Ask Slashdot: Is It Linux or GNU/Linux? (linuxjournal.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Should the Linux operating system be called "Linux" or "GNU/Linux"? These days, asking that question might get as many blank stares returned as asking, "Is it live or is it Memorex?" Some may remember that the Linux naming convention was a controversy that raged from the late 1990s until about the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Back then, if you called it "Linux", the GNU/Linux crowd was sure to start a flame war with accusations that the GNU Project wasn't being given due credit for its contribution to the OS. And if you called it "GNU/Linux", accusations were made about political correctness, although operating systems are pretty much apolitical by nature as far as I can tell.

The brouhaha got started in the mid-1990s when Richard Stallman, among other things the founder of the Free Software Movement who penned the General Public License, began insisting on using the term "GNU/Linux" in recognition of the importance of the GNU Project to the OS. GNU was started by Stallman as an effort to build a free-in-every-way operating system based on the still-not-ready-for-prime-time Hurd microkernel. According to this take, Linux was merely the kernel, and GNU software was the sauce that made Linux work. Noting that the issue seems to have died down in recent years, and mindful of Shakespeare's observation on roses, names and smells, I wondered if anyone really cares anymore what Linux is called. For once and all, I wanted to ask Slashdot crowd what they think.

Comments

Let the show begin

[worf_mo]

FFS, where did I put my popcorn!

Re:Let the show begin

[Jahta]

FFS, where did I put my popcorn!

We're going to need industrial quantities of popcorn for this one! :-)

Re:Let the show begin

[DeBaas]

meh, I'm more into eighties reruns than nineties...

Re: Let the show begin

[plopez]

Yes! Yes! Yes!. Welcome to slashdot, now where's tub girl?

Re:Let the show begin

[serviscope_minor]

meh, I'm more into eighties reruns than nineties...

OK...

System V or BSD?

Re:Let the show begin

[Megane]

Either one is preferable to systemd.

Re: Let the show begin

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean REDDENBACHER/kenmore/popcorn .

Re: Let the show begin

[johnsnails]

Just give me the corn kernels they are more compact.

Re:Let the show begin

[quenda]

FFS, where did I put my popcorn!

Popcorn? I'm sure these is an over-bloated kernel metaphor in there somewhere. Where is our GNU Hurd micro-kernel?

Re: Let the show begin

[lsllll]

believe it or not, I've been having a hard time finding a web site that hosts this picture! They just don't show up in any search engines! Thank you for bringing up a lost memory!

Re:Let the show begin

[Eberlin]

Did you mean SCO/Linux or, really, where's the CowboyNeal/Linux option?

Jesus HB Crickey ... seriously?

[Qbertino]

I mean, ... really?

Nobody Really Cares

[Anonymous Coward]

The GNU suite is obviously important. We all know it. But the market decided a long time ago not to call it GNU/Linux, for a number of reasons. Why are we having this conversation, again?

Re: Nobody Really Cares

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't give a shit about that until I met RMS irl.
Since then it's Linux.

Re: Nobody Really Cares

[Anonymous Coward]

and deciding that he was a pseudo-intelligentsia

It takes one to know one.

Re: Nobody Really Cares

[inking]

A lot of people are correct a lot of the time. They somehow manage to do so without being the incarnation of grossness itself.

There was a kerfuffle?

[Oligonicella]

I guess it didn't make my 'give a shit'-dar.

Shoulda been LiGnux

[Snotnose]

Linus blew his chance for lasting immortality.

Re:Shoulda been LiGnux

[Tablizer]

Excellent compromise. Kudos!

Re:Shoulda been LiGnux

[Misagon]

... and even more wars on about how to pronounce the name.

Re:Shoulda been LiGnux

[dougmc]

I suspect that you already know this, but in case somebody else doesn't realize this ... lignux actually happened, sort of.

Not only was RMS suggesting that everybody call it "GNU/Linux", "GNU Linux" or a "Linux-based GNU system" ... but it was also "LiGNUx" or just "lignux" for short.

And he did more than just preach this, he applied it himself. For example, in 1996 or so if you compiled emacs (a GNU editor, witten by RMS himself) on your Linux system it would actually call the target "lignux" where previously it was just "linux".

Soon after he changed it to linux-gnu which was a good deal less awkward, and emacs is still using that today, though RMS personally generally calls it GNU/Linux now. (But the target name for emacs can't include a slash, so ... linux-gnu it is.)

Really?

[QuietLagoon]

...Some may remember that the Linux naming convention was a controversy that raged from the late 1990s until about the end of the first decade of the 21st century....

I suspect many more are actively trying to forget the Linux naming convention controversy. So much energy wasted over so little. Must be a slow news day here...

Re:Really?

[i.r.id10t]

Especially since Linus himself answered the question during the filming of RevolutionOS -

Interviewer:
-If some people asked you to describe this GNU/Linux, I mean, whatâ(TM)s your
thought about this, does that justify, orâ¦

Linus Torvalds:
-Well, I think itâ(TM)s justified, but itâ(TM)s justified if you actually make a GNU
distribution on Linux. The same way that I think that Red Hat Linux is fine, or
SuSE Linux, or Debian Linux, because if you actually make your own
distribution of Linux, you get to name the thing. But calling Linux in general
GNU/Linux, I think itâ(TM)s just ridiculous.

Neither

[Hognoxious]

It's Systemd/Linux, at least for the next couple of years.

By the way, does anyone think ginger goes well with broccoli?

Re:Neither

[Tablizer]

By the way, does anyone think ginger goes well with broccoli?

I prefer Mary Ann. Now there's a flame-war.

Re:Neither

[q_e_t]

Ginger with broccoli is great, as it's less obviously broccoli. It's like running cairodock on Linux, or GNU/Linux.

Re:Neither

[plopez]

I was thinking "Redhat OS".

Re:Neither

[speederaser]

On my Centos (Red Hat) system:

$ uname
Linux

So we know what Red Hat thinks.

Re:Neither

[Xenolith0]

You gotta run the correct command:

uname or uname -s
Linux

uname is the "kernel name" where "Linux" is correct.

uname -o is Operating System, where GNU/Kernel is correct for most Linii.

$ uname -o

GNU/Linux

Re:Neither

[plopez]

whoosh!

Re:Neither

[Anonymous Coward]

Not on my Slackware boxes.

Re:Neither

[fibonacci8]

No, I'm fairly sure most people agree Ginger goes well with Mary Ann.
Unless you meant you prefer Mary Ann with broccoli...

Re: Neither

[antdah]

No, itâ(TM)s GNU/SystemD, you insensitive clod!

Re:Neither

[Waccoon]

By the way, does anyone think ginger goes well with broccoli?

No, but I like pineapple on my pizza... with or without ham.

Both, of course

[admin7087]

GNU/Linux since Linux is only the kernel and GNU has provided most of the programs that are crucial for a working GNU/Linux system. Linux for short.

Re:Both, of course

[religionofpeas]

Why stop there ? Why not Mozilla/GNU/Xorg/Oracle/Linux ?

Re:Both, of course

[raynet]

Saying just Linux or GNU/Linux is quite worthless, better to say Linux. That actually means something.

Re:Both, of course

[plopez]

Hey neckbeard, you're going senile. If you read your post it makes no sense :)

Re:Both, of course

[dryeo]

Can't most of the GNU tools be replaced by BSD tools along with rewriting some scripts to be portable?
For many uses, I'd say X is the big one that is hard to replace. For other uses, it might be something like Apache.

Re:Both, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman nearly exploded when the FreeBSD folks pointed out that at the time, FreeBSD had a more complete GNU toolchain than Linux-- and so the obvious question was, did he feel it should be called GNU/FreeBSD?

Re:Both, of course

[passionplay]

If you need just the kernel - sure. But if you need an OS, you need both.

Re:Both, of course

[passionplay]

In which case you would have a BSD OS. BSD and GNU have different licenses. If you rewrite the stuff to emulate BSD, you may has well just use BSD. Stop complaining about a free as in beer and free as in speech OS.

Re:Both, of course

[serviscope_minor]

Because GNU is still the base system. My servers don't have firefox, Xorg or Java on them because they don't need it. The base is still GNU/Linux.

Re:Both, of course

[dryeo]

Of course the modern BSD license is compatible with the GPL.

