Why Linux Is Both a Religion and a Meme (And That's Beautiful)

by Anton Van Assche - 7 min read

So yeah, you've noticed. I use Linux. Or, as Papa Stallman would insist I say: GNU/Linux. Because apparently, if you don't include the GNU, he will personally appear in your terminal like Clippy with a beard and correct you.

...well, kind of.

(Funny sidenote: I did once try to run "Linux" without GNU. It was called "booting into a black screen of existential dread.")

The Holy Copypasta

Yes, the GNU/Linux copypasta is a meme. And yes, I'm going to quote it anyway because memes are eternal scripture:

"I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux..." - Richard Stallman or someone who really loves him

You know the rest. We've all seen it 10,000 times, printed on stickers, t-shirts, probably someone's lower back tattoo. And you know what? It never gets old. Like Vim jokes. Or compiling Gentoo.

Torvalds the Angry Dad

Then you've got Linus Torvalds. Father of Linux. Patron saint of telling people their code is garbage in 4k ultra-HD profanity. The man's commit messages read like passive-aggressive haikus. Stallman is the preacher; Torvalds is the dad who yells from the garage while fixing the kernel with duct tape. Together, they are unstoppable.

Just ask the Bcachefs guy. Torvalds got so tired of late patches during RC windows that he basically said "I'm done" and marked it "externally maintained". Translation: even filesystems get the finger from Linus, not only NVIDIA.

Freedom > Fancy

"If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users." – Richard Stallman

Windows wants your soul. Mac wants your wallet. Linux? Linux wants... well, nothing. Except maybe that you learn what the hell a package manager is and why your Wi-Fi driver just rage quit.

But here's the thing: Linux is freedom. Freedom to tinker, to break things, to rebuild them at 3 a.m. with tears in your eyes and StackOverflow on your second monitor.

Well... at least when your NVIDIA graphics card drivers decide to work on Wayland.

Ricing Is a Lifestyle (Not a Crime)

Linux isn't just an OS, it's a fashion show. You haven't lived until you've spent six hours configuring your desktop just to make your terminal prompt a slightly different shade of green. It's art. It's identity. It's also why screenshots of Arch desktops look like spaceship cockpits running Neofetch in 4K. Call it ricing, call it cope - either way, my tiling window manager brings me more joy than any iPhone widget ever could.

The Eternal Install Loop

No one uses Linux. We all just distro-hop. Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, back to Fedora, then suddenly NixOS because "declarative configs will save me". Spoiler: they don't.

Every Linux user has a graveyard of ISOs and half-finished installs somewhere on an old SSD. And yet, we keep doing it. Why? Because Linux isn't about finding the perfect distro. It's about the friends (and broken bootloaders) we made along the way.

Sometimes you get so frustrated that you just open a terminal and type sudo rm -rf /existence in your dreams, realizing even destruction requires configuration.

Emacs vs. Vim: The Cold War That Never Ends

Pick a side, lose friends, spend 10 years learning keybindings you'll forget under pressure. Meanwhile, someone out there is editing /etc/hosts in Nano and doesn't care.

Tux, the Silent Overlord (and Larry the Cow's Identity Crisis)

Tux is calm. Tux is eternal. Tux doesn't have to answer existential questions about udderless cows with the wrong name. He just sits there. Smiling. Judging. Watching you compile your kernel for the fifth time this week.

Meanwhile, Gentoo has been locked in a centuries-long philosophical debate over Larry the Cow. Is Larry a male or female? Does he need udders? Should he be called Larry the Bull? The community filed a bug about it, argued endlessly, and ultimately decided: nah, he's just Larry the Cow.

Systemd: The Final Boss of Init Wars

Half the community: "systemd is evil". The other half: "it just works". Me? I forgot to reload my daemon at 3 a.m after a config change to the unit file. Again. Next time I'll try to remember. Spoiler: I won't.

Systemd isn't just an init system. It's an empire. One day it's starting your services. The next day it's managing your logs, your network, your time sync, and possibly your social security number. Blink twice and you'll find it making you coffee in the morning.

Old-school Unix greybeards hate it because it breaks "the Unix philosophy". Everyone else just accepts it because at least their laptop suspends and resumes without exploding now. And sure, you could use OpenRC, runit, or some obscure init system maintained by one guy in a cave, but sooner or later, you'll crawl back to systemd because it's everywhere. Like Thanos. Inevitable.

Why This Matters

So yeah, that's why I use Linux. Or GNU/Linux, if Stallman is within earshot. It's fast, it's free, it's endlessly memeable, and it doesn't ask for your credit card. It's not perfect. But perfection is boring. I'll take Torvalds yelling, Stallman preaching, and a desktop that sometimes forgets how to detect my monitor any day.

And if you don't like it... well, enjoy your Windows update that takes longer than compiling the kernel from scratch.

That's it. A really good f*cking operating system.

P.S. If you didn't catch it yet - this post is mostly satire. I promise I'm not actually installing Gentoo on my fridge. (Yet.)