14 DAY TRIAL // A new website has been launched, encouraging people to boycott the Linux kernel by avoiding all the distributions and products that use it, while pointing at the Minix kernel for a better alternative.
This is not the first initiative of its kind. In fact, a similar website was released just a couple of weeks ago, asking users to support forking Debian because it adopted systemd. Now, the Linux kernel is the target and the website claims to be the work of multiple users (developers?).
As you might imagine, this will not have any visible or real impact on the Linux kernel. The project is too big and too important to stoop to such challenges and to answer, but it's interesting to see a radicalization of the online environment, even when it comes to open source. Communities are built with all sorts of people and some of them are bound to disagree viciously with what the others are saying or doing.
Boycotting Linux is impossible
It's easy to launch this kind of message, to boycott something, but getting people to actually follow through is a different thing entirely. For once, very few people feel like the ones (one) who made this website. Also, the Linux kernel is present in so many devices and operating systems that it's virtually impossible. Minix might be lighter, but it's hardly implemented in anything.
"Linux represents a monumental increase in complexity, a slap in the face to the Unix philosophy, and its inherent domineering and viral nature turns it into something akin to an "in-kernel" implementation of Unix that is spreading all across the Unix ecosystem. This site aims to serve as a rundown and a wake-up call to take a stand against the widespread proliferation of Linux, to detail why it is harmful, and to persuade users to reject its use, and especially its ubiquity."
"Its responsibilities grossly exceed that of an Unix system, as it interferes with power management, device management, mount points, serial ports, networking, task scheduling, disk encryption, io memory, cpu configuration, resource management, block readahead, partition tables bus device discovery, PCI interrupts, time management, kernel logs, the Linux console and other things ....probably," reads the website.
Some of the complaints made by people who made this website are simply ridiculous and they are not really to be taken literally. It sounds like there is some kind of global conspiracy to promote Linux at the expense of other developers. That is simply stupid. The Linux kernel is the biggest collaborative open source project in the world, and perpetrating the kind of voluntary action described on the website is simply not possible.