Re:Both, of course

[dryeo]

It would still be Linux as that is what the kernel is. In theory the BSD user land should be a drop in replacement for most everything, in practice, the GNU stuff usually has extensions that may be being used and of course bash only scripts.
Usually making stuff portable is easy, I've had patches accepted for portability, things like using = instead of == in scripts so [pdk]sh or ash is happy,

Re:Both, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of embedded systems which don't have GNU utilities but busybox or equivalent. Ultimately, the 'base' is Linux.

Re:Both, of course

[mdhoover]

Because, GNU libc (which all of userspace links against) and GNU *utils/awk/sed ie: 90% of all *NIX standard utilities.

Re:Both, of course

[AmiMoJo]

What is the minimum required for a functional system? You need a kennel, init system, support utilities and shell.

Re:Both, of course

[Pseudonym]

Neckbeards use actual Unix. Hell, many of them wrote actual Unix.

Re:Both, of course

[MSG]

Because GNU/Linux implements a mostly compliant POSIX OS. Linux, by itself does not. And Mozilla, X.org, and Oracle are not covered by the POSIX specification.

Re:Both, of course

[MSG]

I agree with you, but "base" isn't a very well-defined term. GNU/Linux is a (mostly) POSIX system. Your argument is pretty solid when you use that term instead.

Re:Both, of course

[jrumney]

Apache is easy to replace - most people use nginx or nodejs these days anyway. X is supposed to be replaced by Wayland, and only needed for workstations, which are a minority of Linux installations. While the GNU userspace could theoretically be replaced, it isn't - every major desktop and server distribution uses GNU, the only deviations are embedded systems using busybox and uclibc or newlib, and Android with its own busybox analog and the bionic library.

Re:Both, of course

[Quarters]

'Linux is only the kernel' is so very reductive given that the GNU project's own kernel hasn't come to fruition after so so many years of trying. It seems to me GNU got the easy stuff done, punted on the truly hard work, and are now trying to ride on the coattails of the project that tackled the truly complex portion. If anything it should be Linux/GNU, but just Linux is totally fine.

Re:Both, of course

[syzler]

My Alpine Linux systems doesn't have a GNU userspace on them because don't need it. The base is still Busybox/Musl Libc/Linux. Just saying.

Re:Both, of course

[allquixotic]

Android is an example of an OS that uses close to nothing from the GNU project while relying on the Linux kernel (and even then, its fork of the Linux kernel that ships on real devices is pretty far removed from the vanilla Linux kernel, with custom security modules, proprietary drivers, firmwares, etc.)

Over the years Android has replaced GPL or LGPL licensed GNU project tools with BSD or MIT licensed ones, either out of spite or because they just didn't like the license. There was never any functionality problem inherent with these tools that caused them to make the switch, and their replacements aren't significantly better.

I certainly wouldn't call modern Android "GNU/Linux". There's no GNU in it!

Who fucking cares?

[silverkniveshotmail.]

Call it whatever you want, don't correct me and I won't correct you.

Re:Who fucking cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Autists care. Basically most Linux users.

Re:Who fucking cares?

[DaMattster]

I am with you. It's splitting hairs. Call it Linux or call it GNU/Linux. We've got people out there with chainsaws and they're are people igniting flame wars over a fucking name? Wow, shaking my damn head.

Re:Who fucking cares?

[HiThere]

Actually, by Zipf's law if it's used frequently the shorter form will win. Frequently used terms are preferred to be short. Even for infrequently used terms very few people prefer dimethyl-diphenyl-trichloro-ethane over DDT, of course that's a bit of an extreme difference in lengths.

Re:Who fucking cares?

[Pseudonym]

Zipf's law says nothing about the length of a word. It only relates the frequency of use of a word with its rank.

(Also, anyone who quotes Zipf's Law has never read any of his books.)

Re:Who fucking cares?

[HiThere]

OK, possibly I should have said "a corollary of Zipf's law".

OTOH, I didn't read his books, I read a statement of it in a linguistics book. And the version I read didn't use the word rank. but did talk about length. It's also only statistically true even when precisely stated, and according to at least one source is more accurately applied to phrases than to individual words. And it's an empirical observation, with most of the articles that returned on the first page of Google being about Greek.

But a reasonable derivation from his law is that words that are used frequently will be shorter in form than words that are used rarely on the average. My extrapolation, which I think is sound, is that when the same meaning can be expressed in two different ways, the shorter form will generally be more acceptable for common use. And this *is* derived from my understanding of Zipf's law, even though it's not precisely what the law itself states (and even though the law as stated isn't quite accurate..which evaluation is the result of the analysis by professionals, not by me).

OTOH, maybe it works better for Greek. I wouldn't know. By rough inspection it doesn't seem to work as well in German as it does in English, but that may be because I'm not as fluent in German. Or it may be because when fragments of words have distinct meaning they are more resistant to being shortened.

GNU/Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you're talking colloquially with someone, "Linux" is fine. Just like double negatives are fine in conversation but not if you're trying to convey information in fixed form. Now stop asking dumb fucking questions, m'kay?

It matters

[fferreres]

... little. Some cultures have their offsprints retain both their parents lastnames. Some others choose one parent, usually the father. Linus is the father of Linux. It's obvious GNU is the mother here, and wants her lastname attached as well. Actually, the DNA of a Linux system is so intermingled with GNU projects that even if Linux has some children with non GNU wives, and vice versa, we are talking about Linux, the one with GNU.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter, but it's good to note that the wife seduced Linus here, and made her have the children that have raised to fame, in large part due to the wife's traits.

Btw, my kids have both lastnames, and it's just so inconvenient for them. They have no doubts about how they came to be, the roles, but on the plus side, it's like having a tatoo, you never stop to bring to attention the fact that two different things combined to make something unique, for some specific reason.

Re:It matters

[markdavis]

>"Btw, my kids have both lastnames, and it's just so inconvenient for them. "

That's because it is pretty stupid. So exactly what would THEIR children have? Potentially FOUR last names? Then 16? Then 32 last names?

It is about as illogical as hyphenated last names for married women. "I want to retain MY last name too," well, that was probably just YOUR FATHER'S last name, so are you dissin' your mother? Oh yeah, your mother's last name was just your grandfather's last name. Etc.

Pick whatever last name you want for yourself and your children, but please just pick ONE! How about this: no changing of last names ever- name female children with the mother's last name and male children with the father's last name. Seems odd, but at least it is logical. :)

Re:It matters

[markdavis]

>Well, in latin america is pretty common to have four names.. even more. The only place were I have problems with my 5 names ( you read that right) is when I'm in the US..

That actually is no problem at all, as long as one dosn't insist on trying to define them all as last names. They all just become middle names, except the very last one. Although many systems in the US only have room for a single middle name.

It's all words.

[Anonymous Coward]

They're both correct. Linux is the kernel, and much of the software is thanks to GNU. However, the naming is no different than the way the flavors of BSD and even Solaris are named. Not a one of those is GNU/*.

Do I call my system GNU/Linux/X.Org/KDE?

[mupuf]

I purposefully avoid saying GNU/Linux because GNU is not responsible for much of the code of my machine anymore. If anything, it is dwarfed by Libre-office, Firefox/Chromium, the Linux kernel, or the X.Org-related code. So, why would GNU get credit when others do not?

I am a Graphics Stack/Freedesktop developer and I sit on the X.Org board of directors, but you don't see me mandating people to call their system X.Org/Linux or Freedesktop/Linux, do you? To me, Linux either means the Linux kernel, or a Linux-based system (including or not GNU tools).

Re:Do I call my system GNU/Linux/X.Org/KDE?

[passionplay]

If you use any of those items, they require the glue on top of which all those other tools are built. Or did you forget GLIBC and LIBSTDC++ along with all the OS primitives?

Re:Do I call my system GNU/Linux/X.Org/KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

GLIBC? That would be the bit of software that Linux developers twice had to fork and maintain separately for years because of sustained GNU Project mismanagement?

Re:Do I call my system GNU/Linux/X.Org/KDE?

[laffer1]

Linux does not mean the GNU tools. You can use LLVM with linux, etc. It's also possible to run GNU tools on windows, mac, *BSD, etc.

Linux is a kernel, nothing more.

Re:Do I call my system GNU/Linux/X.Org/KDE?

[Misagon]

It is not about code size but about importance.

If you are a developer then you should know very well about the libc library and the dynamic linker.
Those are linked into practically every application program, a layer in-between the application code and the Linux kernel.

I would say that a GNU/Linux system is one that uses GNU's libc and GNU's linker by default for programs.
Then there are the GNU binutils, GNU bash command-line shell etc. that include programs and libraries that you would not want to be without even if you may not use them very often yourself (but your system and your programs do).

