mostly Fedora for my workstations or CentOS/Alma/Rocky for my servers because I was an RHCE for a while (now expired, I think) and was most comfortable in that ecosystem.
My kid has never touched Windows AFAIK; the only Windows system in my network is my wife's work computer (and one VM I setup while experimenting with something, but that's gone now). The kid has two tablets and a laptop I put Linux on, but they're too young to really care about anything but YouTube on those systems. I'll get 'em yet, though!
What got you on SUSE?
The story there is fairly simple. Basically:
I wanted the same system on my desktop and server, and I really like rolling releases on my desktop. openSUSE was pretty much the only one that actually offered both. They were ballsy enough to officially support
btrfsin production, so I figured switching my NAS over to it wouldn't be a terrible idea, especially since I only needed RAID mirror so the write hole on raid 5/6 wouldn't be an issue. The first time an update went south on my desktop (Nvidia, go figure),snapper rollbacksaved me a bunch of time, and that's what sold me on it. I since replaced my GPU w/ AMD and I haven't had a single issue w/ updates since, whereas on Arch I'd have 3-4 manual interventions/year unrelated to Nvidia.And yeah, my kids haven't used my computers for anything other than Steam, YouTube, and some random web games. But they're technically on Linux and have successfully navigated both GNOME (used for a bit before KDE had proper Wayland support) and KDE, so they're more seasoned than some new Linux users.
Awesome answer. Thank you for taking the time. I've enjoyed getting to know this part of your story.
Yeah, any time! It sounds like we had a relatively similar entry into *nix. Have a fantastic day. :)