With that recent post about chrome os not counting as a distro of linux. It does bring a good question, what is a distro of linux?
If Linux is just a kernel then android and chrome os are Linux. Bur no really considers android a distro of linux. So linux is more then a kernel.
KDE say that neon is not a distro but doesn’t really why neon is not but kubuntu is.
Chrome OS is 100% a distro by induction, because Gentoo is a distro and Chrome OS is based on Gentoo.
As for Android: I’d say it is a distro, but most people think of desktop or server OSs when they talk about distros these days. Obviously it’s neither of these.
KDE Neon is a testing vehicle for new KDE software. The devs don’t consider it a distro because it’s not meant to distribute anything. It’s for testing and they don’t (have to) beyond that. So this has nothing to do with how this OS behaves, looks or whatever.
My understanding is that is has to have a certain level of the GNU core utilities in combination with the Kernel but yeah not really, it’s hard to define, maybe the use of a package manager? Definitely nothing to do with GUI, probably a philosophy in mind, not sure at all to be honest.
a certain level of the GNU core utilities
Wouldn’t that make Alpine, or OpenWRT, not a distro?
It is hard. We had Chimera Linux posted here yesterday, which has no GNU code at all. None of the early Linux distributions had package managers. The best I can tell, “pms” (package management system) written for Bogus Linux in 1993 was the earliest, but package management didn’t hit the mainstream until at least 1995. Slackware didn’t get a package manager until the mid-2000s. But we still all consider them distributions. (Right?)
The way I see it, a Linux distribution:
- Boots the Linux kernel
- Has open-source software at its core
- Provides an “easy bootstrap” system.
- Does not outright prevent modification of system software. (This excludes ChromeOS/Android)
- This does not exclude immutable distros, as system software can still be modded as root).
I do like this answer since it gets to why chrome/android is excluded.
To riff on “A language is just a dialect with a navy”, I’d define it as “a distro is just a package manager with a LiveUSB image”.
Does Android really even use the Linux Kernel anymore? I thought they forked it about 15 years ago and at this point it has diverged so much its not even really the Linux kernel anymore.
No, it absolutely uses a Linux kernel.
Dude literally months ago smartphones with android 12 were affected by dirty pipe, that was available only for kernel versions between 5.8 and 5.10.101!
I think your talking about project fuchsia. Which hasbt gotten out of early development
Yes i Read that that’s why i asled
If it distributes Linux, it’s a distro. Thus ChromeOS, Android, Windows are all Linux distros.
If you have a different definition, best you can do with it is go brighten up some lawyer’s day, I guess.
