{"id":206965,"date":"2026-01-27T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/27\/why-linux-is-the-go-to-platform-for-developers-and-tinkerers\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T08:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T13:45:08","slug":"why-linux-is-the-go-to-platform-for-developers-and-tinkerers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/27\/why-linux-is-the-go-to-platform-for-developers-and-tinkerers\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Linux is the go-to platform for developers and tinkerers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Linux is the go-to platform for developers and tinkerers<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/linux-is-still-a-developer-os-and-thats-why-it-wont-go-mainstream\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-01-27 08:30:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.howtogeek.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Linux fans like to dream of the day when Linux is a mainstream OS instead of a hacker’s tool. As much fun and useful as Linux is, it seems that Linux will still be a “geek” OS. Here’s why the Linux community should embrace this rather than fight it.<\/p>\n

\n Linux is a developer’s workbench
\n <\/h2>\n

In 1985, Paul Schindler, who was the software reviewer for the PBS show The Computer Chronicles, delivered a short editorial during the show’s episode on Unix, when observers were speculating that AT&T could unseat IBM as the dominant force in computing with Unix in the wake of the breakup of the Bell System. AT&T, now legally able to market computers and software directly, and Unix in particular.<\/p>\n

Schindler poured cold water on the idea, comparing marketing Unix to mainstream computer users to trying to open a can of tomato juice with a screwdriver (starting at around 21:54 in the embedded video below).<\/p>\n

Schindler’s main argument was that while Unix was a great environment for writing minicomputer software (a class of machine we would now call a server), the proliferation of different Unix versions even in 1985 made software portability difficult.<\/p>\n

While Unix had made a splash in academia and Unix workstations were becoming popular in science and engineering, the fragmentation and lack of office software made it a tough sell in the business market compared to the ubiquitous MS-DOS systems outside of specialized applications.<\/p>\n

Joel Spolsky, in a review of Eric S. Raymond’s The Art of Unix Programming, pointed out that at the time Unix was first developed, the division between developers and end-users didn’t exist in the minicomputer era. Users had to write their own software. Unix culture evolved to make things easier for developers through its command-line and pipeline design, even at the expense of end users, and Linux largely inherited this attitude.<\/p>\n

Unix-like systems are so close to developers’ hearts that an…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Linux is the go-to platform for developers and tinkerers https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/linux-is-still-a-developer-os-and-thats-why-it-wont-go-mainstream\/ Publish Date: 2026-01-27 08:30:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":206966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static0.howtogeekimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/linux-mascot-geek.png?w=1600&h=900&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[35,71],"class_list":["post-206965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-hacker","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206967,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206965\/revisions\/206967"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}