this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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Linux
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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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Probably Guix, and GNU endorsed distributions. Binary blobs are not allowed on free/libre distributions, or not on their official repos. That said, most gnu + linux distributions don't care about those. Most will take care, if they get to realize it, about distribution licenses, so if something has some sort of legal issue to be distributed, that will get purged from its repos most probably...
Aaah, so that's why it takes them so long to update packages.
I'll bet you anything they're not reading the code for every random package and dependency. But yeah, with free distros it's at least possible to read everything that's on your machine.
I’d bet you they don’t. It would be an impossible task to expect people to do.
IT might be, but librelinux for example really removes all binary blobs, although there's some tooling around doing that, so new cases might be missed without human inspection, but they are careful about binary blobs... So from the whole spectrum of open source stuff, if you care about binary blobs, chances are better on the libre/free SW side.