It's so damn stupid. If your site works meaningfully differently in Firefox vs Chromium, you're already doing something very, very wrong.

If you define it that way you are right. Yah. But the common understanding is a bit different than yours.

Operating system - Wikipedia

(en.m.wikipedia.org)

Really great read.

I urge you to take a look at https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ It’s the exact same utilities and everything but a completely different kernel. It really highlights the difference here. How would your definition account for this?

Would Debian GNU/kFreeBSD be 50% Linux, 50% FreeBSD under your definition even though it has no Linux code? It has all the system libraries and system utilities that you associate with Linux.

But the common understanding is a bit different than yours.

the common understanding is that android is a different operating system to ubuntu, and macos is a different operating system to openbsd

Would Debian GNU/kFreeBSD be 50% Linux, 50% FreeBSD under your definition even though it has no Linux code?

it is what it is: a completely different thing… BSD system tools with a linux kernel

Firefox still hasn't fixed Bug 1938998 despite me reporting it multiple times. There's a reason why Firefox is almost non existent on mobile. I've been using the internet for 26 years, and have used Mozilla based browsers since 2001, I want them to survive to the next era of the internet, but they are struggling to keep up. Opera and Edge already gave up their engines, Webkit and Blink are basically the same engine with different standards enabled, and Firefox is under 2% on some days on Statcounter. I feel that soon AI based browsers using their own AI-engine will probably take over the internet soon anyway.

… leadership impacts the product. Ff might be the best choice rn, but leadership will fuck it up.

You’re gunna do you and use your own definitions and I respect that. But the first line from the page is

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is a port that consists of GNU userland using the GNU C library on top of FreeBSD's kernel, coupled with the regular Debian package set.

It is literally GNU userland using the GNU C library on top of FreeBSD's kernel, coupled with the regular Debian package set

You can say Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is BSD system tools with a Linux kernel but you would be evidently and clearly wrong.

Anyways. I wish you well. Best of luck.

okay, sorry i got the kernel and system tools mixed up in my head after reading it. that proves nothing other than the fact that you’re looking for a gotcha rather than a serious discussion

That’s ok! I was just trying to help you see the difference. You do now. It’s a win/win. There was a reason why I kept on brining up Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. It really highlights the difference.

It's ironic that I use Firefox personally but unfortunately we prioritized Chrome when I did more front end work too. Firefox would often render views differently compared to Chrome (Safari was also a shetshow) and we had to prioritize work ofc, especially for legacy stuff.

The thing is, as a pure guess, I would bet that it's Chrome that's not adhering to the web standards.

One observer has been spectating and commentating on Mozilla since before it was a foundation – one of its original co-developers, Jamie Zawinksi

...

Zawinski has repeatedly said:

Now hear me out, but What If…? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?

In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:

1. Building THE reference implementation web browser, and

2. Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.

3. There is no 3.

This makes sense to me. I initially thought everything that Proton does, that should have been Mozilla. They should have been a collection of services to compete with like O365 and Google One. So I didn’t see a problem with Mozilla selling a VPN, even though if I remember right it being just a Mullvad rebrand.

Right now to me it looks like Proton is the closest mostly missing a web browser and a more cloud office offering.

Mozilla functioning more as the reference browser for others to finish packaging and supporting sounds good to me because Mozilla doesn’t seem to be great at attracting general users or even picking what businesses to try and break into.

Linux kernel devs do Linux kernel development and distros small and large do the integration with everything else needed for an operating system, branding, support, etc. Sounds like Mozilla should have been the core devs for a number of reference software projects. Firefox browser engine. Maybe an equivalent to Electron based on Servo. Shouldn't have dropped Rust and been the steward for the reference Rust compiler. Could have been the steward for FirefoxOS/KaiOS/etc. Support PostmarketOS maybe.

Linux foundation stewards or contributes to all sorts of software projects not just the kernel but they're all pretty much things that are relevant for users of Linux operating systems. Mozilla could have found some software centric focus that in some way came together thematically. I would guess privacy focused browser and software services

This is like telling people that they are doing something wrong when they don't "buy low and sell high" when they're trading. Obviously. Issues with browser parity are born from a difficulty of the how and the when, not the what.

and my point is that these things aren’t definitions that have particularly concrete categories… an operating system is not a single thing: it can be many different things which include things like GUIs even… as much as we try to fit the world into neat little boxes, that’s just not how things work

even the categories of operating systems is messy: take single user vs multi user… macos is single user, but openbsd is multi user… in the beginning, the kernel was largely the same but due to the system tools and configuration, macos became a different classification of operating system

it’s all super messy, and saying that windows vista and windows 11 are the same operating system is extremely reductive

But we can agree that there are upper and lower limits though. And I believe that we can now agree that system utilities and system libraries are outside of that limit. Just because the edge are fuzzy, don’t mean we can’t come to any conclusions at all.

Any now stepping way way back. I think we can now agree that Fedora, Ubuntu and other distros run the same operating system. That operating system being Linux.

I use it on mobile. It's mostly OK tbh, and the addition of a working ad blocker means it's far better than Chrome for me.

In fairness that is an invalid URL in my book, but it should at least be consistent across desktop and mobile, or at least tucked behind an option.

You called what?

Firefox is open source, it’s not going anywhere.

The how is testing on one other browser.

i certainly don’t agree that system utilities and libraries are outside of that limit and said as much when i commented on Debian GNU/kFreeBSD: its its own thing… its neither debian, nor freebsd. it is however based on both

the gui is definitively part of the operating system - confirmed by that wikipedia page that you linked (though i’d say only in the case where the gui is heavily tied to the default configuration of the OS like windows, macos, android, etc), and that’s nowhere near the kernel

I haven't trusted Mozilla for a long time. They've very shadily constructed a business model which is part for-profit corporation seperated from their other nonprofit component which appears to serve little purpose other than optics. Most of their funding comes from / came from Google. Their suits make a lot of terrible statements about emerging tech all the time.

What a novel idea.