I would imagine the vast majority of OpenWRT users don't know they're running the Linux kernel. It was installed by the manufacturer or the operator. Assuming that's true, does it make OpenWRT not a distro?
I understand your usage of the word "distro". I think it's useful, but also quite a bit misleading (for example, Wikipedia[1] lists Android as a distro).
Perhaps there ought to be another word for distributions of Linux that require user to take active part in either replacing a manufacturers' choice or setting it up from scratch on an otherwise "empty" system. But I don't know what it would be.
> I would imagine the vast majority of OpenWRT users don't know they're running the Linux kernel. It was installed by the manufacturer or the operator. Assuming that's true, does it make OpenWRT not a distro?
My gut is to not consider OpenWRT a distro since it's usually just the software part of a network appliance and many/most users don't know they're running it, although I concede that it does qualify in most senses as a distro: downloadable image, a package manager, is a complete product that uses the linux kernel, etc.
I fully concede that my opinion of "what makes a distro" is subjective and arbitrary. It's very much the Linux distro version of Stewart's test for obscenity[1] and is a pretty unhelpful standard which value is quite low :-)
I understand your usage of the word "distro". I think it's useful, but also quite a bit misleading (for example, Wikipedia[1] lists Android as a distro).
Perhaps there ought to be another word for distributions of Linux that require user to take active part in either replacing a manufacturers' choice or setting it up from scratch on an otherwise "empty" system. But I don't know what it would be.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions