Many years ago this facet of Linux was the thing that really made me realize just how astonishingly wonderful the central idea of UNIX (everything is a file) really is. It also puts in stark contrast those systems that haven't grokked this beautifully simple idea.
The irony is that the only reason Linus Torvalds spent so much time on Linux in the early days is because he accidentally made his dialer program use his minix partition to dial up his university. The dialer was fine with it... it even 'talked' back, destroying the data. He couldn't re-install Minix because he didn't have a copy of it. So he was stuck with Linux, and he was forced to improve it if he wanted to use his expensive computer.
