this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Android isn't kinda Linux, it is actually Linux. It includes other proprietary stuff too, but Google regularly contributes their changes upstream. Like it or not, android is a prime example of what is possible on mobile using Linux.
Yes, I agree that OP isn't looking for Android and wants to support an alternate option. But here's where I think our disconnect is: the goal wouldn't be for the alternate option to be a difficult to use, niche, build-it-yourself headache. That's never anyone's goal for anything. The goal is to make something roughly as good as, or better than Android, except FOSS.
It's just that it takes funding and vision to make something as feature rich as android, and both are hard to come by.
It's common for Linux distros to make changes specific to their distro. Adding and removing modules, adding custom changes, and offering those changes back to mainline. This is how Linux works and what makes it so great.
It's not as though Google hard forked Linux 15 years ago and have just done their own thing ever since, they're regularly merging Linux LTS. Here's a diagram from Google of what that looks like.
MacOSX is a hard fork from Mach, which fits your French analogy more accurately. Android is more like a Boston accent; it's a dialect but never very far from it's origin.
Yeah, I feel like at this point you're not even disagreeing, you're just saying I'm wrong because you don't want to be wrong. You didn't even give me anything to refute this time. That's fine, you're right, cheers.
Lol man, we're just so far off topic from the point I was trying to make though, which is that a user friendly mobile experience built on linux is totally possible, it doesn't have to be a "build-it-yourself" headache, it doesn't require interfacing with a CLI, and we don't even have to wonder if that's true because it's been done and is massively successful. That's all. If you'd like to nitpick whether it's "actually Linux" or "kinda Linux" I'm just gonna give you a swirly.