Re:Do I call my system GNU/Linux/X.Org/KDE?

[MSG]

So, why would GNU get credit when others do not?

It may be simply a matter of being specific about what you mean. My phone runs a Linux system, as much as my laptop does. However, when I write software I'm typically targeting a POSIX OS. Linux is not, by itself, such a system, but any GNU/Linux system is.

Re:Do I call my system GNU/Linux/X.Org/KDE?

[Now15]

The glue matters too? So let's call it POSIX/Linux then. Or perhaps Intel/Linux? Or how about Semiconductor/Linux?

Re:Do I call my system GNU/Linux/X.Org/KDE?

[jrumney]

Do you purposely avoid saying WIndows too, because the Windows OS code is also dwarfed by the applications you install on it? GNU gets credit because they provide the essential userspace libraries and tools that make GNU/Linux a POSIX compliant operating system, and not just a kernel that is useless on its own.

Depends on the init system.

[Anonymous Coward]

If its systemd its called Garbage.

Re:Linux is gay and so is Slashdort

[hduff]

This is one of those pointless topics. like Mac versus PC.

INTERJECTED!

[CrAlt]

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux,
is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux.
Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component
of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell
utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day,
without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU
which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are
not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a
part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system
that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run.
The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself;
it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is
normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system
is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux"
distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

Re:INTERJECTED!

[drinkypoo]

Did you actually hit return at the end of each line, or did you C&P that from an 80-column text file you found someplace in antiquity? Or your lynx window?

Re:INTERJECTED!

[plopez]

Lynx doesn't have much of an attack surface.

Re:INTERJECTED!

[Anonymous Coward]

Source (e-mail by RMS sent to a radio show):
https://youtu.be/QlD9UBTcSW4?t...

Re:INTERJECTED!

[Apostalypse]

I read it as a poem.Or possibly a song. It sorta fits R.E.M's "Loosing My Religion", though that may be cheating, because you can squeeze as many syllables as you like into a line and it still sounds like R.E.M.

Yes

[q_e_t]

Is the answer

It's Linux

[Kremmy]

It hasn't been GNU/Linux for a long time. There are too many alternatives for the GNU Operating System components. Look at all those micro distributions using Busybox to provide what GNU used to. GNU remains a nice package but it fell markedly short of what it was supposed to be.

Re:It's Linux

[MSG]

Well, yeah, if you aren't using GNU then you wouldn't call the OS GNU/Linux. However, if you are using GNU and you want to refer to a POSIX operating system, GNU/Linux is a more specific term than Linux.

Linux, by itself, describes a variety of systems including GNU/Linux, Android, and embedded systems, as you pointed out. The term GNU/Linux allows us to refer to a specific one of those.

Re:It's Linux

[Unknownus]

because not every piece of software in a Linux distribution's base install is from GNU.

But they all depend on GNU components (if it is a GNU distribution). That's the difference.

Re:It's Linux

[Unknownus]

I assure you that my software runs without bash, coreutils, etc. And can build against musl or glibc just as easily.

What your software depends on or can make use of in a different system has no bearing on the constitution of the one it runs on.

If your software is running on Linux, it is still “Linux” even if your software can also build and run on Windows, and regardless of how much of Linux it uses.

Likewise, a GNU system does not stop being “GNU” just because not all software running on it has a hard dependency on any of its GNU components, or uses only some of them (which is expected).

I guess if Stallman wanted people to use his brand name he should have made it part of the license of glibc.

See his own answers to these questions:

• Shouldn't you put something in the GNU GPL to require people to call the system “GNU”?
• Since you failed to put something in the GNU GPL to require people to call the system “GNU”, you deserve what happened; why are you complaining now?

Shouldn't it be BL/Linux?

[WoodstockJeff]

The basis of "GNU" was re-implementing Bell Lab's Unix. Extending Stallman's logic, if Linux is derived from GNU, and GNU was derived from Unix, the whole mess is the result of work done at Bell Labs, so it should take precedence over "GNU" in the name.

Re:Shouldn't it be BL/Linux?

[erice]

The basis of "GNU" was re-implementing Bell Lab's Unix. Extending Stallman's logic, if Linux is derived from GNU, and GNU was derived from Unix, the whole mess is the result of work done at Bell Labs, so it should take precedence over "GNU" in the name.

It already does. The "ux" in "Linux" refers to Unix. If Linus's kernel were something completely new or he did not want to acknowledge the debt to Unix, it might be called LinOS.

What makes GNU so special, anyway?

[Alwin Henseler]

No need to explain the significance of the GNU project. Or the role it played in getting Linux out there. But on my Debian system, I have software written by:

• The many, many X.org contributors (past & present)
• Mozilla project contributors
• Google
• Red Hat
• John Carmack himself
• countless bits & pieces written by others

Just to name a few. Why would GNU be special enough to be named in one breath with Linux, but not those other authors? Makes no sense to me. Therefore, "Linux based OS" or similar will do fine. Or just name the specific distro or software component(s) and be done with it.

Re:What makes GNU so special, anyway?

[drinkypoo]

Just to name a few. Why would GNU be special enough to be named in one breath with Linux, but not those other authors? Makes no sense to me.

I don't call it GNU/Linux, but I don't think that's a great argument. None of those other authors (I'll spare the list) are critical to the base function of the system. Many functioning Linux systems have none of that stuff.

I don't call it GNU/Linux because all of the GNU stuff can be replaced, and the only part that hasn't been true for all along has been gcc. For a long time, there was no free alternative, let alone a Free one.

Re:What makes GNU so special, anyway?

[darkain]

In case you're not aware, that list isn't just entities that wrote software that works on top of Linux, they're all very significant kernel contributors. So yes, I personally also believe they're just as important as any other kernel contributor, but listing significant contributors along with the name of the kernel itself just seem asinine at this point.

Re:What makes GNU so special, anyway?

[tepples]

I don't call it GNU/Linux because all of the GNU stuff can be replaced

Even if you can take a desktop or server system and replace most of the GNU userspace with BusyBox or FreeBSD's userspace, there's a big difference between a GNOME, KDE, Xfce, or similar system on one hand and Android on the other. So perhaps "X11/Linux" might be more honest.

Re:What makes GNU so special, anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean Wayland/Linux.

Re:What makes GNU so special, anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

History, mainly. The reality is when Linux was getting going, the primary 'userspace' was all the GNU tools. (Mozilla, Google didn't contribute code, Mozilla didn't even exist, Red Hat hardly gave anything

Essentially, a lot of the really core and base userland components that make the system usable were written by the GNU project awaiting their last component (an OS Kernel). That kit was already working on Unixes of the time, and were ported to run against the Linux kernel and that's where real-world distributions came from.

Raw Linux was just a kernel. You can't really get much done on just a kernel.

All those other components came along afterwards -- in the case of Mozilla, plain entirely didn't exist at the time, and Red Hat only started by distributing the GNU tools (they didn't really write that much code themselves.)

It's fair to say the GNU userland tools are (or at least were) vitally important to Linux; and I can see how the GNU project felt that they'd done all this hard work in the background (gcc, libc, basically all of /bin and many many other things) but didn't get the recognition they deserved - it was perhaps an artefact of timing, if Hurd kernel had been working a bit earlier and captured more public attention, we might now be having a different discussion.

(Ironically, today, with the Windows Subsystem for LInux, you can put up an argument for "GNU/Windows" - it's the GNU Userland running against an emulation of the Linux kernel. One component that's entirely missing with the Windows Subsystem for Linux? The Linux kernel itself.)

Re:What makes GNU so special, anyway?

[exomondo]

GNU hitched their wagon to Linux instead of building Hurd and that has been markedly poor decision for a couple of reasons:

Firstly it means that the core component of the system used to advance the FSF ideology is one that not only does not share that ideology. Linus is in favour of Tivoization and against the idea of the GPLv3 for example. Also the kernel's license preamble explicitly overrides parts of the GPL that would make applications that use kernel services derived works so it isn't actually GPLv2. In addition, unlike many other GPL free software projects, kernel contributions are not subject to copyright assignment to the FSF.

Secondly the valuable piece in terms of the operating system is the kernel, that is what hardware vendors write drivers for and what ultimately gives Linux operating systems such a wide variety of hardware support making it so versatile. GNU does not provide that fundamental functionality and can be replaced, as we have seen with Android and ChromeOS. So while Linux systems have seen explosive growth in users over recent years GNU has not.

