[coreyh14444]

As someone in the midst of transitioning to Linux for the first time ever, the thing is: I still kinda hate Unix, but my AI friends (Claude Code / Codex) are very good at Unix/Linux and the everything is a file nature of it is amenable to AI helping me make my OS do what I want in a way that Windows definitely isn't.

[pjmlp]

On UNIX the "everything is a file" quickly breaks down, when networking, or features added post UNIX System V get used, but the meme still holds apparently.

If you want really everything is a file, that was fixed by UNIX authors in Plan 9 and Inferno.

[dark-star]

Yeah, I was really confused when I learned that every device was simply a file in /dev, except the network interfaces. I never understood why there is no /dev/eth0 ...

That was back in the mid-90s but even today I still don't understand why network interfaces are treated differently than other devices

[zokier]

Well it depends on what "file" means. Linuxian interpretation would be that file is something you can get file descriptor for. And then the "everything is a file" mantra holds better again.

[blu3h4t]

I was recently thinking that object orientation is kind of everything is a file 2.0 in the form everything is an object I mean ofcourse didn’t pan out that good. Haven’t googled yet what people had to say about that already before. P.s. big fan of ur comments.

[tankenmate]

Some GOSIP (remember that?) implementations on some Unicies did have files for network connections, but it was very much in the minority. Since BSD was the home of the first widely usable socket() implementations for TCP/IP it became the norm; sockets are a file, but just not linked to any filesystem and control is connect()/accept() and the networking equivalent (setsockopt()) of the Unix system call dumping ground; ioctl().

[star-glider]

Linus finally relented and changed it to "everything is a stream of bits." Still, it's a useful metaphor and way to think about interacting with bits of the OS.

[ok123456]

The problems of commercial Unix in 1993 are totally different from Linux in 2025.

[TrackerFF]

Having observed my fair share of beginners transition from win to linux, the most common source of pain I've seen is getting used to the file permissions, and playing fast and loose with sudo.