> Linux developers have created dependencies on Linux.

Sorry, ignoring the rest of the thread: this statement isn't true even marginally. There are linux distributions that can operate on other kernels than Linux. Debian was my favourite choice for this with their HURD (https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/) and kFreeBSD (https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/) implementation.

The GNU userland itself does not depend on Linux either.

You can run GNU utilities on MacOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD.

> There are linux distributions that can operate on other kernels than Linux.

Then by definition they're not specifically a Linux distribution?

Richard Stallman agrees with you.

I’m happy to take a different name, but Wikipedia at least refers to it this way.

Debian themselves say that they’re an operating system.

Regardless; many (if not most, if not close to all) utilities developed on top of Linux are portable across not only distributions, but other kernels or even operating systems.

It’s not fair to say that “those people who develop on systems with Linux kernels only support linux”.

There are cases where you might want to use Linux (for the hardware support, or for the userland) but without systemd: e.g. if you want to use musl libc, Lennard has said clearly he won't fix the incompatibility https://www.mail-archive.com/systemd-devel@lists.freedesktop... "we will rely on good APIs exposed in the generally accepted Linux API which is the one glibc exposes" (i.e. he won't integrate any required patch to make systemd work without glibc's nonstandard behaviors, and musl doesn't aim for a bug-for-bug compatibility with glibc).

Lennard now works for Microsoft anyway. It clearly suits him better.

Because systemd is not the reason why people choose to use Linux over a BSD.