when I started using linux, I went through two phases. the first one was marked by knowing, generally, which commands to invoke from the command line to make th

when I started using linux, I went through two phases. the first one was marked by knowing, generally, which commands to invoke from the command line to make the computer do what I want. I had very little idea of what was going on in the operating system and the userspace runtime, and it didn't matter because the creators of the OS and runtime were smart and the system behaved sensibly. I thought I knew what was going on, I had this feeling that I was in control of the computer, but really I wasn't, I was just as much at the mercy of the operating system maintainers as I was when I ran Windows. If a command line program reported an error or crashed, the procedure to fix it was identical to the one on Windows: ask your friends, or search the Internet. It was only after many years of doing system level programming that I was actually able to fix problems that the original tool creators did not anticipate. I think many people park themselves in front of a command line for five minutes, "learn bash", and think "hooray I am in charge of the computer". You're not.