It would be an uphill battle but the FSF should really put all effort behind building Hurd and getting industry support for it before GNU is completely marginalized in the context of Linux.

Re:What makes GNU so special, anyway?

[Pseudonym]

Many functioning Linux systems have none of that stuff.

That's true. The thing is, it was once true that a typical Linux-based install had more FSF code in it than anything else. Today, a typical desktop/workstation install has more lines of code from Mozilla than the FSF.

Re:What makes GNU so special, anyway?

[MSG]

Why would GNU be special enough to be named in one breath with Linux, but not those other authors

Because GNU/Linux is a mostly-compliant implementation of the POSIX spec. The other software that you mention isn't covered by the specification.

The name Linux covers a variety of largely dissimilar operating systems, including Android and embedded systems. The term GNU/Linux lets us discuss one of those, specifically.

Re: What makes GNU so special, anyway?

[bursch-X]

If you want to argue on the basis of amount of data taken in your system we'd probably have to call it Porn/Linux then.

Re: What makes GNU so special, anyway?

[bursch-X]

They should've named it POSIX IS NOT POSIX, and go with PINP/Linux.

Re:What makes GNU so special, anyway?

[jguthrie]

I have a theory about why rms is so insistent that Linux be called "GNU/Linux" and it has nothing to do with the explanation he gives, which I find completely nonpersuasive. Please, don't assume that I disagree with their reasoning because I don't understand it and, therefore, explain it to me in an attempt to convince me. I understand the logic, I merely disagree with it.

Anyway, in the mid-1990's there was a joke going around. I first heard it from my friend the FreeBSD fan. The joke?

Q: What's the difference between GNU and Linux?
A: Linux has a kernel that boots.

At about the time that joke came out, the FSF engaged in a major effort to get the GNU/HURD to boot. After many months of work, you could kind of get it to run, but it was in no way useful. Shortly after, rms started insisting that people call Linux GNU/Linux.

It sure looks like the major effort was a response to that joke and, when that effort failed, they decided to respond to the punchline "Linux has a kernel that boots" with "no, Linux IS a kernel that boots." I presume they thought that devastating. To me, it seemed pathetic. I mean, with all of their resources and more than a decade of work, they weren't able to do what Linus Torvalds did all by himself in a few weeks. I think that it's an excellent example of how hard "big bang" development is when compared to a more incremental style.

It depends on what are you talking about

[Tranzistors]

Since Google made Android, the distinction between Linux and GNU/Linux has become rather obvious. Just name the thing appropriately. If you are talking about kernel, say Linux. If the subject matter is Ubuntu distribution, call it Ubuntu. If a game publisher says “Tomb rider now available on Linux”, they better have it on Android. This is why I like the approach that Steam takes, where tiles are available on Windows, Mac and SteamOS. It remove expectations that the game will work on my Linux From Scratch. The only saving grace for calling everything “Linux” is Linux Standard Base, but I am not sure this is relevant today.

Re:It depends on what are you talking about

[Tough Love]

Android is a Linux distribution. If you don't think so, then open up a terminal and go exploring. Notice that the proc directory is there, with all the usual Linux-only interfaces. Notice that the sys directory is there, again, with all the usual Linux-only interfaces. Notice that /sbin is there, like any Unix clone. In fact, Google just made a few arbitrary changes to filesystem layout, such as removing usr, but what remains is clearly Linux. Many Linux binaries run without modification on Android because all the syscalls are the same, and only a few libc calls are missing, such as the ones that assume /etc/passwd is there, which Google removed for no good reason and (inexplicably) a few of the posix pthreads synchronization calls. What remains is clearly Linux, running mostly but not exclusively Android libraries and applications.

Android is an operating system in the same sense that KDE is an operating system. In other words, it isn't. Only in the minds of the marketing department. If you can't see that, then please hand in your geek card.

Re:It depends on what are you talking about

[drinkypoo]

Android is a Linux distribution.

Right.

Android is an operating system in the same sense that KDE is an operating system. In other words, it isn't. Only in the minds of the marketing department. If you can't see that, then please hand in your geek card.

A linux distribution is an operating system, which means services, an API, and a userland. Android is a Linux distribution, with all of those things. Android is therefore an operating system.

Android is of course not GNU/Linux. They use busybox to provide the typical userland utilities. But it's clearly still Linux, because Linux means both the kernel, and a distribution wrapped around the kernel with a Unixlike userland. When it's not obvious from context which it is, then one should specify.

Re:It depends on what are you talking about

[tepples]

Many Linux binaries run without modification on Android because all the syscalls are the same

How would one go about making a graphical application that runs without modification on Android and desktop "Linux" distributions?

Re:It depends on what are you talking about

[serviscope_minor]

Android is of course not GNU/Linux. They use busybox to provide the typical userland utilities. But it's clearly still Linux

And this is why RMS was right: you'd be pretty pissed off if your shiny new Linux laptop arrived and you found it was running Android.

Re:It depends on what are you talking about

[markdavis]

>"If you are talking about kernel, say Linux. If the subject matter is Ubuntu distribution, call it Ubuntu."

+1

That is exactly what I do the most. I call it "Mageia Linux" or "CentOS Linux" or "Android Linux" or XXX Linux where XXX is whatever the distro is. If I mean just Linux distros in general, I often say "Linux distro". Although I will often generically refer to all Linux distributions as "Linux".

Why would I call it "GNU/Linux" when there are hundreds of other projects that make a Linux distro that are, collectively, just as important? How about X11/Linux or Firefox/Linux or LibreOffice/Linux or Audacity/Linux. Dare I even mention Systemd...

Re:It depends on what are you talking about

[drinkypoo]

And this is why RMS was right: you'd be pretty pissed off if your shiny new Linux laptop arrived and you found it was running Android.

RMS was wrong about calling Linux GNU/Linux, because nobody is actually promoting anything else as Linux without going out of their way to tell you that they're not using GNU. He was right about the GPL, though. That's awesome.

Re:It depends on what are you talking about

[jrumney]

They [Android] use busybox to provide the typical userland utilities

Since marshmallow they use toybox rather than busybox. I think even before that there was a minimal subset of commands needed by init etc, which they had implemented under a BSD license, and busybox was installed on development builds only to give a full set of command-line tools to developers.

Re:It depends on what are you talking about

[jarkus4]

At this point we are already talking about distributions. If this laptop somehow came with only kernel and gnu stuff it would be pretty useless too (arguably even more as android at least comes with some essential software such as web browser) .

Re:It depends on what are you talking about

[drinkypoo]

Since marshmallow they use toybox rather than busybox.

That's good to know, thank you. I have busybox on my phone anyway because I bought busybox pro with some of my google opinions money.

Re:It depends on what are you talking about

[Unknownus]

Why would I call it "GNU/Linux" when there are hundreds of other projects that make a Linux distro that are, collectively, just as important? How about X11/Linux or Firefox/Linux or LibreOffice/Linux or Audacity/Linux. Dare I even mention Systemd...

Because all of these depend on the GNU libraries and utilities. (Try removing glibc and see how much of them keep working...)

Linux and GNU are in the name because they form the base of the system. All these other projects run on top of them. That's what an operating system is.

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[Kremmy]

I need to ask you - how many people do you think are using the GNU tools on a modern Linux?

It's Linux

[OrangeTide]

because not every piece of software in a Linux distribution's base install is from GNU.

We don't have time to list the author of every component of the system in the name.

Linux sells the idea of "GNU" by itself

[bjdevil66]

Linux being known as "free software" by just about everyone that cares about computers/IT is enough reason to skip the acronym. Besides, humans are lazy by nature, so why force people to tack on an acronym that many people can't even pronounce right?

BTW - This is the best GNU definition to give to anyone who doesn't know what GNU means. It's clean, concise, and very short - yet quite complete somehow.

You can't control human language.

[sbaker]

Almost all efforts through history to force (or even merely encourage) people to use one word or phrase instead of another have been failures.
Language is a fluid thing and its written on-the-fly by the people who speak it.

People say "Linux" because it's easier than "GNU/Linux" and it really doesn't matter a damn whether you think the latter is right or wrong. You stand about as much chance of changing it than getting people to stop boldly splitting infinitives, to prevent them from saying "ATM Machine" or to understand that "Gay" also means "Happy". We say "Megabyte" when it should be "Mebibyte" - and "Disk Space" when we mean "Unused bytes within a box full of flash chips".

