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Some Windows machines don't have Chrome installed, does that mean those that do should be called Chrome/Windows? On a nominally "GNU/Linux" installation, Linux

Some Windows machines don't have Chrome installed, does that mean those that do should be called Chrome/Windows? On a nominally "GNU/Linux" installation, Linux is the important part of the stack. GNU software is a small (and shrinking!) part of the userland. I expect this trend to continue as Clang/LLVM pushes out GCC, modern packaging replaces Debian-style dependency resolution[1], and more software moves from C/C++ toward languages that statically link their runtimes (Go, Rust). [1] Debian-style packaging, where the binaries link against a libc, is a big part of why GNU libc has been considered by some people to be part of the OS. It's not really part of Linux, but if every userland software is written in C and needs a pre-installed libc.so, then you've got to pick one. Nowadays, packaging of userland software is moving toward FlatPak/Snap/etc where dependencies are bundled. libc.so is just another (exceptionally large) dependency in that world, and GNU libc has no more claim to be part of the platform than Bionic or MUSL.

tcmart14 5y ago
> On a nominally "GNU/Linux" installation, Linux is the important part of the stack. GNU software is a small (and shrinking!) part of the userland. I expect this trend to continue as Clang/LLVM pushes out GCC, modern packaging replaces Debian-style dependency resolution[1], and more software moves from C/C++ toward languages that statically link their runtimes (Go, Rust). If your getting the userland code from GNU (as is the case with Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, Gentoo, etc....), but compiling it with Clang/LLVM, it is still GNU code written by the GNU project. GNU makes up pretty much the entire linux userland on most distributions with the exceptions being distros like Alpine or distros that use BusyBox userland utilities. NetBSD maintains their own userland utilities, they are not written by GNU. But they are compiled with GCC, does not make them GNU userland utilities.
- jmillikin 5y ago
  All of the GNU code on my Ubuntu machine fits in maybe ~100 MB, which is less than any of a dozen non-GNU applications I use day-to-day. It's just not an important part of the userland any more. The world has moved on to GUI tools, of which GNU has only a few (GIMP + whatever parts of Gnome are official GNU).
  - tcmart14 5y ago
    Ubuntu's biggest use case is more than likely a server accessed by a user of SSH. I use linux and love it, but desktop usage is a small portion of Linux's actual use. Those GNU core-utils userland utilites are an integral part in administering remote machines which makes up the vast majority of the use case. I'll even defer to Debian's about page, which is where Ubuntu is derived from. "A large part of the basic tools that fill out the operating system come from the GNU project; hence the names: GNU/Linux, GNU/kFreeBSD, and GNU/Hurd. These tools are also free." [1] [1] https://www.debian.org/intro/about https://www.debian.org/intro/about
    - jmillikin 5y ago
      Looking at one of my remote servers running Debian Buster, it has about the same amount of GNU stuff on it (~100 MB) and most of that is semi-obsolete tooling that, again, just isn't necessary day-to-day. I could probably purge ~all of it without loss of functionality. I log in with OpenSSH, which listens on a Wireguard interface. The shell is whatever generic Bourne-alike Debian uses (Ash? Dash?). The administrative tools are all written in Go since they're a mix of contemporary projects (containerd) and my own administrative agents. Primary editor is vim. There's the basic tools (mv, cp) but those could just as easily be supplied by Busybox, which is installed. It's difficult for me to imagine what sort of server would run GNU software as a majority of its workload, or even just the UX control surfaces. The GNU project has always had a strong emphasis on re-creating the UNIX interfaces of yesteryear, and modern sysadmin practices don't include running m4 or gcc in the same machine that's going to serve traffic.
      - aragilar 5y ago
        Does glibc count? If you use systemd, then you are dependant on GNU (as noted in the article). GNOME is becoming more systemd-dependant, so GNOME is also implicitly more dependent on GNU. Other things include mDNS (what, if anything, does blah.local resolve to on non-GNU systems), libquadmath (which tends to be required more often than people would expect) or GNU-specific flags/behaviours (e.g. GNU tar just does the right thing). I suspect if you did purge the GNU stuff (baring the things which either require you to specifically say you're fine with the result or remove required software) you'll find lots little things that don't work right, because the GNU code is functionally the only option (missing features, integrations from other software etc.). I don't think GNU is particularly special this way: try going from vim to busybox vi, or looking at how much stuff depends on imagemagick (a.k.a https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/).
nix23 5y ago
> should be called Chrome/Windows I think you have problems making a difference between a operating-system and user applications, sometimes the lines are blurry, but Chrome for sure is not part of the OS, but one could argue that for example a installed GCC is a user-application. >those that do should be called Chrome/Windows Since you installed it it's clearly no part of then distribution called windows.

