No question, and especially now with Linux running on billions of devices (if you include Android in that at least), it would be kind of difficult to make a case for a brand new desktop operating system. A lot of the weird edge cases for Linux have been found and fixed and ironed out through decades of continued use.

I tried installing FreeBSD on a laptop years ago, which isn't really an "obscure" operating system or anything, but even that had a lot of compatibility problems with regards to drivers for wifi and GPUs, and even that would have a considerable head-start over something like Hurd if it were to try and take on the desktop world.

▲ bee_rider 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Speaking of BSD, in the hypothetical no-Linux universe, that would be the obvious candidate for taking the Linux spot, right? Rather than Hurd. BSD might even have won in the Linux-included universe, if some random events has panned out differently. Why not, right?

▲ tombert 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Didn't Linus even say that if he had known about BSD he wouldn't have bothered with Linux? I could totally see an alternate universe where BSD took over the world.

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bombcar 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's arguable that the main reason Linux took off where BSD didn't was the fights and copyright arguments around BSD at the time.

Had they not existed, or BSD been obviously free and clear, Linux might have been a footnote.

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ghaff 4 days ago | parent [-]

A combination IMO of lingering issues around the AT&T lawsuit and various community issues within the BSDs.

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flykespice 3 days ago | parent [-]

Yep, the copyrighted Socket code legal issue has stalled the BSD world for a considerable time. It's reasonable to conclude many users thought it was a deadend for BSD distros, and when Linux emerged as the most promising thing from all (free as in freedom, open to any contribution, not plagued by a closed governance like GNU hurd) they all emigrated en masses to the effort.

	▲	ghaff 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		bcantrill has opined that, had Linus gone off to pursue ice sculpture instead, at least one of the BSDs would have figured out a way forward. (Though others suggest that Windows would just have won.) I tend to agree with Bryan though. https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2020/04/podcast-if-linux-didnt...

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butterisgood 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I recall either Linus or a major Linux contributor (Alan Cox?) saying that if he had had a math coprocessor, he would have likely just ran BSD.

I don't think even 386BSD existed when Linus started Linux.

▲ jraph 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It could have been that more effort would have been put in Hurd if Linux hadn't taken off.

And then BSD could have won against Hurd anyway. Especially when corps like the permissive license and are afraid of the FSF.

▲ evanjrowley 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes and no. The gaming industry serves as an illustrative example because we know the Sony Playstation 4 and 5 are both based on FreeBSD[0].

Compare Sony PlayStation Network[1]

  Monthly active users on PlayStation Network reached 123 million as of June 30, 2025.

with Valve's Steam[2]

  Valve reported 132 million active monthly players (that is, they used Steam within the month, as opposed to being logged in at exact the same time) at the end of 2021...

  This isn't scientific, but if the same ratio of active monthly to peak concurrent users held through to today, back of the napkin math would put Steam's current active monthly users at 221.5 million

With an optimistic estimate of current Monthly Active Users, if gaming on Linux grew overnight from 2.5% to 50% of total players on Steam, then it would still be slightly behind half of the people who are currently gaming on FreeBSD-based Playstation.

FreeBSD code is also in iOS and macOS via Darwin, the Nintendo Switch, and the Microsoft Windows networking stack.

Evidently BSD is a go-to choice for consumers today, but many don't realize it, and those of us who do often do not think about it. That's because the BSD license and the companies that use it result in products that bear no resemblance to the BSD we know.

A similar situation occurred with Minix - to the extent that it's creator Andrew Tannenbaum had no idea it's install base was arguably bigger than Linux until 2017. Intel had put Minix into the Management Engine on their professional grade CPUs for years. The BSD license allowed Intel to put it everywhere without the knowledge of the wider Minix community.

In some key ways, BSD is already taking the Linux spot, however, I'd argue that BSD can't truly take the Linux spot because the GPL license makes the Linux spot what it is. I honestly can't say if this makes Linux better or worse off. The most advanced technology of our time is largely not choosing copyleft licenses, and for those who did choose it, they've taken steps to distance themselves from it[3][4][5][6].

Given all this, I think Hurd has more of a chance to be the spiritual successor to Linux (if it disappeared). The only caveat is there is zero chance for a big-tech-dominated $200M "Hurd Foundation" to arise due to Hurd's's affiliation with the Free Software Foundation. Not much of the Linux Foundation's money actually goes to Linux, so it may not matter in the grand scheme of things[7].

