this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
16 points (90.0% liked)

Ask Lemmy

37581 readers
924 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Not talking about all the Linux distros or different versions of Windows obviously. And my definition of "desktop" would be "able to connect to WiFi and launch a modern web browser", since that would cover 90% of most people's use cases.

I know of:
Windows
MacOS
GNU/Linux
GNU/Hurd
BSD
HaikuOS

What others are there?

top 18 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Just for the record, MacOS is a descendant of FreeBSD. At least it was for quite a while.

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.today 1 points 2 hours ago

It's not. They just copied (literally) a few userspace tools from BSD back in the days, and rebased them to FreeBSD some time later.

[–] callyral@pawb.social 2 points 6 hours ago

Technically, Alpine Linux is Linux, sans GNU. Perhaps it can be called musl/Linux or busybox/Linux.

[–] Una@europe.pub 6 points 9 hours ago

There is Redox OS Unix like OS built in Rust. Never used it just know it exists.

[–] PetteriPano@lemmy.world 6 points 9 hours ago
[–] Pirtatogna@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago

One could argue that MacOS is basically BSD, but I guess that can be somewhat debatable.

[–] PetteriPano@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

Serenity was getting close, but I think that whole operating system took a bit of a back seat ride when they started with the gigantic task that a modern browser is. Hence Ladybird.

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 3 points 9 hours ago

https://www.kolibrios.org/en

Absolutely tiny yet has a lot of functionality

[–] zout@fedia.io 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)
[–] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Android is Linux. iPhone is iOS/MacOS. So I think those are covered depending on how you define "family"

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

In this context, I think two operating systems are in the same family if software for one can be recompiled for another with minimal changes without heavyweight compatibility libraries.

In that sense, I would put BSD and traditional desktop Linux distributions in the same family even though they don't share low-level code, and I would exclude Android even though it uses the Linux kernel.

[–] zout@fedia.io 1 points 6 hours ago

Isn't MacOs based on BSD in the same vein?

[–] BozeKnoflook@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

QNX could qualify, but it's not as easily available as most other OS.

Solaris is nearly dead for new development, but it's still receiving updates (last release was 16 days ago) and can run GNOME and a browser.

[–] prettybunnys@piefed.social 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

http://9front.org/

well, modern web browser probably fails the task but … it can be done.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 hours ago

Not entirely sure, if ReactOS would count. Its documentation has a section on WiFi and one of the screenshots on their webpage shows Firefox, but that looks to be a rather old version of Firefox, so no idea if modern versions of it work, too, well, and how well the whole WiFi business works, too.

Well, and one could argue that it's part of the Windows family.

https://reactos.org/

[–] Overspark@piefed.social 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

TempleOS?

Your definition is very broad though, a device like a Nintendo Switch would be covered, even though that's clearly not a desktop 😁.

[–] everett@lemmy.ml 0 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I'd interpret their requirements as "desktop with WiFi and modern browser."

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 7 hours ago

enter Diogenes, holding a nintendo DS