this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I don't think it's completely fine, because, as we see time and time again, Windows being the default, and so the largest player, allows developers, especially in the enterprise and education sectors, to be lazy and support only Windows for their applications. The expectation has been created that everyone has to own a Windows computer and that damages us, since it restricts our choices, for some people it can nullify entirely the effort they put into switching to Linux.
For example, in my country, to do the admission exam to university you need to install the SEB browser, which amounts to pretty much a Windows-only rootkit, now I wouldn't enjoy putting that on my Linux system, but the laziness here is clear, they could have made a a live single-purpose Linux distro that boots up a locked down browser and checks that it hasn't been tampered with when it runs, it didn't have to be the only option, it could have been an additional option for privacy concious users, but why won't they do it? Because it's not trivial to build and the Linux market share is too small to care about and if you use it you are weird.
To a certain extent it's the fault of our institutions that don't allow choice of OS most of the time, let alone forcing the use of Linux, if more would do the latter (because, let's be honest, if they only let us choose they'd treat all other OSes as second class citizens), we might see companies developing more for Linux in turn.
That said, it's not in such a bad situation and it can already be used without issue in many occasions.