"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.

Experienced users : archwiki & gentoo handbook, shell scripting, autotools, packaging, and dmesg

new users : "everything is a file"
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[–] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months 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

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