Caretaker of DS8.ZONE. Free (Libre) Software enthusiast and promoter. Pronouns: any
Also /u/CaptainBeyondDS8 on reddit and CaptainBeyond on libera.chat.
Why not also recognize systemd, or musl, or kde or gnome or any of the other millions of non GNU packages that are needed to make up a complete OS.
Unironically there might be some value in recognizing “systemd/Linux” as a subfamily of Linux operating systems.
And these days GNU makes up less and less of the core packages that most distros run anymore.
Linux makes up exactly one package on a so-called Linux system.
Apple intentionally makes iPhone-Android interoperability crap in order to sell iPhones. That’s not conspiracy theorizing, Tim Apple blatantly admitted to it.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/7/23342243/tim-cook-apple-rcs-imessage-android-iphone-compatibility
Unironically one of the greatest people in the technology space of the last 40 years, in the sense of accomplishments and impact on the world. I’m talking specifically about the free software movement, copyleft, and the GNU GPL. The world would be a much worse place without those accomplishments. The fact that a lot of his life’s work is erroneously attributed to the kernel guy doesn’t change that.
As a thinker, absolutely brilliant and unfortunately misunderstood. He espouses radical ideas about the relation of users to the technology they use that are still relevant to issues of today (e.g. enshittification, planned obsolescence, surveillance capitalism, and so on). It goes far beyond “you can look at source code to see if there’s bugs or spyware in it.” There’s a reason “Stallman was right” is a meme.
As a leader and a figurehead I’m not convinced he’s as effective. Regardless of the coordinated smear campaign from a few years ago (in which it was erroneously said “he defended Jeffrey Epstein” or “he blamed Epstein’s victim” or some such), he has demonstrated behaviors that alienate people and people who have worked for/with him (e.g. FSF employees and GNU maintainers) have said he is not a good boss. His comment about “voluntary pedophilia” is inexcusable, even though he has said he no longer stands by it. The Epstein association was fabricated from a quote taken out of context, but I don’t think it was wise to even join that discussion. The glibc manual abort() joke incident from 2018 is probably what convinced me of this - not so much that the joke is bad (humor is subjective) but that multiple developers objected to it and said it made them uncomfortable, yet he “pulled rank” and insisted it be left in (although as of now it seems to be absent). I believe his intentions were good (the “joke” isn’t actually about abortion as such, but rather the US government “global gag rule” suppressing discussions of such) but forcing it in against the protests of the community was inappropriate in my opinion.
Overall despite the above I feel he’s done more good than harm to the world, however, I’m not sure how much more good he can do in his position. I feel like the term “Stallmanism” would be an apt term for his thought but because of the above I feel leery associating myself with the guy.
Vivaldi’s target audience is people who don’t mind proprietary blobs as long as they are “good” or make things “work better.” Given that Vivaldi itself is essentially a proprietary blob combined with a Chromium backend this makes sense.
Icedove (Thunderbird) works well enough for me. Maybe the reason it’s “old fashioned” is because it works well enough that it doesn’t need to be changed that often.
In the proprietary software world we’re used to UI’s being redesigned on a regular basis for no user benefit.
If Valkey is the de facto successor of Redis, then maybe abandoning Redict is the right move. If he continued to put effort into Redict, people would just ask why is he wasting time with Redict when Valkey exists.
Note that I generally don’t think time put into free software is wasted, because once its put out into the commons it can be picked up and reused elsewhere - although in this particular case since Redict is licensed under LGPLv3 contributions made to it cannot be reused by Valkey which is licensed under the BSD license. One is, however, free to add their own contribution to both projects as neither requires a CLA, however both do require a Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) https://codeberg.org/redict/redict/src/branch/main/CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey/blob/unstable/CONTRIBUTING.md This is as far as I know an unusual case as generally forks use the same license allowing code to be freely exchanged between them.
GNU/Linux != Linux
Linux is a kernel
GNU/Linux is the GNU userland (tools and libraries) combined with the Linux kernel to form a complete operating system
Android is Linux but not GNU. So are Alpine, postmarketOS, and others I can’t think of
Linux is to an operating system as bread is to a sandwich… an essential component, but a slice of bread by itself does not make a sandwich make
Librewolf comes packaged by my distro (GNU Guix) so that’s what I use. I’m sure most “privacy” or “hardened” Firefoxes are more or less interchangeable. The only one that’s really noteworthy is GNU IceCat, because it’s more focused on software-freedom and includes the LibreJS addon, but I switched to Librewolf once it was packaged for Guix.
If Linux is just the kernel then Android and Ubuntu are equally Linux.
It is and they are. These are demonstrable facts.
I have no problem with referring to the family of Linux based operating systems collectively as Linux (with GNU/Linux being a subfamily of such), however, I firmly believe that the mythical concept of “real Linux” where some Linuxes aren’t really Linux is what creates the confusion. I would rather use other terms, like POSIX, Unix(like), and FreeDesktop to refer to so-called “real Linux” (with the caveat that they also include BSDs and the like - but I include these as part of the free desktop operating system spectrum, as most so-called Linux apps also run here. I don’t place special importance on the kernel because it is technically the furthest thing away from the user experience).
