Comments on: 10 Myths About GNU/Linux Operating System

By: dragonmouth

dragonmouth — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 15:10:23 +0000

"10. The Linux Ecosystem is Highly Fragmented" "Diverse" is just another way of saying "fragmented". Another word that comes to mind is "balkanized". Linux's greatest strength (the freedom of choice) is also its biggest weakness. Because of Linux's ethos, any Tom, Dick, or Harry can have his 15 minutes of fame by creating a distro or an application. Just make a few cosmetic changes and there's a new distro. Just make a few cosmetic changes and you have a new application. How many of those "new" distros or applications are like all the other distros and applications? DistroWatch has over a thousand distros in its database with 230+ of them being actively developed and supported. How many of those distros are truly unique? Why do we NEED 3 "universal packaging systems" (AppImage, FlatPack & Snap)? They are incompatible with each other but they achieve the exact same purpose. Why do we need 10-15 versions of each application? Wouldn't 2 or 3 be enough? Is it ego? Why not harness all the "creativity" to improve existing projects?!

By: JohnT

JohnT — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 13:35:38 +0000

It would be good to insert a new No 1 in your article - If you have an Android phone you are already using a variant of Linux. The user interface is dramatically different from the 'Windows style' desktop found in many Linux distributions, but look inside the 'About' entry in the 'Settings' menu and you will find most phones have a mention of Linux. Apple's IOS also has origins similar to Linux, but after years of adaptation to Apple's ecosystem, the evidence is much harder to find.

By: Ian

Ian — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 03:28:08 +0000

Hi, Under #10, you say

“the differences between distributions should matter much since all share a common underlying kernel.”

but surely you mean “should not matter” and “they all share”…

By: Slip

Slip — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 00:50:16 +0000

7000+ Games are supported on Linux via Steam alone.

By: Andy Marden

Andy Marden — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 18:01:34 +0000

“word processing is a feature of the OS” – sounds dangerously like Windows monolithic-blob kind of thinking. I am sure you didn’t mean that because word processing should absolutely not be a feature of any OS, but rather that a worthwhile OS needs to be able to support quality word-processing apps.