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Not according to this article: > The operating system in which Linux is used is basically GNU with Linux added. I'm not sure how you lump all distros into a s
by gregmac 10y ago
Not according to this article:
> The operating system in which Linux is used is basically GNU with Linux added.
I'm not sure how you lump all distros into a single "operating system".
And anyway, I'm not sure what the point of this argument is anyway. Why stop at the GNU userland? An OS with only GNU userland and the kernel would be nearly useless, so there's a lot more to it than that.
"Please stop saying GNU/Linux. It's really KDE[1] with some GNU programs and Linux kernel tacked on".
"Please stop saying KDE/GNU/Linux; your OS is really just Firefox[1] with some other apps, utilities and a kernel somewhere underneath."
[1] Insert your favorite desktop/shell/browser if appropriate.
- verandaguy 10y agoThanks for following up with the point that these things could stack almost indefinitely. It's hypocritical to put GNU at the forefront when, obviously, the kernel alone would be totally useless except as a portable-ish interface to talk to hardware and process syscalls with very little abstraction. -- Sent from my <textarea>/HTML/Hacker News/Gecko/Firefox/GNOME/GNU/Linux
- belorn 10y ago> I'm not sure how you lump all distros into a single "operating system". I think a lot of people agree there and don't do that. My machine is running Debian, not "linux", and the fact is that the kernel is just one of many packages which can be replaced. It holds no more special places on my machine than Emacs, GNU or Firefox. The problem comes when people want to lump together several operative systems under the same umbrella. We could call them Unix systems, Linux distributions, GNU/Linux, and even systemd-based distributions, and it is a solution to a problem that I find unnecessary inflammatory and over debated.