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• By now, I’ve had years of experience on different operating systems. It’s quite common for me to use multiple operating systems in one day. Of all of them, though, there’s only one that doesn’t feel like it’s holding my hand or keeping parts of the system locked behind the counter. That’s a deliberate design choice that addresses certain use cases, which may feel reassuring to some. But that’s not my style.Linux (come on, you knew it’d be Linux) takes a different approach: no locks, no guardrails, no limits. That’s what makes Linux a real operating system, something its competitors, dwarfing it in desktop user share, will never be. Bold words, to be sure, but I have the receipts to back it up.Not One Kernel of Truth…But MultipleOf the major desktop OSes, Linux is the only one that lets you completely switch kernels. The kernel is the essential software that ships with every operating system and mediates between the OS and the device hardware. Because of its prime placement, the kernel also enforces the most fundamental security controls in any system.Of course, because kernel support is required to use hardware, and no OS developer can support every peripheral, desktop systems cannot be completely inflexible with their kernels. Windows permits users to manage driver installation. As is typical for Apple, macOS is less permissive, especially as Apple is now discouraging the use of kernel extensions in favor of “system extensions,” which run outside the kernel. Linux systems allow you to install any kernel you want, making Linux the most adaptable of the three desktops.You might think that, given how integral kernels are to an operating system, it would be challenging to reconfigure them. While you should certainly be careful, it’s not difficult. Many desktop Linux distributions give you a graphical tool for browsing, installing, and switching kernels. Just select what you want, reboot your computer, and you’re on your way.So why would you even want to do this?Different kernels prioritize different attributes. Some kernels support specialized hardware. Others simply aim to save space by omitting many default modules that most users don’t need — and still others add hardened security controls, such as SELinux-enabled configurations, to make system manipulation more difficult for attackers. Why wouldn’t this be the case? Personal desktop users, software developers, and information security professionals all have different needs, so why would they all use the same kernel?Ditch the Uniform, Show Off Your StyleHave you ever noticed how most macOS desktops have only modest differences? With possibly the exception of gamers, one might observe this among Windows users, too. When it comes to icon style, status bar placement, and even wallpaper, there just isn’t much variation within macOS and Windows user populations, respectively. This is partly by choice, partly by OS constraints.By contrast, with distros being legion, each embracing its own desktop environment with its own visual tweaks, conformity isn’t even possible for Linux users.Just considering any single distribution, because it’s Linux, you’re free to change literally anything about its form and function. It’s not called “free” software just for its price tag. The icons, cursor, status bar, tray widgets, and app launchers are all a breeze to swap out.As just one example, I wrote a custom script that sends a notification every 20 minutes to take a break from the screen. You can go really deep and pick the exact graphical libraries to use, or redefine how windows are drawn on the screen by replacing your compositor. To me, the Linux desktop is the perfect canvas for expressing my unique computing style, and I love that.Hardware With a Soft TouchIn Linux, sudo is the only thing stopping you from accessing every hardware component directly from the command line. Everything is a file for truly Unix-like systems. Thus, Linux represents hardware — and the data going to and from it — as files. Anything that can operate on regular files can operate on hardware “files.”That’s very abstract, so here are some examples of what that entails:
  • Want to write a program that changes your screen brightness? Just change a number in a file.
  • Want to capture raw keyboard entry? Simply read its character device file.
  • Need random numbers from system entropy? Tap right into the unlimited supply in /dev/urandom.
  The trick is knowing where these files are and how to handle them. But your system has plenty of tools for any case you’ll find yourself in.Desktop or Server? Why Be Forced to Choose?I would argue that no other OS works equally well as a desktop and as a server. There might not be many cases where you’d want to do that, but the advantage is that you don’t have to learn a whole new operating system to go between the two. Think about how convenient it is to take all of your system diagnostic skills from your desktop and apply them on your server, or vice versa.It also goes to show that Linux truly delivers on the concept of a general-purpose computer. Windows and macOS are classified as such, too, but how easy is it to turn them into web servers, file servers, VPN endpoints, or DNS servers? Not very. Meanwhile, you could probably get an AI to spit out a script to set up a web server on your Linux box in the time it takes to finish reading this article.Nothing to HideWhile not as exciting as the aforementioned attributes, this one is the most practical: everything in a Linux system is fully documented. Of course, command-line utilities for all major desktops have “man page”-like help interfaces. But in Linux’s case, so do low-level system processes like systemd, the all-in-one system initializer and background software manager, constituting the beating heart of the most common Linux distros.Linux’s thorough documentation is really in service of its customizability, which, I would contend, is merely a manifestation of its explicit “portability” objective, which one can interpret as “versatility.” It also partly owes to Linux being open source. If you’re allowed to download, alter, and install the software however you want, it should provide basic guidance on how to do so.Even so, there’s no reason Linux’s proprietary competitors can’t have just as much documentation. There is a way to write technical guidance on what software can do without disclosing how it does so.So why don’t proprietary OSes do this?There are doubtless multiple reasons. To me, the most likely explanation is that, for some features, the concern is that divulging too much about what it does would reveal too much about how it works. Especially as Apple and Microsoft scramble to stuff AI into every product offering, they just might prefer to remind you about the constant data collection as little as possible.January 27, 2026
