I am not saying that more people using Linux is bad or that people shouldn’t use it (I mean, check my own post history; I am a recent convert myself), but if it reached the kind of saturation that Windows or Apple enjoys, it would bring not liberation but enshittification.

Nor am I trying to be some kind of elitist “the plebs don’t deserrrrrrve it” schlub; hell, I use Linux Mint Cinnamon and have to have a guide to handhold me through all but the most rudimentary, familiar-to-me-as-a-Windows-user tasks.

However.

A bar to entry (even such an ankle-high one as there is now) keeps Linux relatively off the radar of large, moneyed interests that would otherwise descend onto Linux distros and enshittify them in a heartbeat.

In other words, rather than “everyone who uses Linux will then see how bad they’ve had it under Windows and how anti-consumer certain software companies (let’s say Adobe for example) have been treating them!”, the more likely outcome would be “now there is Adobe Photoshop Linux Edition that is exclusive to the paid Adobe Linux distro” or other similar shackles and lockdowns and limitations (for which your credit card is the key), and the alternatives, not having ad money or corporate backing to prop them up, would be left by the wayside as other such enshittified distros/softwares gained users and traction.

Hell, just because a non-enshittified alternative to an enshittified software exists doesn’t mean people will know about or use it. To use an example, Excel is hardly the only way to make a spreadsheet. But it’s the one that is used, taught, known, documented, and widespread. It doesn’t matter that [some other software] is superior in every way if no one knows or cares about it.

Admittedly this is kind of my shower-thought guess and it’s not as if I have sat and thought through this thoroughly, but heck, here we are. Lay it on me.

  • squaresinger@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    So Alpine Linux isn’t a Linux distro either? It also doesn’t include GNU tools.

    GNU tools don’t define a Linux distro.

    Wikipedia lists Android as Linux distro.

    Android is not Posix compliant, but the same is true for pretty much all Linux distros, though they differ in how much non-Posix-compliant they are.

      • squaresinger@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        The problem is that there’s a ton of different categories and the term “Linux Distro” doesn’t really have a solid definition apart from “runs a Linux kernel”.

        • Unixoid is probably the broadest term and hardly means anything.
        • POSIX is a specific standard to standardize unixoid distros, but pretty much everything breaks POSIX in some way, because it’s an ancient and outdated standard that nobody really cares about.
        • “Runs a (modified) Linux kernel” is specific, but again so broad that it hardly defines the user experience one will get.
        • GNU used to be the defining part of the user experience running a Linux Distro, but on the one hand, there’s almost perfect drop-in replacements (muslc, busybox, toolbox, …) and on the other hand there’s much more UX-defining system components like the DE or the browser.

        I think for me the bigger reason is that the end Android product people are running is completely controlled by Google and has a lot of proprietary software added on top of AOSP.

        That’s kinda a circular argument chain. We started with “If Linux becomes the biggest OS it will become more locked down” and now we are at “Something that’s locked down is not a Linux distro, so it’s not possible that Linux becomes locked down.”

        But think about it: An Alpine Linux running on a server with no window server or DE installed is still a Linux Distro, because it runs a Linux kernel and can run Linux programs.

        The same is true for Android (especially if it’s rooted). You can run normal Linux CLI programs on Android too. You might need to compile them with the correct C library (same as on Alpine) and you might need to adjust some paths if you call external programs (same as on many other Linux distros), but you can do that.

        Yes, Android is pretty locked down, but you can do the same with pretty much any Linux distro too. Create a new user, lock that user down and delete the root password. It’s not that much different.