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When advocates say Linux they unironically (and sometimes unknowingly) mean GNU+Linux. This typically means a standard image the school can manage that has rea
by xethos 3y ago
When advocates say Linux they unironically (and sometimes unknowingly) mean GNU+Linux.
This typically means a standard image the school can manage that has reasonable device management, with a company they can pay, and that their in-house IT can contact for support when the unexpected, unforseeable issues happen.
I have yet to hear one suggest ChromeOS or any Android tablet; those run the Linux kernel, but don't (AFAIK) use nearly any of the GNU software.
And I kind of get it. We've all seen the copy-pasta, and this division took on a life as a joke about a crazy person that takes things too far. But most of the people that make that joke seem to have forgotten that RMS frequently starts off looking crazy, but is nearly always vindicated. Sometimes it's five years, sometimes it's twenty. But it happens more often that not.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoSo we all know what we're talking about, but the terminology is actually messy because ChromeOS is a GNU/Linux system; AFAIK it's using GNU coreutils, glibc, and a fair bit of other software pulled straight from the packages provided by gentoo (from which ChromeOS derives). This is a notable contrast to Android, which indeed replaced coreutils with busybox and then toybox, and uses its own bionic libc and custom userland. I tentatively lean towards calling it "desktop Linux", or perhaps "user-controlled Linux" since that's rather the important part.
- theprivacydad 3y ago> user-controlled linux Thanks, I will change that in the article. I appreciate your feedback
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoGlad it was useful:)
- xethos 3y agoThere really is no good term; GNU+Linux includes ChromeOS (TIL) and excludes Alpine (and derivatives like PostmarketOS), "Desktop" doesn't jive with Mobian (for Linux mobile devices), and "Linux" includes Android. User-controlled might be the best I've seen so far, which is really saying something - all it's missing is what happens when it's issued (and administered) by a school or other org. Now I'm gonna be rolling around phrases like "libre-encouraging Linux" in my head the next few days.