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Comment by kube-system

2 months ago

> The Steam Deck very much runs Linux Desktop. Android runs the Linux kernel, but everything else is different.

Linux is a kernel.

15 comments

kube-system

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sneak  2 months ago

A distinction without a difference. The point of this subthread is that the term Linux is overloaded to mean two things: a kernel and also an OS that has certain assumptions (usually glibc and some unix userspace stuff).

The point being that “Linux Desktop” means something more than “runs the Linux kernel”.

palata  2 months ago

Which is exactly why people here talk about "Linux Desktop". Linux is a kernel, Linux Desktop is some flavour of a full OS made to run on a PC, as opposed to e.g. embedded Linux or a Linux server.

Not sure what your point is?

  • tuna74  2 months ago

    Yeah, but ChromeOS is just as much "Desktop Linux" as Fedora Workstation.

    • danieldk  2 months ago

      I think that's pretty pedantic. When most people here say 'Linux Desktop', they mean the Linux kernel, GNU(-ish) userland, Wayland/X11, and some desktop like GNOME, KDE or Mate.

      Though, I guess outside tech circles, people will just talk about Linux as the whole desktop OS. E.g. our municipality was promoting installing a Linux distribution to save Windows laptops after the Windows 10 apocalypse, and they just call it Linux.

      Even Wikipedia says: Linux (/ˈlɪnʊks/ LIN-uuks[15]) 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.

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