this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
197 points (94.6% liked)

Explain Like I'm Five

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I'm old. I don't understand it.

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[–] bjorney@lemmy.ca 96 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

Your computer is a bunch of parts that need software to make them work. The "operating system" handles talking to the hardware directly, while the programs you run only talk to the operating system. Talking to the operating system is easy, talking to the hardware is difficult, since you may need to speak a hundred different languages to work with every possible network card, sound card, graphics card, etc.

The operating systems you have probably heard of are windows and macOS. Linux is a 3rd one.

Windows is owned by Microsoft, macOS is owned by Apple, and Linux is developed by the community and (typically) released for free. Since anyone can work on Linux, there are tons of different versions of it floating around, that are all slightly different from one another.

[–] TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

4/10. No mention of TempleOS.

Nah, this is a really good explanation.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 4 points 2 weeks ago

Dude may have been nuts, but he did do something quite impressive for his time.

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Have you heard of Stallman's new project TNL?

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