I wonder what has the other half of the Linux market. Linux, perhaps?
ChromeOS.
Apparently, desktop Linux use measures 3.08 per cent, lagging about a quarter behind the usage of ChromeOS at 4.15 per cent. The problem with this is that ChromeOS is also a Linux distribution. It’s a strange distro, non-standard in several ways, but current versions are built on the basis of Gentoo Linux, switching from an Ubuntu basis some years earlier.
I’m not sure what’s being implied here, but the quote from the article is true. ChromeOS is FOSS, was based on Ubuntu (a long time ago) and is now based on Gentoo. Early versions of ChromeOS, which were basically just a full-screen browser, didn’t feel very Linuxy. But I think current ChromeOS versions look and feel a lot like using a simplified Linux distro.
I don’t have a strong opinion on whether ChromeOS should be grouped with traditional Linux distros for statistical purposes. But it is notable that Google maintains the two most most popular non-server OSs built on the Linux kernel.
TL;DR: ChromeOS is Linux but it’s not Linux but it’s a Linux so count it as a Linux but not Linux. Half.
I guess this is a situation where the proper name of GNU / Linux is useful
Edit: Chrome OS is is a GNU/ Linux and a couple of “proper” Linuxes are not.
As far as I know, ChromeOS is also GNU/Linux (It uses full glibc, includes gnu utils and bash), so not so much.
They mention this in the article.
In fact, they never say it’s not Linux. The summary would be more like: “ChromeOS should be counted among desktop Linux, because it has the same basis as any other GNU/Linux distribution, unlike Android. Here are the dumb reasons I think people would argue against this.”
Such definitions are becoming more and more complicated. I think we should standardize a name for the family of systems we use, or it will become uglier and uglier.
Recently, I had to write an academic work in the area, and an entire section was dedicated to explaining this controversy and defining what kind of system I was talking about, so that the work is reproducible.
If Linux only makes up half the Linux market, what the heck makes up the other half? 🤔
ChromeOS, which has another 4%. Which is also Linux but the “wrong” kind. It was the author’s tongue-in-cheek way of highlighting the fact that ChromeOS is so different for the regular Linux user that not being counted as Linux actually makes sense.
I read the title and assumed it was a typo, made the joke, then clicked into the article to see that no, that really was what the title was saying. lol
Deleted the comment immediately but apparently it is still there for others?
Still there hours later for me.
Maybe edit first next time in, just in case?
This reads like a high school essay made in the absolute last minute before it was due and the kid couldn’t come up with anything worthwhile to write about.
Or an essay written by ChatGPT without the student checking to make sure it made sense before turning it in
A quick summary of this [frankly, rather crappy] article boils down to “I don’t understand, why people ignore the 4% of ChromeOS usage when talking about the 3% of Linux usage?” written in the most facepalm-worthy way, spamming fallacies like there was no tomorrow:
- “Which is also Linux, but the wrong kind of Linux.” - strawman
- “which means that [desktop Linux]¹ has less than half of the [desktop Linux]² market.” - ambiguity (“1” refers to a subset of “2”)
- “It’s not a typical Linux, because typical Linuxes are tools for nerdy hacker types, and that kind of OS will never, ever go mainstream unless someone forces people to use it” - begging the question + ad hominem
- “So naturally the Forces of FOSS hate it. Of course they do. And how do they express that contempt? By saying it’s not a True Linux.” - repeating the strawman again, for an ad nauseam
Also note that the same type of stupid reasoning from the article would also “prove” that MacOS is a *BSD.
What a weird hill to die on.
But nobody considers MacOS a BSD.
I thought the author’s point was pretty well-made. Some implementations are so far removed from the original’s goals that they no longer count for it even though they’re technically a match.
It’s merely an oddity that ChromeOS is based on Linux; it could be based on anything else and it wouldn’t change anything. It doesn’t work like Linux does and you can’t use it for most of the things that make Linux worth using.
Even Windows (via WSL) is more Linux at this point than ChromeOS is. Let that sink in for a moment and you’ll see why we don’t count ChromeOS.
But nobody considers MacOS a BSD.
Yup - and that’s the point of the comparison. They share a lot of important code (mostly in the userland IIRC), and yet people don’t consider MacOS a BSD, since both drifted away so much that lumping them together is simply not useful. And yet it’s what the author is doing with ChromeOS and Linux, that are in the exact same situation. (Another way to say this is how you did it - they don’t work the same and you can’t use one to do the things that makes the other worth using.)
I thought the author’s point was pretty well-made.
The author’s point boils down to “actually you got 7% Linux, not 3%”. I don’t think that it was well-made; it relies on disregarding why people don’t call ChromeOS “Linux”.
MacOS is not a BSD specifically because its kernel is not BSD (although it has some bits of it), so the comparison isn’t really sound. What makes it “a BSD” (or Linux) shouldn’t be the graphical environment.
Immutable distros are making accepted “Linux distributions” even more like ChromeOS, while ChromeOS has gotten more like those immutable distros.
