Learning C is essentially required to become really good with UNIX. For example, the answer to your library linking question only "correctly" makes sense when y

Learning C is essentially required to become really good with UNIX. For example, the answer to your library linking question only "correctly" makes sense when you understand C since you need to understand C to really understand how the underlying C code works with all the compilers, linkers, loaders, object files, executable file formats, and such. The good folks Debian build and maintain a solid linux disto, but you need to realize how a linux distro will only teach you the "linux way" of doing things. There are other ways, and of course, other systems. The various BSD operating systems like OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD, ArchBSD, BitRig, and so forth all tend to stick a bit more closely to the classic or historic "UNIX way" of doing things. If the goal is to learn C so you can learn the underlying system code, my choice would be OpenBSD. It's simple, solid, and secure, but the best reason to pick it would be the quality of the code and documentation. It really helps to have reliable code and docs when you're trying to learn, and like all active projects, they keep trying to improve both. The only reason why I know about the AFL fuzzer is due to the never ending auditing of OpenBSD since some of the OpenBSD developers, like Damien Miller [1] and Jonathan Gray [2], have recently been using AFL to discover and fix bugs. [1] https://twitter.com/damienmiller/status/534156368391831552 https://twitter.com/damienmiller/status/534156368391831552 [2] https://www.marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=141646270127039&w=2 https://www.marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=141646270127039&w=2