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Comment by LexiMax | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a worldview borne from an era where the PC was _the_ definitive, ubiquitous computing device of choice for the layperson. These days, that crown is taken by the smartphone.

If you need a PC in 2025, you're probably a fair bit more knowledgeable than someone buying one in 2005. You're also almost certainly buying one online, possibly even directly from the manufacturer or builder, which means the seller can simply give you options and doesn't have to worry about competing for store shelf space.

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> These days, that crown is taken by the smartphone.

Which, if you use Android, is ...Linux...

iOS is really just repackaged UINX.

Surely the people who speak of "linux on the desktop" (not me, for the record) are at least in some small sense alluding to being able to have some of the freedoms historically associated with Linux, originating in the GNU movement and all that? The right to study, share, etc.

What I mean is that I would have picked Android as quite a good example of how the technicality of running the Linux kernel under the hood means very little in terms of users being empowered, or anything of the sort.

You are correct. If folks want that "freedom," then these are not the droids they are looking for.

However, folks that want that freedom, are a pretty small segment of the population, heavily represented in this community. Apple is a 3 trillion-dollar company, because most folks aren't like HN members.

Well ok then, agreed. Most people want what the advertisers tell them they want, absolutely.

iOS is pretty much Apple’s fully bespoke operating system at this point. You might be overestimating how much it actually shares with Unix (it boils down to a few standard libraries and terminal commands and no actual code). Functionally, iOS and Linux are only about as similar as a penguin and a robotic statue of a penguin.

Well, I'm not sure exactly what's under the hood, but I write Apple software, and I use a lot of the same NSXXX calls that have been in it since the dawn of OSX.

NextStep was a shell over FreeBSD. MacOS X was an evolution of NextStep.

Some time ago, I wrote a network driver for iOS, and used BSD sockets, accessed via standard C. I remember using the BSD manual, to figure out how to use them.

The NS calls behave the same now, as they did, back when OSX was new, and, at that time, MacOS was definitely UINX. iOS is a direct descendant of MacOS.

macOS is literally certified Unix. Apple still shells out for certification of their new releases, although I'm not sure what they're getting out of it given that macOS Server isn't a thing anymore.

iOS is arguably a subset, but whether it's Unix-like or not is a philosophical question depending on how you define the minimal set of features that'd make it one. It's certainly not Unix-like from the end user perspective.

Android does not resemble a traditional GNU/Linux desktop.

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