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I really wish people creating a distro, and even more so distro of a distro of a distro should not call it OS. (Debian - Ubuntu . AnduinOS)

I am alwasy happy to look at new operating system projects. It is a major hobby.

Could distros use AnduinDI AnduinUbuntu AnduinLinux. or just Anduin

I dont like getting my hopes up like that.

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Technically what people often refer to as "Linux" should more properly be called "GNU slash Linux", or as I've taken to calling it, "GNU plus Linux", GNU being a holistic operating system with multiple kernel...

;)

GNU people would insist so. But Linus Torvalds doesn't use that name and he seems indifferent to the whole GNU thing. The kernel was actually named Linux after Linus by early users and it kind of stuck. The license came later. And the Linux Foundation, the thing that is now probably closest to "owning" Linux (aside from Linus Torvalds) just calls it the "Linux kernel". There is no actual distribution called GNU/Linux. And insisting they all should be called that is a bit weird. None of those actually refer to themselves as GNU/Linux as far as I know.

Aside from that, it's also an inaccurate label these days. Most Linux distributions come with a lot of non GNU licensed software. To the point where these distributions (or any distribution) would be unusable without all that non GNU software. For example xfree86 and its modern replacement wayland are MIT licensed. Some popular window managers are GPL of course. But some aren't.

And some distributions actually replace GNU components on purpose (for stability/memory safety reasons usually). For example libc is now sometimes replaced by a MIT licensed variant called musl. You can now compile Linux with llvm instead of gcc. People commonly use zsh instead of bash. There are rust implementations of commonly used command line tools. Etc.

it's a copypasta

In my defense its a remix of several copypastas.

I think I can allow it for nixos, which is such a pain in the ass (I say that affectionately) that it merits the accolade. it's an os made of nix the language and nixpkgs the package manager. it happens to use the Linux kernel and a lot of gnu stuff, so maybe it could still be called a distribution, but it's so unlike 99% of what's out there.

> Could distros use AnduinDI AnduinUbuntu AnduinLinux. or just Anduin

ANAL, but I'm reasonably sure that the answer is no, they could not, because Ubuntu and Linux have trademark policies that would prevent that.

Also, I disagree; a distro, even a respin, is an operating system, they just don't have a unique kernel which sounds like what you want.

I believe it's fine, as long as you get a sublicense: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/the-linux-mark

What does it actually mean to create a distro though? Is it just what software you package in your flavour of debian?

To be an independent distro it should at least have its own package manager.

The last thing the world needs is another Linux package manager. F-Droid uses apt and it could hardly be considered Debian.

It's an interesting question though, that I haven't thought about. At a minimum I'd say that it should have some sort of coherent goals and philosophy, its own package repository, and should not be replicable from its parent distro with a script to install/remove various packages.

The last one is probably the most critical, if it can do something the base distro can't, then it at least has a reason to exist, whether or not you want to call it a "distro" or not.

To me, a "distro" always was a prepackaged system that includes everything you need to use (it for). Of course there are major distros, they build their own systems and packages and bundle them with their main releases. But then there are also subdistros, that build other/more packages for a different experience (think elementaryOS).

I feel like I've seen a load of "distros" that are just ubuntu with different packages or a different default DE or something

> F-Droid uses apt

I think you mean termux

Or its own package repositories ! There are many excellent package managers out there :)

Don't loads use apt?

Yeah and they're all Debian derivatives, IMO.

Names could be trademarked… it’s like if I started a car company called Red, but later marketed it as RedLamborghini

This is also a pet peeve of mine.

The last thing I'm going to care about comparing distros is whether they used the same naming pattern as Microsoft instead of Apple. To give credit to their author, it sounds like their name really is Anduin Xue and this is their OS, not that they intended for it to sound confusing. Not all that different than how Debian was named, beyond including OS at the end.

https://anduin.aiursoft.cn/page/about

I think the gp is complaining specifically about the "OS" bit; that makes it sound like a new operating system rather than a derivative linux distribution

The points are are the same specific topic. A distro is a superset of the OS bit and the latter is rarely distributed without the additional software, documentation, and configuration that make up a distro so, to me, it's more than fine to me to include OS in the name. Even to switch between one Debian derivative to another it's extraordinarily rare to not reinstall the OS as part of that swap, so why not name the whole solution according to what it includes?

The same naming pattern as Microsoft? Like a distro named Linux for Workgroups Lync 365?

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