• The Only Way to Be ConfidentHow are you supposed to be confident about something when you have nothing to feel confident about?Like, how are you supposed to be confident at your new job if you’ve never done this type of work before? Or how are you supposed to be confident in social situations when no one has ever liked you before? Or how are you supposed to be confident in your relationship when you’ve never been in a successful relationship before?On the surface, confidence appears to be an area where the rich get richer and the poor stay the fucking losers they are. After all, if you’ve never experienced much social acceptance, and you lack confidence around new people, then that lack of confidence will make people think you’re clingy and weird and not accept you.Same deal goes for relationships. No confidence in intimacy will lead to bad breakups and awkward phone calls and emergency Ben and Jerry’s runs at three in the morning.And seriously, how are you supposed to be confident in your work experience when previous experience is required to even be considered for a job in the first place?https://youtube.com/watch?v=juPtFTifgvM%3Ffeature%3DoembedThe Confidence ConundrumIf you’ve always lost in life, then how could you ever expect to be a winner? And if you never expect to be a winner, then you’re going to act like a loser. Thus the cycle of suckage continues.This is the confidence conundrum, where in order to be happy or loved or successful, first you need to be confident… but to be confident, first you need to be happy or loved or successful.So it seems like you’re stuck in one of two loops: either you’re already in a happy and confident loop, like this.Or you’re in a loser loop, like this.And if you’re in the loser loop, well it seems damn near impossible to get out.It’s like a dog chasing its own tail. Or Domino’s ordering its own pizza. You can spend a lot of time cuticle-gazing trying to mentally sort everything out, but just like with your lack of confidence, you’re likely to end up right back where you started.But maybe we’re going about this all wrong. Maybe the confidence conundrum isn’t really a conundrum at all.If we pay close attention, we can learn a few things about confidence just by observing people. So before you run off and order that pizza, let’s break this down:
  1. Just because somebody has something (tons of friends, a million dollars, a bitchin’ beach body) doesn’t necessarily mean that this person is confident in it. There are business tycoons who totally lack confidence in their own wealth, models who lack confidence in their looks, and celebrities who lack confidence in their own popularity. So I think the first thing we can establish is that confidence is not necessarily linked to any external marker. Rather, our confidence is rooted in our perception of ourselves regardless of any tangible external reality.
  2. Because our confidence is not necessarily linked to any external, tangible measurement, we can conclude that improving the external, tangible aspects of our lives won’t necessarily build confidence. Chances are that if you’ve lived more than a couple of decades, you’ve experienced this in some form or another. Getting a promotion at your job doesn’t necessarily make you more confident in your professional abilities. In fact, it can often make you feel less confident. Dating and/or sleeping with more people doesn’t necessarily make you feel more confident about how attractive you are. Moving in with your partner or getting married doesn’t necessarily make you feel any more confident in your relationship.
  3. Confidence is a feeling. An emotional state and a state of mind. It’s the perception that you lack nothing. That you are equipped with everything you need, both now and for the future. A person confident in their social life will feel as though they lack nothing in their social life. A person with no confidence in their social life believes that they lack the prerequisite coolness to be invited to anyone’s pizza party. It’s this perception of lacking something that drives their needy, clingy, and/or bitchy behavior.
  Get Your Shit Together — Here’s HowEnter your email address below and I’ll send you a 55-page guide showing you how to develop rock-solid self-discipline and healthy habits that last.Get EbookYour information is protected and I never spam, ever. You can view my privacy policy here.How to Be More ConfidentThe obvious and most common answer to the confidence conundrum is to simply believe that you lack nothing. That you already have, or at least deserve, whatever you feel you would need to make you confident.But this sort of thinking—believing you’re already beautiful even though you’re a frumpy slob, or believing you’re a raving success even though your only profitable business venture was selling weed in high school—leads to the kind of insufferable narcissism that causes people to argue that obesity (something that is more detrimental to your health than smoking cigarettes) should be celebrated as beauty and that it’s, like, totally OK to carve your name into the Roman Colosseum, because, you know, selfies.A lot of people soon realize this doesn’t work and so they take a different approach: incremental, external improvement.They read articles that tell them the top 50 things confident people do, and then they try to do those things.They start to exercise, dress better, make more eye contact, and practice firmer handshakes.This is admittedly a step above simply believing that you’re already confident and that you don’t belong in the loser loop. After all, at least you’re doing something about your lack of confidence. And actually, it will work—but only for a little while.Again, this type of thinking only focuses on external sources of confidence. And remember, deriving your self-confidence from the world around you is short-lived at its best and completely fucking delusional at its worst.So no, external improvement is not a sustainable solution to the confidence conundrum. And feeling as though you lack nothing and deluding yourself into believing you already possess everything you could ever dream of is far worse.The only way to be truly confident is to simply become comfortable with what you lack.Read that again.The big charade with confidence is that it has nothing to do with being comfortable in what we achieve and everything to do with being comfortable in what we don’t achieve.People who are confident in business are confident because they’re comfortable with failure. They realize that failure is simply part of learning how their market works. It’s a reflection of their lack of knowledge, not a reflection of who they are as a person.People who are confident in their social lives are confident because they’re comfortable with rejection. They’re not afraid of rejection because they’re comfortable with people not liking them as long as they’re expressing themselves honestly.People who are confident in their relationships are confident because they’re comfortable with getting hurt. They’re not afraid to be vulnerable and tell someone how they feel and then establish strong boundaries around those feelings, even if it means being uncomfortable (or leaving a bad relationship).Building Confidence Through FailureThe truth is that the route to the positive runs through the negative. Those among us who are the most comfortable with negative experiences are those who reap the most benefits.It’s counterintuitive, but it’s also true. We often worry that if we become comfortable in our failures—that if we accept failure as an inevitable part of living—that we will become failures.But it doesn’t work that way.Comfort in our failures allows us to act without fear, to engage without judgment, to love without conditions. It’s the dog that lets the tail go, realizing that it’s already a part of himself. It’s the Domino’s that cancels its own order, realizing it already has the pizza it wanted. Or something.Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to publish this article comfortable with the fact that some people will probably hate it. And eat my pizza.January 27, 2026

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