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Being part of the "OS and Systems" community, I think I'd know :-). There are a lot of debates about whether X or Y should be a function of the operating syste

by weland 13y ago

Being part of the "OS and Systems" community, I think I'd know :-). There are a lot of debates about whether X or Y should be a function of the operating system, but that doesn't justify OP's position. Applications that come with the operating system are not part of the operating system, you know, on account of them being separate applications. Unless I missed the debate on whether grep and emacs are essential parts of Linux or not. The questions you quote are much like the heap paradox, but that doesn't make the concept of operating system so flexible that you can bend it to mean anything. Also, let's be honest here -- quite a few of those questions are there only because at some point in history, fanboys of one platform wanted to rest their fanboyism on some sort of technical grounds, which is how we ended up with fundamentalist-like questions of the "should the OS provide a GUI" sort.

bane 13y ago
You should know then! Here's GNU's definition of a Unix-like, "A Unix-like operating system is a software collection of applications, libraries, and developer tools, plus a program to allocate resources and talk to the hardware, known as a kernel." This is a very heavy idea of an OS and grep and emacs sound like "developer tools" and "applications". Most OS people involved in unix-like OSs would be aghast if you didn't at least include some basic userspace applications like cat and ls. GNU isn't specific about what needs to be in the collection of things to constitute a unix-like OS, but it looks like that agrees in most respects to bookwormAT, "'operating system' is a very generic expression. For most people today an operating system is the software that is installed on the device minus applications that the user installed himself." GNU's concept is miles different from very light concepts of an embedded OS's like Femto OS which near as I can tell is pretty much just a kernel and some libraries. WP on the other hand says, "An operating system (OS) is a collection of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs." So strictly speaking, by this definition an OS doesn't even need to provide disk access like the old DOSs! Although of course it later contradicts itself and says "Access to data stored on disks is a central feature of all operating systems." which anybody involved in the OS community knows is not a central feature of "all" operating systems. I've used OSs where useful file system access was provided via userspace applications (a la FUSE). Palantir takes the position that an OS doesn't need to be interacting or managing the hardware stuff, just providing the ability to run different hosted applications is enough, making things like web browsers operating systems (http://www.palantir.com/2009/11/palantir-like-an-operating-system-for-data-analysis/ http://www.palantir.com/2009/11/palantir-like-an-operating-s...) bookwormATs position is that not only are OSs heavy things, but that "Android" is not just an OS, but a meta-OS description of what an Android OS should be (just like XML is a meta-language for describing XML compatible file formats). So if GNU's definition is correct (and lots of people subscribe to GNU's position), bookwormATs position, "'operating system' is a very generic expression. For most people today an operating system is the software that is installed on the device minus applications that the user installed himself." is correct.

by weland 13y ago

bane 13y ago

You should know then! Here's GNU's definition of a Unix-like, "A Unix-like operating system is a software collection of applications, libraries, and developer tools, plus a program to allocate resources and talk to the hardware, known as a kernel." This is a very heavy idea of an OS and grep and emacs sound like "developer tools" and "applications". Most OS people involved in unix-like OSs would be aghast if you didn't at least include some basic userspace applications like cat and ls. GNU isn't specific about what needs to be in the collection of things to constitute a unix-like OS, but it looks like that agrees in most respects to bookwormAT, "'operating system' is a very generic expression. For most people today an operating system is the software that is installed on the device minus applications that the user installed himself." GNU's concept is miles different from very light concepts of an embedded OS's like Femto OS which near as I can tell is pretty much just a kernel and some libraries. WP on the other hand says, "An operating system (OS) is a collection of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs." So strictly speaking, by this definition an OS doesn't even need to provide disk access like the old DOSs! Although of course it later contradicts itself and says "Access to data stored on disks is a central feature of all operating systems." which anybody involved in the OS community knows is not a central feature of "all" operating systems. I've used OSs where useful file system access was provided via userspace applications (a la FUSE). Palantir takes the position that an OS doesn't need to be interacting or managing the hardware stuff, just providing the ability to run different hosted applications is enough, making things like web browsers operating systems (http://www.palantir.com/2009/11/palantir-like-an-operating-system-for-data-analysis/ http://www.palantir.com/2009/11/palantir-like-an-operating-s...) bookwormATs position is that not only are OSs heavy things, but that "Android" is not just an OS, but a meta-OS description of what an Android OS should be (just like XML is a meta-language for describing XML compatible file formats). So if GNU's definition is correct (and lots of people subscribe to GNU's position), bookwormATs position, "'operating system' is a very generic expression. For most people today an operating system is the software that is installed on the device minus applications that the user installed himself." is correct.