it’s called macos, and honestly, i’m glad it exists. seeing apple choose a unix-based system is a win. windows is just… not it. it’s nice that macos lets people work in a way that feels closer to linux without needing to dive into the deep end right away. sure, it’s not open like linux, but it’s a step in the right direction for those who want a mix of usability and power.

linux or ubuntu?

wtf?

like what if linux still was open source but had a lot of proprietary dependencies and packages…

At that point, it’s not really open source anymore. Once it has proprietary dependencies, it’s no longer open.

but it still would let you use any desktop environment and there would be a new proprietary desktop environment which was like gnome but easier

What you’re describing is a closed-source version of Pop!_OS with a closed source version of Cosmic, their latest DE still in Alpha.

Businesses and software companies don’t make software for operating systems based on their openness or proprietary-ness. They make it based on market share. Your idea would still have to compete with Linux, MacOS, and Windows, and it would have to get a better share of the market than at least Linux before businesses would even bother making software for your closed system.

The reason Linux is as successful as it is, is because it’s open, and hobbyists can and do contribute to it for free. When you close that off, you then have to pay for development, and you’ll have to overcome the gigantic barrier to entry set up by the likes of Microsoft and Apple.

What if a thing were a different thing from the thing that it is???

any distro except the ones listed here https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.en.html technically already “took” that “route”

Then it wouldn’t really be Linux, then, would it?

Linux does have proprietary blobs, Canonical has signed some NDAs, so not that far off from Android (which is linux-based and certainly has proprietary firmware).

Well, Ubuntu or any company could certainly do something like that. But then this company would simply be competing with Android with an incompatible app platform built on top of Linux. App developers who have a hard enough time developing their apps for both Android and iOS would not want to write their app for yet another incompatible proprietary platform, even if the underlying OS kernel was Linux.

As others have said, the real advantage to Linux, the real reason to use it, with desktop environments like Gnome or KDE, in spite of their minor flaws, is that the software is owned by all of us. Unlike proprietary software which you are basically renting for a monthly fee, on Linux you actually own your software and your data.

Openness of linux would be lost

Although device drivers are proprietary, linux does its best to limit such proprietry stuff. But in case of android, Google pretty much has a monopoly because a standard build of android isnt enough for use.

I hate that the spirit of openness is shot on the foot just because of the need of commercialization. I would prefer linux than android.

Unlike what people reply here out of ignorance, your thinking is correct, meaning, that Google has already done the hard work to create a TRULY modern OS, with proper usability, security, and yes, a way better compositor than wayland (in fact, android has the best compositor in the world, compared to ANY OS). A properly modified desktop OS based on it (better than Samsung’s DeX for example), that is also able to run normal Linux apps, would be a huge winner.

macOS, ChromeOS, SteamOS, AWS, Samsung Tizen, literally any embedded device, …

Wrong neighborhood, buddy.

Now GTFOutahere.