In StatCounter’s latest US numbers, which cover through October, Linux shows up as only 3.49%. But if you look closer, “unknown” accounts for 4.21%. Allow me to make an educated guess here: I suspect those unknown desktops are actually running Linux. What else could it be? FreeBSD? Unix? OS/2? Unlikely.
In addition, ChromeOS comes in at 3.67%, which strikes me as much too low. Leaving that aside, ChromeOS is a Linux variant. It just uses the Chrome web browser for its interface rather than KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, or another Linux desktop environment. Put all these together, and you get a Linux desktop market share of 11.37%. Now we’re talking.
Android as well. These are operating systems distributing Linux Kernel, therefore they are Linux distributions. Nothing more, nothing less. From there, it depends what the use case is to classify an operating system. Is it a Desktop system? A smartphone system? Or specifically made for gaming? For IOT devices or for servers or for supercomputers? Does it use GNU tools? Where is the line when you stop saying it is Linux based operating system?
Linux is Linux. ChromeOS is distributing the Linux Kernel. Even if an operating system wouldn’t use the GNU tools and if you could not run the application that runs on your Desktop PC, does not mean it wouldn’t be Linux. I don’t care how people categorize it or arbitrary ignore Linux based systems.
Windows contains WSL. It’s distributing the Linux kernel which makes it a Linux distro, right?
No. WSL contains entire operating systems. Embedding a distribution in an operating system doesn’t make itself the operating system… The OS is Windows not Linux. I’m not sure if you are trolling or not…
I’m being a little facetious to highlight that your “operating systems distributing Linux Kernel, therefore they are Linux distributions” comment is a bit silly.
Yes technically Android and ChromeOS are Linux, but that’s not really what people mean when they say Linux. It’s not the Linux kernel specifically that they want, it’s usually the freedom and openness.
The reasons people generally celebrate linux don’t really apply to these two, so I don’t see much point in celebrating these numbers.
You’re arguing entirely past that.
It doesn’t matter what people “celebrate” (what does that mean?). If the question is if these operating systems are “Linux”, then yes, they are. Because they distribute Linux. That’s all to it. Just because a system distributes Linux does not mean it is compatible to each other. That is a completely different question, involving other tech and standards.
I am not arguing past that, I answer the question from the reply I answered to.
You misunderstood the point of the question. I already said that they are linux.
You said “might” and asked if it should count. I gave you reason why.
Not every expression is meant to be read literally. Nobody else seemed to have trouble inferring it, so I think it was clear enough.
OK, because you have trouble to understand my reply, here a short one: yes, we should count Android and ChromeOS as Linux. And I explained why. You might not like the answer, but it is what it is.
You misunderstood the point of the question. I already said that they are linux.
You misunderstood the point of the answer. I already explained why we should count them as Linux.
Yes it does - because that is the point of this post.
That is not the question as was pointed out to you.