From discord, when I started aggressively mentioning how I use Linux regardless of current topic 🤣
No Linux distro can be vegan because none of them can be produced without any suffering
Pretty sure that suffering is consensual, so it’s fine. It’s like how vegans can drink human breast milk or eat people who want to be cannibalized.
I would say that most vegans, even if they’ve never heard it, at least approximately follow the Vegan Society’s famous definition:
Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.
Striking the parts that seem irrelevant to this specific question:
Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for […] any […] purpose […]
Keep in mind that “animals” in that first part is widely treated as “humans and non-human animals”. So you would have to decide 1) to what extent cruelty was inflicted to create the distro, 2) to what extent people and non-human animals were exploited to create the distro, and 3) if there exist practicable alternatives that meaningfully reduce (1) and (2).
by that definition do vegans have to grow their own vegetables? you know, capitalism and exploitation of labor and such.
Basically what @[email protected] said: the idea is to be practicable. Here’s a stream of disconnected thoughts about this:
- What you pointed out is actually consistent with how a disproportionate amount of vegans are staunchly anticapitalist.
- A cut-and-dry example of someone who’s still vegan but eats animal products based on “practicable” is someone whose prescription medication contains gelatin with no other pill type; vegans aren’t going to say “lol ok too bad bozo you’re not vegan anymore”.
- The core focus of veganism has traditionally been non-human animals with the idea that a reduction of cruelty and exploitation toward humans is, at most, peripheral. This is changing in my opinion, especially when questions like “vegan Linux distro” don’t involve animals short of what the devs eat.
- Based on what you say (as someone else pointed out), a distro based solely on FLOSS would probably be regarded as “the most vegan” if that were ever measured by anyone (it never would be).
- It’s a weird analogy, but after you’re done using and purchasing products derived from animals, what’s “practicable” from there is kind of like a vegan post-game. Many vegans, for example, won’t eat palm oil because of how horribly destructive it is to wildlife.
- Growing all your own food is in that post-game area of “practicable”. It’s up to you to decide if that’s practicable for you. It’s up to you to implement that if you think it is or, if it’s not, to maybe think about how else you can reduce harm with how you buy vegetables. It’s up to you if you want to share that idea and help other people implement it themselves. It’s widely accepted that it’s not up to you to determine if it’s practicable for others.
as far as is possible and practicable
Its not really practicable to grow all the vegetables you eat on your own. So, to answer your question, no.
It absolutely can be. You’re just not trying hard enough.
Reminds me of the episode in Good Place where the dude gets like a lifetime worth of bad karma for buying a tomato in a grocery store
Consensual suffering is still suffering. Usually the alternative is just… more or different suffering
BDSM is not vegan, then? Can I get an expert’s opinion?
ROFLOL
You’ve got me thinking about how the distinction is what the incentive is. Still not black and white, but if you want to suffer because you have only personal enjoyment to gain and your needs are all met, that’s better than consenting to suffering to pay the bills.
I think the problem lies with the definition of consent more than with the definition of suffering. If the alternative is something worse, then that’s not consent. That’s coercion.
Now, whether it’s still appropriate to still call it suffering when applied to someone enthusiastically consenting, I’m not sure.
This the real answer right here.
I aways see the “100% libre” systems being the vegan version of Linux, ie Guix or Trisquel on a canoeboot machine!
Yes, and some fine work as been put into making it a great choice for a webserver:
This is a vegan server, not distro.
It could be a distro if enough of us download it
It should be obvious that it’s your choice if you want to run Linux on a steak or on a lettuce.
Usually you run it on a potato
One of those is not like the others.
Edit:
Well from a hardware perspective, pretty much every tech product is built on the back of horrifying amounts of labor exploitation.
Also in some cases components will contain gelatin, which isn’t vegan.
For software? Well I sacrifice and goat and feed it to the machine before every git commit I make, so that’s probably not vegan either.
Gnus and Penguins are both animals. So Linux is an animal-based product, and cannot be vegan
Alpine is Gnu-Free. So plant based without animal.
As per Linux+cross fit, that’s Arch, no questions there
BSD.
Should be fine with Mint, surely? Cinnamon edition is a weird taste combination but still vegan
Two of those (x-fit and linux) are mostly good for the user whereas veganism is good for everyone but capitalists so, I would hope, they’d talk about being Vegan first
As a linux user who uses linux on my linux machine (which runs linux), I agree that mentioning that one uses linux is not as important as mentioning that non-linux thing you just said
Arch?
In my years as a linux user using linux on my linux machines i have used various linux distributions, including arch linux, but for various reasons the linux distribution i use on most of my linux machines is currently ubuntu linux
This might be relevant but I do not know how:
Apt has super cow powers…
Gotta be NixOS
Gentoo
BSD, Carnivore, gym rat, barefoot, pro-bidet - let’s talk about microkernels
Get outta here techno hippy
GNU Hurd… any day now
My sparkling clean asshole. You could eat a steak off it.
Linux Mint?
“Fack off I’m full”
“It’s just a kernel thin.”
Linux is mayo
