@lanodan

FYI Apple products all uses Darwin as kernel and it is meant for Apple products only.

Those are kernels but not alternatives to Linux: you can't say "I will move from Linux to...".

Too much software and hardware is based on Linux today.

If you don't want to use Blink, there are Gecko and WebKit.

A lot of people use Gecko or WebKit powered browsers today. How many use a BSD kernel instead of Linux? Can you really say BSD has broad enough scope like Linux and comparable to it feature-wise?

Torvalds has still too much power over something that has public interest.

Don't be hypocritical and admit that there is a centralization that you don't like and an even worse centralization that you like.

@post
>Don’t be hypocritical and admit that there is a centralization that you don’t like and an even worse centralization that you like.

That one I can agree on, but it's not a monopoly problem, nor is it a problem with torvalds, because he's very much not alone.

Linux is sadly the current best kernel *with* additional restrictions like being free software, but still compatibility with stuff like proprietary games (which all require x86_64-pc-linux-gnu).

And I know that if it weren't for proprietary games, I would use FreeBSD or NetBSD everywhere.

@lanodan

> That one I can agree on, but it's not a monopoly problem, nor is it a problem with torvalds, because he's very much not alone.

Torvalds has to take balanced decisions just like Google because Linux and Blink can just being forked if the need justify the huge effort. There is no difference here, you just have a bias, at this point don't tell me you believe the Linux Foundation is a no-profit org.

> And I know that if it weren't for proprietary games, I would use FreeBSD or NetBSD everywhere.

I was not talking about desktop computing, when I said Linux kernel is everywhere of course I meant servers, embedded devices, Internet and cloud infrastructures and so on.

In theory the right way is having the interface between kernels and the rest standardized and implemented by different kernels like Linux. So basically what we have with Web standards.

The fact that very important interfaces are not standardized like the Web doesn't mean it is not possible. If there was one implemented only by Linux, maybe some people would recognize that there is an even worse problem than current Blink quasi-monopoly.

@post
Router side of things: Cisco has IOS, Juniper is using a FreeBSD base, the rest is mostly consumer-level stuff or people using their own hardware (and using whatever software).

Handhelds / tablets: Nintendo has their own (Horizon), Microsoft has their own with the Surface, Apple has iOS.

Server side is a massive amount of Linux but it's a space where you're not going to move BSD out nor the bunch of proprietary OS used on them.
And server-side is one where Linux can be entirely replaced and because of binary-compatibility (linux doesn't breaks userspace) a transition to no linux anymore could happen pretty fast.

Cisco gets super weird because they didn't want to keep supporting new hardware, so back in the mid-2000s they actually started running a Linux kernel. There was some guy at Kiwicon 2016 (I think) who showed how he hacked a Cisco router and broke out of ios into the base Linux shell.

The base Linux only shows once Ethernet adapter because the others are implemented using PCI-E userspace drivers (which is apparently a thing) and ios is one massive binary (I think it was a few hundred megs) that's run as the only process.

They somehow adapted the entire OS to run as a userspace process on a Linux kernel.

@djsumdog @post @lanodan this is why exactly apple built bsd as a library on top of mach

@post @lanodan
playstation uses freebsd. it's in places you wouldn't think

@ageha @post @lanodan pfsense routers are freebsd too, worth mentioning. i am told (can't verify) that the bsd network stack is definitely superior to linux

@Moon @post @lanodan @ageha I have heard a lot of times that freebsd's network stack is the best in the market, which is why supposedly Windows uses it/has bits of it and why netflix uses freebsd over linux

@MischievousTomato @Moon @ageha

Can you please untag me from *BSD discussions? I know what it is and where it is used but mentioning it completely miss my point.

Here there are people complaining of Blink being used too much compared to other Web implementations despite WebKit is used by all Apple devices and more and Gecko is a third good alternative.

Kernels are not even implementations of standards like Web browsers, who cares if there are kernels other than Linux used here and there, they are not alternatives to Linux.

Linux is way more prevailing than Blink in the respective areas, it's a fact that can be ignored just because of personal bias towards Google vs the other corps in the Linux Foundation.

@post @MischievousTomato @ageha sorry friend

@post @Moon @ageha > Can you please untag me from *BSD discussions?

You sound snobby but sure, i'll keep it in mind.

> re: linux

While yeah, you can argue it's a monopoly of sorts, it's way of development more or less counters that. It's developed by a myriad of people from different kinds of places, plus as lanodan told you, You could replace linux with other kernels because of binary compatiblity and stuff. FBSD has the linuxulator or whatever it is called for stuff that's linux-only, but A lot of devs use macOS so by extension I believe freebsd could be used the same way

@MischievousTomato

Linux kernel is mostly developed by a consortium of corporations (the Linux Foundation) and hardware manufacturers.

From Wikipedia:

"Blink is a browser engine developed as part of the Chromium project with contributions from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Opera Software, Adobe, Intel, IBM, Samsung, and others."

That are more or less the same corps from the Linux Foundation.

@post gangbanging nigger cocksucker