Having interacted with him a few times online (if he was alive he would be on this comment thread right now, and would probably have been banned at this point) - he was severely mentally ill. I’m not sure if he had any form of political ideology that was coherent enough to be “theocratic.”

Like, when you run TempleOS, the majority of programs on there are about using random number generators to “talk to” God. There are keyboard shortcuts for this purpose. I don’t think he was fun to be around - I imagine that his parents were at the end of their rope by the time they kicked him out - but Davis spent the last ten years or so of his life completely untethered from reality.

It’s not Linux, it’s something entirely unique.

TempleOS is a 64-bit, non-preemptive multi-tasking,[8] multi-cored, public domain, open source, ring-0-only, single address space, non-networked, PC operating system for recreational programming.[9] The OS runs 8-bit ASCII with graphics in source code and has a 2D and 3D graphics library, which run at 640x480 VGA with 16 colors.[5] Like most modern operating systems, it has keyboard and mouse support. It supports ISO 9660, FAT32 and RedSea file systems (the latter created by Davis) with support for file compression.[10] According to Davis, many of these specifications—such as the 640x480 resolution, 16-color display and single audio voice—were instructed to him by God. He explained that the limited resolution was to make it easier for children to draw illustrations for God.[1]

When he was alive, he would be frequently banned from forums for getting into crazy arguments about esoteric code things. Also the racial slurs. A complicated but beautiful human being.

Genuinely took most of my notes in college on vim, when you get good it’s just faster.

This kind of behavior mystifies me. I get that it can be frustrating to deal with lazy folks, but especially with how shit google/ddg are nowadays, when people are looking for help and are met with this kind of treatment it’s pretty discouraging! I’ve been an Arch user for about a decade, and sometimes I run into problems that should be googleable but aren’t.

It’s especially concerning, considering how tech illiterate the next generation is. They’re very used to walled gardens, and if they can barely manage a MacBook, they’re going to really struggle starting with things like the command line.

Lighting a candle leaves you with two lit candles. There’s no reason to gatekeep knowledge.