tcmart14 5y ago

> On a nominally "GNU/Linux" installation, Linux is the important part of the stack. GNU software is a small (and shrinking!) part of the userland. I expect this trend to continue as Clang/LLVM pushes out GCC, modern packaging replaces Debian-style dependency resolution[1], and more software moves from C/C++ toward languages that statically link their runtimes (Go, Rust). If your getting the userland code from GNU (as is the case with Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, Gentoo, etc....), but compiling it with Clang/LLVM, it is still GNU code written by the GNU project. GNU makes up pretty much the entire linux userland on most distributions with the exceptions being distros like Alpine or distros that use BusyBox userland utilities. NetBSD maintains their own userland utilities, they are not written by GNU. But they are compiled with GCC, does not make them GNU userland utilities.

jmillikin 5y ago
All of the GNU code on my Ubuntu machine fits in maybe ~100 MB, which is less than any of a dozen non-GNU applications I use day-to-day. It's just not an important part of the userland any more. The world has moved on to GUI tools, of which GNU has only a few (GIMP + whatever parts of Gnome are official GNU).
- tcmart14 5y ago
  Ubuntu's biggest use case is more than likely a server accessed by a user of SSH. I use linux and love it, but desktop usage is a small portion of Linux's actual use. Those GNU core-utils userland utilites are an integral part in administering remote machines which makes up the vast majority of the use case. I'll even defer to Debian's about page, which is where Ubuntu is derived from. "A large part of the basic tools that fill out the operating system come from the GNU project; hence the names: GNU/Linux, GNU/kFreeBSD, and GNU/Hurd. These tools are also free." [1] [1] https://www.debian.org/intro/about https://www.debian.org/intro/about
  - jmillikin 5y ago
    Looking at one of my remote servers running Debian Buster, it has about the same amount of GNU stuff on it (~100 MB) and most of that is semi-obsolete tooling that, again, just isn't necessary day-to-day. I could probably purge ~all of it without loss of functionality. I log in with OpenSSH, which listens on a Wireguard interface. The shell is whatever generic Bourne-alike Debian uses (Ash? Dash?). The administrative tools are all written in Go since they're a mix of contemporary projects (containerd) and my own administrative agents. Primary editor is vim. There's the basic tools (mv, cp) but those could just as easily be supplied by Busybox, which is installed. It's difficult for me to imagine what sort of server would run GNU software as a majority of its workload, or even just the UX control surfaces. The GNU project has always had a strong emphasis on re-creating the UNIX interfaces of yesteryear, and modern sysadmin practices don't include running m4 or gcc in the same machine that's going to serve traffic.
    - aragilar 5y ago
      Does glibc count? If you use systemd, then you are dependant on GNU (as noted in the article). GNOME is becoming more systemd-dependant, so GNOME is also implicitly more dependent on GNU. Other things include mDNS (what, if anything, does blah.local resolve to on non-GNU systems), libquadmath (which tends to be required more often than people would expect) or GNU-specific flags/behaviours (e.g. GNU tar just does the right thing). I suspect if you did purge the GNU stuff (baring the things which either require you to specifically say you're fine with the result or remove required software) you'll find lots little things that don't work right, because the GNU code is functionally the only option (missing features, integrations from other software etc.). I don't think GNU is particularly special this way: try going from vim to busybox vi, or looking at how much stuff depends on imagemagick (a.k.a https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/).

nix23 5y ago

> should be called Chrome/Windows I think you have problems making a difference between a operating-system and user applications, sometimes the lines are blurry, but Chrome for sure is not part of the OS, but one could argue that for example a installed GCC is a user-application. >those that do should be called Chrome/Windows Since you installed it it's clearly no part of then distribution called windows.