With that recent post about chrome os not counting as a distro of linux. It does bring a good question, what is a distro of linux?

If Linux is just a kernel then android and chrome os are Linux. Bur no really considers android a distro of linux. So linux is more then a kernel.

KDE say that neon is not a distro but doesn’t really why neon is not but kubuntu is.

  • monk@lemmy.unboiled.info
    1·
    1 year ago

    If it distributes Linux, it’s a distro. Thus ChromeOS, Android, Windows are all Linux distros.

    If you have a different definition, best you can do with it is go brighten up some lawyer’s day, I guess.

  • js10@reddthat.com
    0·
    1 year ago

    Does Android really even use the Linux Kernel anymore? I thought they forked it about 15 years ago and at this point it has diverged so much its not even really the Linux kernel anymore.

  • Mateo@lemmy.zip
    0·
    1 year ago

    My understanding is that is has to have a certain level of the GNU core utilities in combination with the Kernel but yeah not really, it’s hard to define, maybe the use of a package manager? Definitely nothing to do with GUI, probably a philosophy in mind, not sure at all to be honest.

    • duncesplayed@lemmy.oneEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It is hard. We had Chimera Linux posted here yesterday, which has no GNU code at all. None of the early Linux distributions had package managers. The best I can tell, “pms” (package management system) written for Bogus Linux in 1993 was the earliest, but package management didn’t hit the mainstream until at least 1995. Slackware didn’t get a package manager until the mid-2000s. But we still all consider them distributions. (Right?)