(Android being Linux isn’t a mere technicality - it means you can get a full terminal environment with a package manager and “Linux apps” and even run a full desktop environment if you really want)
Stallman’s attempt to rename Linux
There was never any “attempt to rename Linux.” Stallman simply wants to clarify which part of the operating system is “Linux” (the kernel) and which part(s) are not (many of which are his work, which Linux fans insist on also calling “Linux” even though the GNU project predates it by almost a decade).
Any “confusion” on this point is the result of Linux fans spreading mistruths (I assume only sometimes intentionally). Unfortunately at this point the myths are so firmly ingrained we have myths about the myths (like “Stallman wants to rename Linux”) and in my mind Stallman is definitely fighting a losing battle nowadays. Still, a falsehood being widely accepted does not make it true.
Linux is an operating system kernel and Windows is an entire operating system. You can’t really compare them
The most obvious difference going from Debian stable to GNU Guix is that Guix is a rolling release distro, not stable (in the Debian sense) at all.
Package management is also very different as it’s fundamentally a source based distro, although sometimes the build servers can provide prebuilt packages if they’re available. Also, Guix has the concept of “profiles” which group sets of installed packages; typically, there is a system profile as well as a profile for each user, but users can also create their own separate profiles. This means that a user can install packages to their own profile without needing root permissions.
Profile updates are done in an atomic manner, such that changing the set of installed packages (installing, updating, or removing a package) actually creates a new generation of the profile, and it’s possible to roll back to a previous generation if something breaks. This is true of the system as well as the user profile(s), of course. A profile generation can also be exported as a manifest, which can then be imported to create a profile generation on another system, allowing package management to be done in a declarative manner.
Finally, Guix has a commitment to ship only free software, and uses linux-libre as its kernel. Debian has a clear separation between free and non-free components but does ship non-free software, including firmware blobs, and I believe as of recently the installer provides them by default. There are unofficial Guix channels (=repositories) that provide these things.
Currently I run GNU Guix on my desktop, laptop, and servers. I like the dedication to software freedom and the way package management works. Before that I used Debian until 2019, Trisquel until 2014, and Ubuntu until around 2010. Debian and Trisquel are fine and I don’t have anything against them, I just like the Guix package manager more. I’ve used Xfce with all of these (and before then, GNOME 2). I set it up the way I like it and it never changes.
I typically run LineageOS on my mobile devices, without microG or any proprietary apps. As I’ve said before my preferred OS would be some variant of GNU/Linux, preferably Guix as well, but LineageOS works well enough.
I run OpenWRT on my router, and had a previous router than ran LibreCMC (a variant of OpenWRT using Linux-libre).
Windows games are made for Windows so I prefer to use Windows for them. I don’t particularly want to turn GNU/Linux into Windows, I think it deserves better than that.
For me LineageOS is a good baseline. I don’t have anything against “privacy” OS’s but they’re not really for me. I just use F-Droid to get apps and don’t care about compatibility with proprietary stuff so neither microG nor the GrapheneOS sandboxed Play services are of interest to me. I don’t use GrapheneOS because I don’t have or want a Pixel phone.
LineageOS significantly increases the lifespan of devices it supports and that’s important to me. Planned obsolescence is cancer.
My ideal mobile OS would be something like Mobian (or even better, a GNU Guix based distribution) but it should be noted that AOSP is also a Linux based operating system and thus anything derived from that is a Linux mobile OS.
It’s worth noting the reason why Molly isn’t available on F-Droid proper: it’s entirely F-Droid’s decision. F-Droid policy requires that developers support (or do not oppose) inclusion in F-Droid, which Signal’s developers haven’t. Signal’s developers are also hostile towards forks and do not want them interoperating with Signal. Thus, F-Droid does not allow Signal or any fork of Signal.
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/-/issues/2297
I am not really a fan of this decision, I don’t think it’s logical that an upstream can forbid a fork from being published anywhere - but that’s F-Droid’s call to make.
Microsoft is about as bad as any other proprietary software company. They do some good things for the open source economy, but they also mistreat their users.
I think it’s a mistake to look at the free software movement as being a reaction against Microsoft or Google. It’s against the proprietary software world in general.
Everyone who has an Android phone “uses Linux without the command line.” Your question, however, seems to be “is it possible to play Windows games on Debian without the command line” (edit: or, more broadly, “how suitable is Debian as a Windows replacement”) which is not the same question.
AFAIK on Android it has a hard dependency on Google services. I don’t mind installing proprietary stuff to my work profile for the express purposes of work but that requires modifying my system to accommodate this specific app and that’s a step too far for my personal device. So I use a free software option (Aegis) instead.
edit: if for some reason I really did need MS Authenticator and not any old TOTP app, I would procure a googled device specifically for work rather than install google or microG into my personal device.
Notice they avoid using the exact term “open source” in this press release. I’m ~90% sure it’ll turn out to be under some proprietary source-available license.
I don’t know if grouping disparate projects under the “community” label has any worthwhile benefit. Given the label is meant to classify related operating systems, the label should provide an accurate description of the basis of the system. A simpler solution would be to just say GNU/Linux is a subcategory of Linux (and maybe even sub-sub-categorize by package manager or init system or whatever makes the most sense). Similarly, I think Android and its derivatives are worthy of being its own classification of Linux operating system (as long as you don’t try to claim “it’s not real Linux” or whatever).
With regards to software compatibility, I think it’s rather the other way around - software written for “Linux” usually works on any POSIX operating system, and sometimes even Windows. Unless you’re talking about binary compatibility, which is meaningless in the Linux space anyway.