Listening To: No Means No – Wrong

Photo: Having a coffee while the Main St. Fire is doused.

I got a comment the other day that using our Linux-based video streaming system was “non-standard”. All they had to do was enter their username and password then click on a icon to run an application. The exact same application that runs on all the major desktop platforms. Yes, I rolled my eyes.

The ironic thing is that most people use Unix or Linux on a daily basis. It’s behind many of the devices we interact with. Apple uses it for all their products and even Windows now includes the ability to run not only command-line Linux but full desktops. Desktops that resemble other operating systems and some that are quite unique. There is a lot of choice (Plasma is my go to).

I’m going to use “Unix” and “Linux” interchangeably here and while a purist may want me to note the various distinctions between the two it really doesn’t matter to those using them with any sort of graphical interface.

Here’s a short random list of things that use one of the two underneath:

  • Android/ChromeOS (1)
  • IOS (1)
  • macOS (1)
  • Amazon Kindle (1)
  • Sony Playstation (1)
  • The Internet (1)
  • The Top 500 supercomputers (1)
  • Roku (1) and Tivo (1)
  • NASA (1)
  • “Smart Things”: Your Fridge, TV and Light Bulbs (1)
  • Teslas (1) and many other cars (2)
  • Intel Processors (1)

Look at that last one. Arguably the most popular operating in the world is something called MINIX. And it’s used by much of Intel’s processor line as a management engine.

So, “Normal”.