Language does what it pleases...it's virtually impossible to control.

So, it's "Linux" - and yes, we know that the GNU folks made a gigantic contribution - without which "Linux" would simply not exist...and we regret that language is not doing what they might ideally wish it to do.

GNU/Linux is better

[aliquis]

Call it what you want but just as with saying "I'm vegetarian" doesn't necessarily explain it well saying GNU/Linux is better for instance to separate from Android (I guess that too have GNU software though?) or Tizen or whatever if that's your intention. Depending on what you mean it's fine calling both Linux systems.

Calling it Debian could had been better except there's multiple Debian distributions so you'd have to specify more. But Fedora is fine I guess.

Welcome to Slashdot

[nuckfuts]

REALLY OLD news for nerds.

GPL !

[redelm]

I had an email exchange with RMS around the time this all started ~20 years ago and the closest thing I got was it was not GNU/BSD or GNU/TomsRtBt but it was GNU/Linux for Slackware and Debian. Everybody used `gcc` at the time, so the closest differentiator I could determine was "user environment", essentially fileutils,etc. Neither clear nor satisfying.

Personally, I prefer the term GNU/Linux for those who might need education on GNU. I firmly believe the GPL (esp.v2) is what enabled the fledgling 90s Linux to overtake the established BSD (partially hobbled by the AT&T suit). The forced publication/sublicence of the GPL was and remains far more attractive to many publishing programmers than the "take it private if you want" BSD licence.

Re: to boldly split infinitives

[l2718]

There is no rule in English grammar about splitting infinitives. There is such a "rule" in Latin (where infinitives are single words and can't be split).

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

If GNU is not UNIX, why would it be Linux?

Distributions are where it's at

[grumbel]

This whole thing would have been so much easier if the FSF would have build a proper Linux distribution of their own and called it GNU, but they didn't (outside of that Hurd thing I booted up some 15+ years ago). So we have Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Gentoo, SuSE, Redhat, Fedora and Co. instead and that's the names I tend to use when refering to my OS. GNU and Linux are just some small subset of software that is part of those distributions.

The name GNU/Linux still has a bit of value, as it differentiated the desktop Linux distributions from Linux distributions like Android that share almost nothing but the kernel, but it's not really a correct term, it's just the only common term I can think of that connects all those distributions.

Re:Distributions are where it's at

[drinkypoo]

This whole thing would have been so much easier if the FSF would have build a proper Linux distribution of their own and called it GNU, but they didn't (outside of that Hurd thing I booted up some 15+ years ago).

Yes. If the FSF were smarter (collectively) it would have embraced Linux as the kernel for the GNU OS right away. HURD could have existed as a research project off the side of that, and would probably have gotten more attention in that form. Then they could have focused on making a complete system out of nothing but FSF-copyright software plus the Linux kernel, and achieved all the non-kernel goals that way.

To be fair, it's not too late. And such a thing would be systemd-free by its nature, so there's a ready audience. A lot of people would welcome such a beast.

This still?

[bigdavex]

I like pedantically correcting people, too. It's properly referred to as Solitaire/Windows.

Re:Linux is gay and so is Slashdort

[OzPeter]

This is one of those pointless topics. like Mac versus PC.

As opposed to the important topics such as vi vs (whatever that crappy other operating system is)

It makes more sense to combine it with the distro.

[ZorinLynx]

Ubuntu/Linux (or Debian/Linux)
RedHat/Linux
Slackware/Linux (the few, the proud) ...etc...

The name of the distro is far more informative to tell you about the nature of the system than just "GNU". Lots of distros include non-GNU software these days.

Re:clang is the beginning of the end

[raynet]

Is GNOME developed mainly by FSF or by companies like Redhat?

Let’s wrap this up

[93 Escort Wagon]

I want to get back to the debate that REALLY matters:

How do you pronounce “Linux”?

Re:Let’s wrap this up

[religionofpeas]

How do you pronounce “Linux”?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Let’s wrap this up

[93 Escort Wagon]

Unfortunately I can't manage a Finnish accent.

Re:Linux is gay and so is Slashdort

[mfnickster]

The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system.

Hmmm. According to Andy Tanenbaum:

"On top of the operating system is the rest of the system software. Here we find the command interpreter (shell), window systems, compilers, editors, and similar application-independent programs. It is important to realize that these programs are definitely not part of the operating system, even though they are typically supplied preinstalled by the computer manufacturer, or in a package with the operating system if it is installed after purchase. This is a crucial, but subtle, point. The operating system is (usually) that portion of the software that runs in kernel mode or supervisor mode. It is protected from user tampering by the hardware..."

I call it Elementary OS

[iamacat]

Because I refuse to give credit to people who are nags. You gave away software for free, with a conditon to only share modified source and not to sing you praises. If people don't want to name their derived works as you like, tough! Amazon is not naming their tablet "Google Kindle" and they should have no obligation to, as it was not in Android source license. We need to put an end to passive aggressive tendencies among supposedly intelligent techies. Linus is all right, he doesn't go grumbling about Linux/Ubuntu.

Pointless to begin with

[The Cynical Critic]

I've never really understood the point of calling Linux GNU/Linux beyond stroking Sallman & Co's ego...

Most of the really fundamental GNU projects (GCC, glibc, etc.) were after all developed for proprietary Unix distros like Sun Unix and only started gaining real support after Sun stopped bundling their software development suite with the Sun Unix OS. As much as Stallman likes to talk about Free Software being "Free as in freedom and not free as in free beer" his most popular work became popular because it really was "Free as in free beer".

Then there's also the fact that products in general don't tend to be named after the whoever supplies the components or what they're made of. We don't call a "Volkswagen" a "Bosch/Volkswagen", an "iPhone" a "Samsung/iPhone" or "cornflakes" "Monsanto/Cornflakes".

Re:Pointless to begin with

[JustNiz]

> I've never really understood the point of calling Linux GNU/Linux beyond stroking Sallman & Co's ego...

Because nearly all of what you know as Linux is actually GNU and was written by Stallman and co?

Re:Pointless to begin with

[The Cynical Critic]

If what you mean by "written" is "compiled" then sure, but we hardly claim companies like Foxconn are the real companies behind the products they assemble any more than we claim compiler makers are behind the software it's users create.

Re:Pointless to begin with

[JustNiz]

Well he pretty much founded GNU and wrote GCC.
I guess from your arrogant dickhead attitude, you've personally done something even more significant that we would all know?

Re:Is it Windows or Adobe/Windows ?

[jfdavis668]

I always thought it was Intel/IBM/Microsoft, but I've been around for a while.

to me its just Linux

[FudRucker]

or else why not call it GNU/GPL/FOSS/Linux

I have GNU’s coreutils on my Mac

[93 Escort Wagon]

I guess I’d better start calling it GNU/macOS.

(but only while using “gls” or “gcp” etc. rather than the native versions, I suppose)

Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[raymorris]

I'm tired of the "Gnu/Linux" discussion too.
Anyone who cares to can call it "Apache/Mozilla/Gnu/X/Gnome/Linux" if that's their preference, I call it Linux.

The submitter brought up an interesting tangent, though:

> although operating systems are pretty much apolitical by nature as far as I can tell.

For Richard Stallman and the FSF leaders, free software is very much political. In case anyone was unsure, he said it is just two weeks ago. For Stallman, it's about changing (part of) society, advancing a popularist ideology which has some things in common with Marxism. To Stallman,. proprietary software is EVIL, an evil which must be defeated.

For Linus Torvalds and the "open source" folks generally, it's not really political, it's simply a way of producing quality software, a good way to produce software which has several advantages. To Linus, proprietary software isn't the best match to his needs - except when it is. The kernel source control was a proprietary system he bought called Bitkeeper. He could have used open source version control, but at the time he thought Bitkeeper, the proprietary system, fit his needs better. So he used it. Later, Linus wrote git to exactly fit his needs.

What are people's thoughts on this? Free Software as a political movement, or Open Source as a better way to get software done?

Re: Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything that concerns the lives and daily activities of people is political. It must not be electoral to be political, that is an important distinction

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[fred911]

". To Stallman,. proprietary software is EVIL, an evil which must be defeated."

  Without freely distributed code we'd all be running windows fucking 10, sold and subjugated worse than BookFace. Proprietary software isn't evil, just a good proportion of the creators are. Without BSD's starting distribution of a high quality OS able to control X8* hardware, we'd all be fucked. As far as proprietary software needing to be defeated, well seems it's in the design.

