Wait what? Telnet? I am guessing cybersecurity is not one of the classes available at your school.

I teach. I use Arch for my school laptop.

No. I did not. And you can. Happy to conclude things here. Good luck.

They did not really “talk him into it”. They simply labelled it that when they uploaded it. Linus just went with the flow and it stuck.

I actually believe that “GNU / Linux” creates the confusion, even the Android problem you cite.

If we all just said “Linux” to mean Linux distribution and the software ecosystem that implies, almost everybody would agree what that meant. All this “actually what you are calling Linux is actually” and “Linux is just the kernel” stuff confuses people. If Linux is just the kernel then Android and Ubuntu are equally Linux. Most people do not even know what a kernel is until you start “educating” people that “Linux” is not Linux.

An Operating System is defined by the applications that it runs natively. Alpine Linux and Ubuntu run the same software and services. Chimera Linux runs all the same stuff even though it comes without any GNU software by default ( BSD utils, Clang compiler, MUSL ). They are all “Linux”. None of them are Android or ChromeOS. They are not the embedded OS in my thermostat or body worn camera. Of course, all these things use the Linux kernel but they are not all “Linux” operating systems.

There are many examples of the kernel not defining the Operating System. iOS and macOS are not the same thing. Windows and Xbox are not the same thing. Yes, us geeks know the common infrastructure they share.

And if an operating system is defined by its applications, is “GNU” a good label? My distro of choice offers 80,000 packages of which maybe 200 are managed by the GNU Project. Go to gnu.org and look at the list of packages that are actually GNU for real. It may shock you how short the list is.

There are other single sources that contribute more software. In terms of code and base architecture, Red Hat is probably the largest contributor ( and no, I do not use Red Hat — RHEL has fewer than 3000 packages for one thing ). I do not want to call my distribution “Red Hat” Linux but frankly it makes more sense than GNU.

Some of the GNU / Linux folks say that the reason for the label is the C library ( Glibc ). But not all Linux distros use Glibc. For a mainstream Linux user, does it make sense to say that Alpine, Void, and Chimera are not the same kind of OS as Ubuntu or Fedora? A regular user could sit down at any of them and not only use them mostly the same but perhaps not even notice the difference. I could write a Linux app without knowing about Alpine and the it could be built for it easily. They all use the same apps and desktop environments. They all run Docker natively. Even fairly deep Linux knowledge applies equally to them all. As pointed out, freedesktop.org applies to them equally. They have the same driver and hardware support ( including the full graphics and audio stacks ). Most people would agree that all these “Linux” systems are pretty alike and quite different from macOS, Windows, and Android. They are all much more like each other than they are even to FreeBSD.

The GNU name pays homage to the historical contribution of the GNU Project that, while important, is pretty historical at this point. If the goal is to promote Free Software or even the GPL, the right branding would be the FSF. So, even that is confusing.

Clearly, in my view, GNU is a terrible brand to try to glob on to Linux. It is not explanatory. It is not even accurate. It is mostly political and frankly overstates the current contribution of the project. I talked code above. There is more code in Wayland or X11 and Mesa than in all of GNU probably. There are more lines of code licensed MIT than GPL in most distros. Most GPL software available is NOT provided by the GNU project.

Again, GNU is a hugely important project to free software and the history of Linux. That history should be celebrated and acknowledged. Distorting it and contorting it is not the way to do that. Enough with “GNU / Linux” already.

Um. No.

Red Hat is not a publicly traded company and has not been for 5 years. They are a division of IBM. What you can know about Red Hat financials comes from IBM’s financial statements.

Red Hat has three primary product lines of which RHEL is one.

Did you read the article?

Being cynical about Red Hat is fine as long as we keep it factual. I enjoy their contributions but otherwise have no skin in their game.

I am not as enthusiastic about Rocky. I cannot see at all how you can compare them to Debian. It seems unfair even to Alma to lump them in with Rocky as Alma is taking the high road. Best of luck with Rocky though. Truly.

Your make a good case that “community” means “cannot be shut down by a corporation”. Thank you for that. Can a “bug-for-bug RHEL clone” be community though? If Red Hat cancels RHEL ( unlikely ), is there still a Rocky Linux?

Once a chip architecture gets popular on Windows, it will be hard to displace. ARM has already become popular on macOS ( via Apple Silicon ) so we know that is not going anywhere. If ARM becomes popular on Windows ( perhaps via X Elite ), it will be hard to displace as the more popular option. That makes RISC-V on Windows a more difficult proposition.

I do not think that RISC-V on Linux has the same obstacles other than that most hardware will be manufactured for Windows or Mac and will use the chips popular with those operating systems.

IBM has to file public financials. Tracking rough Red Hat revenues is not all that hard. They have done very well.

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/red-hat-high-growth-streak-151126295.html

I won’t get back into the Fedora thing. I bet the whole dollar though that, if RHEL disappeared, Rocky and Oracle would take no interest in Fedora.

Full disclosure - I do not use any of these enterprise distros anymore although the stance taken by Alma makes them attractive to me. I am looking for ways to use them.

If we had more time and maybe more beer, I would be interested to get into a discussion about what “community” is.

CentOS pre-Stream was not a “community” distro in my view as I do not see “downloads that cost no money” as the backbone of what makes a community.

CentOS ( pre-Stream ) could not innovate their own distro. They could not even fix a bug without breaking their “bug-for-bug” RHEL compatibility promise. All they did was recompile and redistribute RHEL packages with the trademarks removed. What kind of community do you have if you do not produce anything? Everything from CentOS was actually provided by Red Hat. It was just literally “RHEL without paying”. There was no diversity.

CemtOS Stream is managed by Red Hat for sure as its primary purpose is to become the base for a future version of RHEL. However, it is Open Source and developed fully out in the open. Contributions are possible.

Unlike CentOS of old, the “community” can contribute to and debate the future of CentOS Stream. Alma has contributed bug fixes for example. It has been a bit painful as Red Hat is used to being the only one in the sandbox but the process is evolving. CentOS Stream has multiple contributors ( not just Red Hat ). This means that others have some influence on what RHEL looks like in the future. “The community” can build on that.

In my view, CentOS Stream is already a lot more of a “community” distro than the original CentOS was. You do not have to agree of course. Anyway, I hope other projects join with Alma and Red Hat in contributing to CentOS Stream.

For all their flag waving about “the community”, distros like Rocky and Oracle have shown no interest in contributing to CentOS Stream. They continue to clone the distro that Red Hat forks from CentOS Stream. They don’t get involved until all the work has been done. Then they make money off it ( the only reason they are there ).

Largely true but Red Hat also wanted to control their own cloud / container stack.

Cloud is a big part of why IBM paid so many billions for Red Hat to begin with.

Things should get a lot better with NVIDIA soon in distros like Fedora that want to stick with only open software.