[0] https://wololo.net/2023/03/22/new-freebsd-vulnerabilities-co...

[1] https://www.psu.com/news/psn-hits-123-million-monthly-active...

[2] https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/steam-just-cracked-4...

[3] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/googles-fuchsia-smar...

[4] https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-development-...

[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/red_hat_centos_move/

[6] https://lwn.net/Articles/655519/

[7] https://blog.desdelinux.net/en/The-annual-report-of-the-Linu...

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rcxdude 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Embedded for sure eats the world. If you're looking at that then QNX, FreeRTOS, and similar options are also big in the running. The thing is if you're targeting a particularly well-defined piece of hardware and application, and you know you're going to want to customize and optimize for that combination, then you're generally going to be better off with a smaller, simpler starting point than something which is designed to run on pretty much everything and for almost any application. The different licenses complement that, but I think even if the licenses swapped the design and goal difference would affect things more.

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jowea 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> A similar situation occurred with Minix - to the extent that it's creator Andrew Tannenbaum had no idea it's install base was arguably bigger than Linux until 2017. Intel had put Minix into the Management Engine on their professional grade CPUs for years. The BSD license allowed Intel to put it everywhere without the knowledge of the wider Minix community.

Off topic question, but wasn't that a violation of the BSD license? It does require a copyright notice.

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inkyoto 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> FreeBSD code is also in iOS and macOS via Darwin […]

It is a common belief that Darwin has allegedly descended from FreeBSD, but there is not a lot in there: a pretty ancient snapshot of the FreeBSD userland, another snapshot of the TCP/IP stack that has now completely diverged from the current FreeBSD TCP/IP stack (or, more correctly, the other way round), plus a few borrowed kernel level API's (kqueue is the most notable one).

VMM, VFS, driver layers, file systems etc etc do not share the same lineage.

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doublepg23 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Evidently BSD is a go-to choice for consumers today, but many don't realize it, and those of us who do often do not think about it.

Is this not even more true than with Linux in the billions strong Android?

	▲	evanjrowley 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Links 3 through 6 in my comment touched upon this. My point is that even companies behind commercial Linux products are trying to resist the GPL. In 2021, it appeared that Google was planning a pivot to their own BSD/MIT-licensed OS named Fuscia. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/googles-fuchsia-smar... This pivot seemed to end around the same time tech layoffs were occuring in 2024. https://9to5google.com/2024/01/15/google-is-no-longer-bringi... Since then, Google has chosen to limit the amount of open source development done for the Android OS. https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-development-... Keeping Android kernel development internal creates greater risk of binary blobs polluting the source code. Binary blobs might be a practical solution to bring products to market, but they are also a mechanism to circumvent the GPL. I doubt Google will take this problem seriously, but other Linux distributions have. https://lwn.net/Articles/655519/ The move by Google mirrors the choice by Red Hat to keep RHEL source code private. https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/red_hat_centos_move/ The common trend is product managers for these companies view the GPL as a bug instead of a feature.
	▲	bee_rider 4 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I’m not sure which comes out ahead if we count all of these kinds of devices. There are probably a lot of lightbulbs and routers out there running some variant of BSD or Linux, but only the manufacturer knows (I mean, you can often figure it out, but who cares?). Anyway, it is important to keep in mind that the useful “size” metric of a community led open source project is the number of developer-hours being contributed to it, not the number of users. It is a fun bit of trivia that these devices are everywhere, and maybe good news for open source fans’ career prospects. But that’s all.
	▲	pjmlp 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Linux kernel, not GNU/Linux, which is what folks trying to misuse NDK always get wrong.

▲ Twirrim 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> it would be kind of difficult to make a case for a brand new desktop operating system

Google is sure trying with Fuscia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)

▲ femto 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> especially now with Linux running on billions of devices

Aren't those billions of Linux/Android instances typically running on top of an seL4 microkernel?

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yjftsjthsd-h 4 days ago | parent [-]

Are they? I can't seem to find evidence of Android using it

	▲	femto 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		At one point it was [1], and I'm not aware that that has changed. I've also a memory of talking to the seL4 team at a NICTA open day, and them saying it was widely deployed on Qualcomm based devices. It's not part of Android per se, sitting underneath Android and acting as a secure hypervisor, so any Android vulnerabilities are contained. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120211210405/http://www.ok-lab...