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The Free Software Foundation and the GNU project have had an enormous impact on people's lives. We all owe a significant debt of gratitude to the many people w

The Free Software Foundation and the GNU project have had an enormous impact on people's lives. We all owe a significant debt of gratitude to the many people who have worked on FSF/Gnu products. Even more significant is the ethos involved. Where would we be today were it not for the free software community.

nerdponx 9y ago
Indeed. GNU is way more than Linux. GNU Parallel, the ubiquitous GNU Make (did you know ":=" is a GMU extension?), GNU versions of Grep and Sed that have some really nice quality of life options, and the GPL which for better or worse has "infected" a lot of really important software. That said, it's a shame that GNOME, Gtk, and Glibc are evidently not the best (I use none of them but I have read many complaints). Lots of other old, weird, and/or semi-abandoned projects too like Taler, the GNU version of 'yes' [0] and Hurd of course. What makes some GNU tools so great and others not-so-great? And where does this "everything but the kitchen sink" mentality come from with respect to options and configuration in GNU programs? 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14542938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14542938
- rekado 9y ago
  What's not to like about the GNU C library? It's used on the vast majority of GNU+Linux distributions. > Lots of other old, weird, and/or semi-abandoned projects too like Taler, ... GNU Taler is none of these things. > And where does this "everything but the kitchen sink" mentality come from with respect to options and configuration in GNU programs? Did you know that GNU Emacs had an overflowing kitchen sink as its logo for a while? (I still prefer that logo over the current logo, actually.)
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    > GNU Emacs had an overflowing kitchen sink as its logo oh wow, http://ergoemacs.org/misc/emacs_overflowing_kitchen_sink_icon.html http://ergoemacs.org/misc/emacs_overflowing_kitchen_sink_ico... pretty nice, and with dataflow !
  - nerdponx 9y ago
    GNU Taler Always happy to stand corrected on these kinds of things. When it was posted here recently I got the impression that nobody was using it for much of anything, nor would they. Then again I should know better than to put too much stock in comments here. It's full of people like me repeating things they don't understand...
- walki 9y ago
  > ... Glibc are evidently not the best The GNU GCC compiler and the glibc are actually the 2 GNU projects I like most. If you are interested in high performance you won't find any better, most Linux servers (which means 99% of cloud servers) are based on these 2 projects! There are other C library implementations that may be suited better for embedded or low power devices but for servers and Desktop CPUs glibc is very good/fast.

nerdponx 9y ago

Indeed. GNU is way more than Linux. GNU Parallel, the ubiquitous GNU Make (did you know ":=" is a GMU extension?), GNU versions of Grep and Sed that have some really nice quality of life options, and the GPL which for better or worse has "infected" a lot of really important software. That said, it's a shame that GNOME, Gtk, and Glibc are evidently not the best (I use none of them but I have read many complaints). Lots of other old, weird, and/or semi-abandoned projects too like Taler, the GNU version of 'yes' [0] and Hurd of course. What makes some GNU tools so great and others not-so-great? And where does this "everything but the kitchen sink" mentality come from with respect to options and configuration in GNU programs? 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14542938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14542938

rekado 9y ago
What's not to like about the GNU C library? It's used on the vast majority of GNU+Linux distributions. > Lots of other old, weird, and/or semi-abandoned projects too like Taler, ... GNU Taler is none of these things. > And where does this "everything but the kitchen sink" mentality come from with respect to options and configuration in GNU programs? Did you know that GNU Emacs had an overflowing kitchen sink as its logo for a while? (I still prefer that logo over the current logo, actually.)
- agumonkey 9y ago
  > GNU Emacs had an overflowing kitchen sink as its logo oh wow, http://ergoemacs.org/misc/emacs_overflowing_kitchen_sink_icon.html http://ergoemacs.org/misc/emacs_overflowing_kitchen_sink_ico... pretty nice, and with dataflow !
- nerdponx 9y ago
  GNU Taler Always happy to stand corrected on these kinds of things. When it was posted here recently I got the impression that nobody was using it for much of anything, nor would they. Then again I should know better than to put too much stock in comments here. It's full of people like me repeating things they don't understand...
walki 9y ago
> ... Glibc are evidently not the best The GNU GCC compiler and the glibc are actually the 2 GNU projects I like most. If you are interested in high performance you won't find any better, most Linux servers (which means 99% of cloud servers) are based on these 2 projects! There are other C library implementations that may be suited better for embedded or low power devices but for servers and Desktop CPUs glibc is very good/fast.