Can confirm; user is file too

Everything is computer.

Files don't actually exist once you dig down

Exactly. A file is really just a way to understand a collection of bits. So saying everything is files is like saying everything in computers can be described as sets of bits, which is not a terrible heuristic.

7. Everything is a FIFO

true enlightenment: everything is a string over an IO socket

/dev/null sez nothing is also a file

Am I a file?

Missing stage 7: Not everything is a file.

Linux is closer than other *nixes (sysctl equivalents in some platforms are not files, but they are files in Linux).

However get very far into network and the file-like behaviors become more limited. From an application, at least you have a decent chance of having unseekable, but otherwise 'file-like' interaction with stream protocols. Then you need recvmsg/sendmsg. Then you want to deal with low level interaction with the network stack and dealing with NETLINK and such..

Unfortunately, no one can be told what a file is. You have to see it for yourself.

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the file system goes.

And the hidden 0th level that you only get after being nearly killed by a falling server rack:

"Files Aren't Things"

Which looks great on a tshirt, btw :p

"How can files be real if the filesystem isn't real?" - Jaden Smith (probably)

I suspect sarcasm but in case it is not, photos are just binary files, just like videos and many other file formats.

tldr: it's to have nicer, less complicated I/O operations

it enables just having two API calls: read() and write() to do everything