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[Anonymous Coward]

This is stupid and nonfactual and paints a fairy tale. https://lwn.net/Articles/130746/ - Stallman is right - if you don't care about the license, your rights can be revoked at any time. What's in a name? Trademarking. Why is this important? If you don't defend your trademark it can be usurped as having been dormant/defunct. What's in a license - whether your ideas are free to grow or locked down.

The only problem was that BitKeeper is proprietary software. Instead, it came (in binary-only form) with a license which allowed free use, but which imposed some significant restrictions. The free version of BitKeeper could only be used with open source projects; users could be required to make their repositories available on demand. The free version posted all changelog information on openlogging.org, and disabling the logging was not allowed. Users were required to upgrade to new versions, which could come with different licenses. And users were not only prohibited from reverse engineering the software, but they were prohibited from working on any sort of source code management system at all.

Larry wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He truly wanted to support the development of free software - as long as that software didn't threaten his own particular business niche. Supporting the kernel development cost real money - and supporting the business which created BitKeeper cost even more. Whenever BitMover felt that its business model was threatened, it responded; often the BitKeeper licensing terms were changed in response to perceived threats - to the point that the BitKeeper license became known in some circles as the "don't piss off Larry license."

Well, somebody pissed off Larry one time too many. The final straw, it seems, was a certain high-profile developer who refused to stop reverse engineering work while simultaneously doing some work for OSDL. BitMover is now withdrawing support for the free version of BitKeeper, and Linus has ceased to use it. BitKeeper is no longer the source code management system for the kernel. Proprietary software can be good stuff, but it always carries this threat: you never really know if it will be there for you tomorrow or not. BitMover has decided that it can no longer afford to make BitKeeper available for the free software community.

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[Anonymous Coward]

"Proprietary software isn't evil, just a good proportion of the creators are." You do realize that a lot of people who contribute to the open source world have day jobs building proprietary applications of all sorts. Are they "evil"? And you do realize the MS has been the leading contributor of open source code for the past 4 years. And they are starting the process of melding open source applications with it's proprietary application stack. And yes I realize that it doesn't matter what MS does because they will be the target of shallow and childish complaints by people who have to much time on their hands and limited insight of the computing world.

Real IT professionals know the most important factor in making software choices is to determine which solution best meets your needs with cost being apart of the decision making process. Worshipping at the alter of some open source to the exclusion of everything else is the recipe for disaster.

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[fibonacci8]

Context: GP equates having no choice but Windows 10 with being subjugated. If you remove enough of the words that disagree with your point, you can make anyone appear wrong.

What kind of arrogant, benighted, sheltered, pampered, pompous jackass equates something like running Windows 10 with being subjugated?

If someone like that shows up, we'll ask them. Until then...

Get over yourself.

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[Kjella]

What are people's thoughts on this? Free Software as a political movement, or Open Source as a better way to get software done?

I think for me it's mainly about transparency and adherence to standards where it matters. I must admit that I often find open source tools lacking, but open source is the only software I trust to only do what it says it does. And it's not perfect but since you can review the code you can figure out exactly where and how it doesn't do what it's supposed to do. Basically, I want open source when the data is much more important than the software, like documents, audiovisual formats and anything else "important". I want open source for anything related to security. I want open source for anything with the potential to surveillance me. I don't mind proprietary tools or games, though I'd like them to be sandboxed so all they can send info about is themselves.

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[serviscope_minor]

What kind of arrogant, benighted, sheltered, pampered, pompous jackass equates something like running Windows 10 with being subjugated?

I dunno, someone who has to use it?

Re: Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[senatorpjt]

Proprietary software and its' creators aren't evil, it's something even worse - suboptimal.

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[jbn-o]

I'm tired of the "Gnu/Linux" discussion too.

No you're not. That's why you're continuing the discussion and asking people questions which further the discussion.

For Richard Stallman and the FSF leaders, free software is very much political. [...] For Linus Torvalds and the "open source" folks generally, it's not really political, it's simply a way of producing quality software, a good way to produce software which has several advantages.

You appear to be using the word "political" to advance your own views without defining what you think the word political means. Software certainly is political; as with so many things brought up on these corporate repeater sites Stallman was right (and typically people need a lot of time to come around to understanding that he got there well before the people you're allowed to hear from on corporate media).

Frankly, your overmoderated post is all too typical of what passes for acceptable on sites like these: You also don't specify which "qualities" in software are being addressed when you try the reductionist approach by saying "simply a way of producing quality software". Which qualities are you talking about? After all, what's considered a valuable quality to someone looking to preserve their freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the software on their computer often is the opposite of what a spy considers mandatory or what a DRM scheme requires to effectively restrict the user. Lots of proprietary software people run every day is malware when considered from the perspective of the user. These are political choices that are increasingly part of everyone's everyday life, regardless of whether they'd call that politics.

When people call an OS by its kernel's name they're being remarkably inconsistent (other widely-used OSes aren't called this way; they get called by the names their proprietors assign to the OS), technically inaccurate (Linux has always been a kernel and never a complete OS), and for all the claims of being practical they're choosing a remarkably impractical nomenclature. A binary that runs on one architecture of an OS (be it GNU/Linux, Busybox/Linux, or something else) won't necessarily run on another system that also uses the Linux kernel. People led to believe that these systems are all "Linux" might believe otherwise because that's what the ill-chosen name plainly indicates.

When it comes to the difference between the older free software social movement and younger open source developmental methodology, they're sometimes quite compatible (as Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" has pointed out for a decade, people who agree with either philosophy "can and do work together on some practical projects". But they are distinct philosophies that sometimes reach radically different conclusions: free software never concludes that proprietary software is acceptable because proprietary software does not respect a user's software freedom. Open source development methodology was apparently designed to be thrown away or ignored when inconvenient because software developed not using that methodology (such as proprietary software) is accepted. Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software has pointed this out for many years in the section named "Different Values Can Lead to Similar Conclusions...but Not Always".

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[Pseudonym]

other widely-used OSes aren't called this way

I know it's not officially called this any more, but "Windows NT" comes very close, since it's Windows on top of NTOS. Most users interact entirely with Windows, not with the kernel. And many developers can get through an entire career without ever interacting with Ke or Ob.

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[inking]

Should have been upvoted as FUNNY really.

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[im_thatoneguy]

The problem is that GNU elbowed its way into a lot of areas of the Operating System that its maintainers allowed but didn't really agree with. It was just more convenient to take over something that wasn't at 0% complete and run with it while the maintainers and contributors largely disagreed with GNU philosophy.

If Stallman had put his foot down and insisted it was called GNU\Linux then many of the "GNU" contributors and leaders would have just forked the projects.

How many people that have contributed to all of the components in Linux even knew that the FSF was the "owner" of the project? And what does it even mean for an open source project to be GNU or not? GNOME is the perfect example.

As a community we (or honestly Ubuntu) could if they were so inclined fork most of the GNU projects and then call it UBUNTU\Linux. Would they then be "stealing" credit? Lots of people want to contribute code, not everyone subscribes to Stallman's political objectives. So far that's been fine because he hasn't injected himself too deeply into the projects but I suspect if contributors had to pledge loyalty to Stallman or fork, most projects would fork. The only reason GNU "controls" most of the linux system is because it's been more hassle than it's worth.

Re: Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[bursch-X]

TL;DR So itâ(TM)s purist ideology vs. Realpolitik. Or as they say âoein theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.â

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[Raphael]

When people call an OS by its kernel's name they're being remarkably inconsistent

Think about "Windows Subsystem for Linux", which contains no Linux code but is designed to run "Linux" programs on Windows 10.

That being said, I still have my Yggdrasil "Linux/GNU/X Fall 1993" CD at home. It is funny how this naming debate keeps coming back, with remarkably few new arguments.

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[Quarters]

I never understood why Stallman just stopped at software. Aren't all for-purchase tools evil? My hammer could have a GPS tracker in it. I have no way of knowing. My table saw that has 'that look' about it. Totally untrustworthy.

I always find Stallman's 'GNU/Linux because Linux is *just* the kernel' argument funny, given that he and his haven't been able to produce 'just a kernel' in how many decades now?

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[Killall -9 Bash]

I use an operating system to run applications, it's little more than a launcher of those applications.

That's the problem. Windows, and Windows 10 in particular, does a little bit more than launch applications.

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[rahvin112]

Because your hammer doesn't have an EULA that prevents you from learning how the hammer was built or prevents you from taking it apart. Are you that ignorant of that which you comment?

