3. Creation and Destruction

Every culture has stories it tells itself about how things came to be (cosmogony) and how things will eventually be destroyed (eschatology). For the Norse, this was Muspellsheimr and Niflheimr at the beginning of time, and Ragnarok at the end. For Zoroastrianism, you would read the Bundahishn and then read about frashokereti. Christians would start with Genesis and end with Revelation. Linux isn’t a religion, but it too enables users to create and to destroy. Read on, and act wisely with your newfound power!

Note

When I updated this book for its second edition, I removed the sections about mkdir -v (which shows you what mkdir is doing as it does it) and rm -v (which does the same thing, but for rm). You can find the ...

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