this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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No one is going to enforce this. It's political theater, and will in no way protect children.
Easy enough to send threatening cease and desist letters to distro maintainers that may not have a penny in savings. This is a huge gift to Apple and Microsoft that probably had enough of Linux hoarding in on their market share.
Were that to happen, I imagine it would be a relatively simple matter to move everything out of state, or even out of the country if need be.
Well... don't live in rogue nations then, I guess?
Apple and Microsoft are both rather large Linux customers. On desktop, they sell their operating systems, but both of them use a lot of Linux in the enterprise. Apple more so, but Microsoft is no slouch.
MacOS is FreeBSD under the hood, which would also suffer from this.
I think that's a bit different. If all desktop OSs are affected by this law, Apple is in no better or worse position than their competitors. The mach kernel that macos is built around would still be available. TBH, I'm not even sure how reliant Apple still is on the mach source. If such a law were to effectively outlaw Linux, it would have massive implications for pretty much every company with a moderate or bigger enterprise footprint.
There's a shirt that you could buy where a kid is asking his dad what clouds are made of. Dad replies, "Linux servers, mostly." It's no less true today than it was then.
It's not the kernel, which is their own work for a long time now. It's the userland utils, which are almost entirely taken from FreeBSD and track that project.
Although BSD utils are updated at a glacial pace, so it probably wouldn't be much work for Apple to do that themselves.
You think they'll pass up the chance to enforce an increase in mass surveillance?