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[Reziac]

That's precisely why I refuse to call it GNU/Linux. Stallman makes some good points, but his philosophy seems to be less about making more information free than about forcing everyone to conform to his Marxist vision of information redistribution. (A conclusion I reached during a long-ago discussion with RMS himself.)

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[BadDreamer]

Stallman doesn't stop at software. In fact, the whole GNU concept began around a printer. Anything which you are not allowed to take apart to see how it's done qualifies. Your hammer does not, nor your table saw, because nothing stops you from disassembling, reassembling and figuring out how they work.

And Stallman says "just" in the sense of "only", not in a negative sense. On the contrary, he has never shown any disrespect to the kernel developers and their achievements. The only thing he does not show respect for is acceptance of closed licenses.

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[DamnOregonian]

Without freely distributed code, there would be no BookFace.
May some day a social media platform as gargantuan as it may have arisen, but I don't think it's guaranteed.
The availability of open-source software stacks made the barrier to entry into a grand project like a massive social media environment very low.

Re:Tangent: Stallman says software is political

[DamnOregonian]

I think you nailed it on the head. For some people, (FSF/GNU) open source is very much a political movement.
For some people, like me, it's simply that I don't really care about monetizing my creations, and other peoples' source has helped me, and I like giving it away. I have GPL'd my code when I had to, or done my best to say I retain no copyright over this code, and it can be considered public domain.

I don't fault anybody for their reasons for releasing their source, political, apolitical, apathetic, generous; I just think it *is* a better way to get software done, regardless of the political ambitions.

Re:Is it Windows or Adobe/Windows ?

[RhettLivingston]

A better comparison might be Windows/Mach derivative. As near as I can tell, Microsoft hasn't even bother naming their kernel other than calling it the kernel or the Windows NT kernel which is no different than the "kernel in Windows NT".

If we cast Linux into a similar vein, "Linux" users are actually running "GNU/Gnome", "GNU/KDE", etc. which happen to run on multiple kernels including Linux.

From a practical marketing point of view though, maybe if GNU had come up with a better name, we'd be using it. The fault probably lies with the GNU program for not coming up with a marketable name. In the vacuum, users grabbed for "Linux".

Re:Linux is gay and so is Slashdort

[plopez]

vi ia an editor, newbie. nothing you said makes sense. I bet you run Windows.

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[drinkypoo]

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

The vast majority of daily Linux users are using Android, the vast majority of them probably don't even know it's Linux let alone what Linux is, and Android doesn't use GNU utilities in their userland.

GNU is how we got where we are today, so all Linux users owe it a massive debt of gratitude for getting us here. Desktop Linux users, in the main part, still owe it thanks daily, but desktop Linux users are a tiny minority — both of Linux users, and of desktop users.

All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

If you want to be pedantic, be fully pedantic. Not all of them are GNU/Linux distributions. For example, Alpine Linux. There is also a list of other Linux-based products which don't use the GNU userland on the Busybox site. There have even been a couple of attempts to wed a BSD userland to a Linux kernel, but none of them appear to still be around AFAICT. Seems like they should take the Solaris 2 approach of adding a BSD userland directory into their distribution for people who need it for scripts, or just want to use it to be perverse.

Hacking vs. Cracking

[plopez]

While we're at it let's argue over hacking vs. cracking.

Re:Linux is gay and so is Slashdort

[drinkypoo]

The operating system is (usually) that portion of the software that runs in kernel mode or supervisor mode. It is protected from user tampering by the hardware..."

That's a nonsense definition designed to make Minix look cool. But it's a lot of bollocks. The operating system is the collection of software which provides the functionality intended to be offered to users and developers alike. That means the kernel (for all operating systems) and the userland (for operating systems in which shell scripting is a feature — you know, like Unix, DOS, Windows... and literally every modern operating system.)

Gnu is just application software

[91degrees]

That is often useless without other software, be it X, apache, language interpretors or whatever. But we only generally care about the core of a system. For example, we focus on the CPU of a computer. We focus on the core reactor of a nuclear power plant.

Depends

[guruevi]

The kernel is Linux, the toolset is GNU. So if we're talking about Android or VMWare or Cisco or HPs line of SDN switches it's just Linux.

If we're talking about Ubuntu and RedHat I would say it's GNU/Linux.

The reason isn't necessary political there are huge technical and legal differences between just using the Linux kernel and using the GNU or other toolsets that may not even share the same license as Linux.

Re:Depends

[Krishnoid]

Or "BusyBox/Linux", possibly.

Neither.

[iCEBaLM]

The OS name is the name of the distribution.

Re:Neither.

[arkane1234]

Man, what was the last mac you touched... was it fruit colored?

Re: Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Rms was never relevant to the likes of you. to all others he is kassandra, and if your flavour of linux consists of the kernel and glibc, its gnu/linux.

Re: Gnu/Linux sounds terrible.

[nowwith25percentmore]

This is my poor-man's upvote.

Depends on context

[GameboyRMH]

Historically there's been no Linux other than GNU/Linux, but now there's also Android/Linux so it's more important to specify if the context isn't already established.

Why bring this up again?

[kevmeister]

This was talked and commented to death 15-20 years ago. Let it go!!

Or, like I do, just run FreeBSD and forget the whole thing.

Re: Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I wasted 15minutes if my life reading the comments below looking for the flame war to start..... nothing.... no one gives a shit. Everyone calls it Linux.... not a single GNS/Linux sider.....wasted all the popcorn.

I refer to the operating system kernel as Linux and the operating system as GNU/Linux. Without the GNU utilities and other support software the kernel would be useless unless Linus Torvalds had chosen to licence the kernel software under a BSD license for instance.

well technically ...

[mbaGeek]

In a "fair" world it would be "GNU/Linux" - "Linux" is the kernel, GNU provides other necessary "operating system" functions.

I've taught an "intro to Linux class" a couple times and can say that most textbooks only mention the GNU project in passing (if at all - in the beginning "history" type chapter) - so from that perspective everyone knows when you say "Linux" you are referring to an operating system (if they know what an OS is)

my personal preference is to talk about "distributions" (Ubuntu/Red Hat/whatever) but don't mention GNU unless I'm in a classroom setting (and then more to drive home the technical difference between "kernel" and "operating system").

I used "Revolution OS" to fill up some class time - if you are curious (and didn't live through it). In the documentary Bill Gates is the "bad guy", Stallman the crusader/fanatic, and Linus the practical applier of knowledge.

with all of that said - my official answer to the question is "no one cares"

Second verse, same as the first.

[davmoo]

And next week we can reopen the years-long debate of is Linux pronounced lie-nucks, lee-nucks, or leh-nucks.

Re:Second verse, same as the first.

[nnet]

lih-nicks.

Will a Linux app run on my Linux phone?

[tepples]

Anyone who cares to can call it "Apache/Mozilla/Gnu/X/Gnome/Linux" if that's their preference, I call it Linux.

Then how would you answer the following: Will an application made for "Linux" run on an Android system, which uses Linux as its kernel?

I tend to use the terms "GNU/Linux" and "X11/Linux" when distinguishing the server and traditional desktop operating environment from Android.

Servers use Coreutils and glibc

[tepples]

On a Linux desktop or server, you're probably using GNU Coreutils along with Bash and glibc, even if you have replaced GCC with LLVM or Emacs with Vim. Other systems, such as Android and home network appliances, run Linux without GNU. They replace GNU with things like Google Bionic, uClibc, Newlib, and BusyBox.

Two flavors of GNU/Windows

[tepples]

Cygwin stands for Cygnus GNU/Windows. MinGW stands for Minimalist GNU/Windows.

Yes, it will. Not the answer you expected?

[raymorris]

Yes, applications written for LINUX, such as OpenVPN, will run on Android. Bash, Imagemagick, Perl, Python, ffmpeg, sed, awk, Emacs, vim, nano ... all this stuff runs fine on Android. Postgresql is a bit tricky to install.

Applications written for X11 will run on systems with X11- which doesn't include most of the hundreds of Linux systems I've owned or administered, mostly servers, along with some VPN endpoints and other types of systems. Applications written for KDE will run on KDE systems, Gnome applications on systems with Gnome, etc.

Re:Yes, it will. Not the answer you expected?

[jeremyp]

Applications written for X11 will run on systems with X11- which doesn't include most of the hundreds of Linux systems I've owned or administered

Actually, as long as they statically bind the X11 client libraries, they'll run on pretty much any Linux system. The computer that has to have the X11 server software is the one that the user is sitting in front of.

