It would be twice as much if people could stop arguing about who counts and who doesn't
  • Lvxferre@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • dartanjinn@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • blackstrat@lemmy.fwgx.ukEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    The difference is that nobody in the FOSS world would celebrate if Chrome OS had 50+% market share. That would be a terrible time for FOSS.