I used to think like that, but now I’m on the fence since I’ve started working much more closely with packaging. Calling it “linux” is actually kind of harmful for adoption. Devs that claim their software works on Linux mislead people into thinking it works on any Linux distro, which is rarely true. Most of the time, those devs only test on Ubuntu and no other distro.
Maybe when Snaps finally die out and Flatpak emerges as the one true standard for desktop apps, then that problem will go away once and for all. Until then, I think we should normalize distinguishing Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, etc as separate “operating systems” instead of “distros”, which is an unnecessary and misleading term anyways.
This doesn’t account for blinking.
If your friend blinks, they won’t see the light, and thus would be unable to verify whether the method works or not.
But how does he know when to open his eyes? He can’t keep them open forever. Say you flash the light once, and that’s his signal to keep his eyes open. Okay, but how long do you wait before starting the experiment? If you do it immediately, he may not have enough time to react. If you wait too long, his eyes will dry out and he’ll blink.
This is just not going to work. There are too many dependent variables.