this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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Explain Like I'm Five
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Omg this us an amazing explanation thanks
Fun fact: Android is one of those Linux variants. It is, however, so highly modified, that we usually don't really call it 'Linux' anymore. But the core components of Android are most certainly Linux components. So in a pedantic way, way more people directly use Linux than you would think.
There's pretty much three core OSes out there:
Amost everything else is just a variation of these.
Android, ChromeOS, PS3 OS, tons of embedded systems like car entertainment systems, and of course all the traditional Linux distros like Ubuntu, Mint, PopOS, Fedora, and so on are Linux.
MacOS, iOS, Switch OS, pfSense and tons of embedded systems like routers, and of course all the traditional BSD distros like FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD and so on are BSD based. (Though Switch OS, to be fair, is mostly it's own thing, only borrowing significant portions from BSD.)