@Beefcake - do it. odd was joking, but his wacky Jewish humour has revealed a deep inner yearning to learn about a real OS. Odd shall graduate, in time, to z/OS, and become one with the universe. @oddguy - your future streams before you like radiant beams of plasma. Ride the streams, my fuzzy haired icon, ride them to your destiny and on into the void. Become. Transcend. Be.
So you wish to learn about the wonderful family of operating systems that is Linux? Who am I to deny you this chance at education, even if you are a Jew rat. What I find to be the most important thing about Linux and open source in general, is freedom. Take the user interface for example. Apart from some tweaks and options, you're stuck with whatever Microsoft or Apple want to ram down your throat when you use their operating systems. On Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems there is a myriad of not only full featured desktop environments like GNOME and KDE, but also lightweight window managers like Dwm and Awesome. Basically, anything is possible when it comes to the user interface. You can have a fully featured desktop environment with flashy effects or you can just use a terminal window and anything in between. But freedom doesn't end with silly shit like choosing a user interface. Since you can get the source code of the entire operating system, you can change it to do anything you want and are able to code. This is also a big reason why Linux is so popular on all sorts of different systems like mobile phones (Android), servers and super computers (90% of the Top 500 super computers runs Linux and all of the Top 10), set-top boxes (TiVo), firewalls, routers and switches (Cisco NX-OS, Vyatta), music workstations (Korg, Yamaha) and all sorts of embedded devices. Linux puts ultimate control of the system into the hands of the user and the open source model has been shown to build better and safer applications than the closed source model. Edit: tldr, if you don't play PC games, switch to Linux.
