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1 year agoYou could say the same thing about other distros that hide the difficult bits, tbh. Is Endless Linux? What about Elementary?
The thing about Linux is that it’s extremely flexible, and there’s a lot of choices about interface and user experience.
So what is it about ChromeOS that makes it not Linux? Is it that it doesn’t have GNOME, KDE, XFCE or the hundreds of other DEs? Is it that you don’t need to use the terminal for anything? I mean, it’s not the kernel or the userland or even the compiler…
So what is it?
Forgive me, but I’ve been around the Linux/FOSS community for a couple decades and I have never heard someone mention the Freedesktop spec as a requirement to be considered ‘Linux.’ Considering that the Freedesktop spec is mostly targeted towards systems with graphical UIs, would that mean that any headless system running a Linux kernel and GNU userland is not considered ‘Linux?’ Furthermore, that kind of flies in the face of the idea of using Linux as a testing ground for alternative computing ideas.
Now, there’s been a lot of discussion around fragmentation, and I get the arguments towards enforcing standards, but to me this is a truly bizarre line to draw in the sand. You could just as easily say “Any systems not using SysV are not ‘real’ Linux.” Or any system that gets rid of /usr. Or any system that isn’t POSIX compliant (bye bye, NixOS…).
Seriously. I don’t get it. Please show me what I’m missing.