Opinion Linux is now a slight greater than 3 3 according to cent of the desktop OS marketplace, except for the simply over 4 according to cent this is ChromeOS. Which is additionally Linux, however the mistaken sort of Linux.
Internet server statistics aggregator Statcounter introduced latter moment that as of June 2023, Linux accounts for three according to cent of desktop running device importance. Then again, that is nonetheless surpassed by means of ChromeOS, which means that that desktop Linux has lower than part of the desktop Linux marketplace. If you’re feeling that it is a bit bizarre, we believe you.
It sounds as if, desktop Linux importance measures 3.08 according to cent, lagging a few quarter in the back of using ChromeOS at 4.15 according to cent. The disease with that is that ChromeOS is additionally a Linux distribution. It’s a bizarre distro, non-standard in numerous techniques, however stream variations are constructed at the foundation of Gentoo Linux, switching from an Ubuntu foundation some years previous.
We really feel {that a} extra correct reckoning can be that Linux has now reached 7.23 according to cent of Statcounter’s utilization figures, with ChromeOS at simply over part: 57.4 according to cent of the entire. That turns out like a extra certain interpretation, person who Linux fanatics can be prepared to build, however it appears now not. By means of instance, Linux advocacy web page Linuxiac doesn’t even point out ChromeOS in its write-up.
(As an apart, we suspect that rather a accumulation of the three.23 according to cent of OSes grouped underneath “Unknown” are almost definitely additionally Linux customers, simply extra-paranoid ones who’re obscuring their user-agent or one thing.)
Why shouldn’t ChromeOS depend? It’s a Linux kernel and a Linux userland on lead of the usual glibc C library. You’ll be able to unhidden a shell. If you wish to have, you’ll run a Debian container and when you’re in there set up and run any Debian app; The Reg FOSS table’s experimental ChromeOS Flex device runs Firefox and DOSemu.
If any individual mentioned “Android is not a Linux,” this is defensible. You’ll be able to’t simply obtain it for sovereign, and you’ll’t run it by yourself generic off-the-shelf laptop. There were a couple of experimental Android-based desktop OSes, however up to now they’ve all flopped. On its local platform of smartphones and drugs, you’ll’t run familiar Linux apps on Android. It’s a distinct kind of beast, even if technically this can be a Linux inasmuch because it has a Linux kernel. However that’s about it. It even has a peculiar, non-standard, non-GPL libc, “Bionic”. By means of default and until cracked, excluding the kernel, it has not anything else Linux-like about it. Incorrect shell, disagree desktop, disagree X11 or Wayland, not anything.
However that’s now not the case for ChromeOS. Beneath its distinctive GUI layer – which, in contrast to the only in macOS, is unhidden supply – it’s a fairly traditional Linux which will run traditional Linux apps, out of the field, on each x86 and Arm. As such, it’s essentially the most a hit desktop Linux there’s.
It’s now not a standard Linux, as a result of standard Linuxes are gear for nerdy hacker sorts, and that more or less OS won’t ever, ever travel mainstream until any individual forces population to importance it. (As the federal government of the Community’s Republic of China is lately doing, however this is inappropriate to this. Incorrect Google throughout the Splendid Firewall method disagree ChromeOS.)
ChromeOS is a desktop Linux with the Linuxiness stripped out. Incorrect selection about partitioning. Incorrect bizarre dual-boot mechanisms. Incorrect number of desktops or bundle managers. Incorrect bundle supervisor!
However in each means that issues, it’s mainstream, it’s commercially a hit, it’s a elegant end-user desktop OS, and it’s a Linux.
So naturally the Forces of FOSS dislike it. Of path they do. And the way do they specific that contempt? By means of pronouncing it’s now not a True Linux.
Unix is sort of a faith: in some way, it encourages schisms and splinter sects, all of whom renounce that the others are legit. It’s nearly a defining function.
Ignoring all of the industrial Unixes as they’re successfully all useless now, and simply taking a look on the FOSS ones, there are a few accumulation rival sects: NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, Minix, HURD and L4 and its diverse splinter teams, Plan 9 (9front, HarveyOS, Jeanne and so on.), Inferno, xv6, v7/86, and naturally, Linux and its thousand distributions.
Exactly two (2) Linux-based OSes have loved large-scale industrial good fortune as user-facing GUI techniques for non-technical customers. One has billions of customers, the alternative an important fraction of 1000000000. Each are from Google, and each percentage a defining component: the FOSS international rejects them.
ChromeOS is available in two flavors: there’s familiar ChromeOS, which you’ll simplest get by means of purchasing {hardware} constructed to run it (identical to Apple’s macOS), and there’s ChromeOS Flex. Flex worn to be known as Neverware Cloudready. Neverware grew from Hexxeh’s remixed and rebuilt ChromiumOS for familiar PCs. Hexxeh made ChromeOS Tide, and that’s the direct grandparent of ChromeOS Flex: each are ChromeOS for generic PC {hardware}. That’s the important attitude. It presentations that ChromeOS is simply every other Linux distro.
ChromeOS Flex isn’t like Android. This can be a Linux in each means that issues. It’s each small-f sovereign and it’s unhidden supply; there were a couple of remixes and rebuilds. It runs on generic package with familiar BIOS or UEFI, together with with Book Boot. It has a desktop, albeit its personal distinctive one. You’ll be able to pop a shell and set up and run any arbitrary Linux app.
It seems like a Linux, it acts like a Linux, and it runs like a Linux. It’s according to a generic Linux kernel, and it does Linuxy stuff with Linuxy binaries like every alternative desktop Linux.
It doesn’t have systemd, however thank the superior god Torvalds and his apostle St Cox that isn’t but a demand for a Linux distro. It has upstart, which was once one of the usual init techniques.
It’s one hundred pc on-brand for the Linux international that once one particular method of Linux-based OS is going mainstream, and is worn by means of roughly part the human race, the True Believers of the Linux international discard it. Android isn’t a Linux. OK, they more or less have some extent.
However ChromeOS, and particularly ChromeOS Flex? After all, all of the advocates decry it as now not being a True Linux, however upcoming once more, this simply temporarily descends right into a “no true Scotsman” argument. As it’s, the Fedora accumulation suppose Ubuntu is junk, and the Debianisti suppose the whole lot else is junk, and the Arch family suppose they’re the real innovative, Slackware fans believe everybody else inexperienced persons, day the NixOS family suppose all of the left-overs are nonetheless within the stone era someplace… ®