Windows and Android are universally known as two of the most popular operating systems in existence but what if I told you that there was an operating system...
  • BitingChaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1031·
    1 year ago

    What am I missing?

    Linux has been out in the open and running shit since the 1990s.

    How exactly is that a secret?

    • wmassingham@lemmy.world
      60·
      1 year ago

      It’s not, but it gets clicks.

      If anything, vxworks is the secret one. Huge numbers of embedded devices run vxworks, but the only people who work with it are embedded systems developers.

    • lonewalk@lemm.eeEnglish
      201·
      1 year ago

      Keep in mind there’s everyone not in tech. Loads of people probably use their iPhone and MacBooks, or windows and android, or some other combo - might never even look up a single Linux distro, or think about what servers are.

      • maxprime@lemmy.ml
        18·
        1 year ago

        Right. But most people who subscribe to a Linux community on Lemmy have probably heard of Linux before.

    • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      Big hardware companies used to get access to the windows source code all the time. It didn’t make it public, but lots of people have seen it by now.

    • apprehensively_human@lemmy.caEnglish
      631·
      1 year ago

      I’m not trying to defend Microsoft, but their software isn’t licensed under the GPL so they really aren’t under any obligation to share the source code.

      There are alternatives and people can choose to use Microsoft software or not.

    • azimir@lemmy.ml
      6·
      1 year ago

      Licensing issues for Minix. BSD has entered the chat, but it also has licensing issues.

      In the BSD case, I feel that many devs worry about their work being taken and used by large corporations without the corporations sharing back to the OSS world. The GPL might not be a panacea to capitalism, but at least it’s more then “do what you like, corporate overlords.”

      • quat@lemmy.sdfeu.org
        2·
        1 year ago

        The things I’ve read (admittedly mostly from the OpenBSD camp) from BSD devs, they seem to not worry about corporations building from their source that much, instead they actively try to get rid of GPL code because it isn’t permissive enough for their standards.

        Theo wrote "GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope—the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we have many companies giving us code back, all the time.

        But once the code is GPL’d, we cannot get it back."

    • optissima@lemmy.world
      6·
      1 year ago

      I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

      Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

      There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!