Re:Yes, it will. Not the answer you expected?

[dougmc]

To be fair, most or all of these applications will also run under Windows ... and you don't even need to use Linux-like environments like cygwin, though you certainly can do that too.

Re:Yes, it will. Not the answer you expected?

[DamnOregonian]

Actually, as long as they statically bind the X11 client libraries

There are quite a few library stacks that don't work statically compiled... Do you know if X isn't one of them? Honest, question- I don't know. But I suspect it might be. Or you'll end up with a 400MB binary.

Maybe less if you only include the very bare minimum, which doesn't include font renderers, GUI toolkits, etc.

How do I install kdelibs on Android?

[tepples]

Python

Breaks if you try to import tkinter.

Applications written for X11 will run on systems with X11- which doesn't include most of the hundreds of Linux systems I've owned or administered

Among the subset of those Linux systems that you have administered that also have a graphical user interface, how many have X11?

Applications written for KDE will run on KDE systems, Gnome applications on systems with Gnome, etc.

Most popular KDE Plasma distributions will let the administrator easily install a package containing libraries to run GNOME applications or vice versa. As far as I can tell, Android is an outlier in this sense.

Re:How do I install kdelibs on Android?

[Thumper_SVX]

See, the problem here is that you're conflating a "Linux" system with one that has simple package management for the tools (technically, the GNU part of Linux). That's simply not true, and GP's point that Linux tools will run on Android is actually quite valid. Just because they're not installed by default doesn't make it any less of a Linux or GNU/Linux system than the system I'm currently using to type this post.

Plus, you're deliberately moving goalposts here. How do YOU define a complete Linux system? Personally I'd define it as a kernel that can boot all the way to a usable shell... you're adding layers of client-access tools on top of that including a GUI, none of which is required for it to be considered a Linux system. Your argument basically implies that you wouldn't consider anything a full Linux system unless you can run a web browser in a fancy GUI. Sorry, that's just not a valid argument.

So if you want to see Linux on your Android device, install a shell. There's plenty in the Play Store. My personal favourite is called... strangely enough... Terminal Emulator. You want to get really fancy, install SSHDroid and then SSH to your Android phone over WiFi. Once there you'll find a completely usable Linux system. Yes, you're correct in that Android basically sits on top of Linux and is written in such a way that interaction between the two environments is relatively minimal... however, the Linux environment (or GNU/Linux environment) is still there.

Re:How do I install kdelibs on Android?

[tepples]

It is always possible to write Python modules that requires specific hardware or is incompatible with different parts of an operating system.

Agreed. One needs to choose modules that are available on all the platforms on which you plan to deploy. For a GUI, one ought to choose a module that Python for Android, Python for X11/Linux, and Python for Windows have in common. The annoying part about this though is that tkinter module is specified as part of Python's standard library on GUI systems. So what GUI module should a program written in Python use instead?

Re:How do I install kdelibs on Android?

[tepples]

Your argument basically implies that you wouldn't consider anything a full Linux system unless you can run a web browser in a fancy GUI. Sorry, that's just not a valid argument.

Agreed in theory. But now I seek a better term to distinguish a netbook running a distribution of POSIX/Linux, which can be used for lightweight terminal-based or graphical programming on top of POSIX and optionally X11 and Wine, from a Chromebook or Android device, which runs the Linux kernel but isn't quite a close substitute in this respect.

Re:How do I install kdelibs on Android?

[DamnOregonian]

What is this GNU package management you speak of? tar+*zip\d?

Re:How do I install kdelibs on Android?

[Thumper_SVX]

Thing is, there really isn't much of a distinction. Chrome/Android are both still Linux under the hood (and I use that phrase in the sense that it's a completely capable Linux kernel with the GNU tools and a shell). They're all Linux-based computers. If you really want a distinction then use the one the marketing folks have already given you; a Linux laptop, a Chromebook and an Android device. That's all the distinction you really need.

Re:How do I install kdelibs on Android?

[tepples]

If you really want a distinction then use the one the marketing folks have already given you; a Linux laptop, a Chromebook and an Android device. That's all the distinction you really need.

That doesn't help when Slashdot users deliberately try to bend this distinction by claiming that a "Chromebook" or an "Android device" can substitute for most or all use cases of a "Linux laptop", or when I have no access to try the keyboard and screen of a "Linux laptop" within reasonable cycling range of my home, or when manufacturers completely discontinue production of "Linux laptops" in particular size ranges.

Why? Microsoft

[unrtst]

The GNU/Linux argument was also propped up by the fact that you can swap out the Linux kernel with FreeBSD's kernel and keep (nearly) the entire rest of the Debian system (or other distros). In that case, it behaves very much like a Linux based distro, but there is no Linux in it. Not many people really used those other things though, and the argument kinda died out due to lack of interest.

Now enter Microsoft, who now has a "Windows Subsystem for Linux", but it's really just a compatibility layer to run all the GNU and other stuff on the Windows kernel. There's really very little "Linux" there.

Re:Why? Microsoft

[Kremmy]

I've been wondering how to pull WSL into this since I've been using it lately and it's working remarkably well.
Would someone argue that I'm using Microsoft GNU/Linux? It's so quaint.

Re:Why? Microsoft

[manu0601]

Would someone argue that I'm using Microsoft GNU/Linux?

I would say you use GNU/Windows NT

Re:Why? Microsoft

[MSG]

There's really very little "Linux" there.

None, as far as I can tell. When you run a GNU system using WSL, it's basically GNU/Windows.

Re:Why? Microsoft

[unrtst]

You can also swap out all the GNU software and replace it with alternatives running atop a Linux kernel. How is that different?

Go ahead and do it (or at least think about it), and let me know what you come up with.
Linux kernel + busybox on a router is not something people are asking to be called GNU/Linux. These are usually referred to by the distro name, like OpenWRT or Tomato.
Linux kernel + android stack is commonly referred to as Android, not Linux nor GNU/Linux.
FreeBSD kernel + GNU stack (implemented by Debian) is referred to as Debian GNU/kFreeBSD (https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/).

WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) implements an ABI between the Windows kernel and the userland from other linux based distros. IMO, it's a bit more like WINE or FreeBSD Linux Binary Compatibility than GNU/kFreeBSD, but there's no "Linux" in it.

Re:Why? Microsoft

[unrtst]

Agreed. FWIW, I had said, "the argument kinda died out", not that GNU/kFreeBSD died out.

OMG

[e3m4n]

OMG I cannot believe you just invoked RMS. Thats like saying Beetlejuice.. Have you any idea what you've just unleashed?

Also if you hit the tab key

[raymorris]

Python also breaks if you hit the tab key - on any OS. :)
Python also breaks if you update from last week's version this week's - you have to rewrite all your a scripts every time you update Python.

This reminds me of Friday during scrum one of my co-workers was proposing to do a certain thing on AWS Cloud watch and others weren't so sure it was a good idea. "It's like writing a Python script", he said. That scored him -8 points with the people he was trying to convince. I suggested that perhaps next time he was trying to say something is a good idea, don't use the phrase "it's just like Python". Lol

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[Kremmy]

I notice that you didn't list a desktop environment or web browser.
How many people do you think are using the GNU tools on a modern Linux?

I've been dealing with that all week

[raymorris]

> And it's not perfect but since you can review the code you can figure out exactly where and how it doesn't do what it's supposed to do.

That's super important to me. I virtually ALWAYS find and fix any issue at all on an open source system by using one consistent method - trace the program, let look at the source to see exactly what's going on. If the issue is that I have to pass a different argument to the program, I can see that clearly. It'll say right in the source:

if (option.be_sane) {
  do_what_ray_wants();
}

If there is a bug in the program, I can see it and fix it.
Whatever the problem, the solution is always the same - go look at the portion of the code that handles that and see exactly what's going on.

For the last couple of weeks a co-worker and I have been trying to enable WMI on a Windows 10 box. According to all the documentation we can find, that should be a simple 3-minute process. Yet it doesn't work. No matter what we try, Windows just returns an undocumented and apparently irrelevant error code. The Windows logs show nothing. All we can do at this point is make random guesses and try different things which are not documented to be needed. There is no process which will solve problems on Windows, or any proprietary software, because we can't look at the source and see what's going on. We can only guess at random and hope we eventually hit the Windows jackpot and happen across the lucky set of registry settings and reboots that makes it work, for no apparent reason.

Re: I've been dealing with that all week

[Brockmire]

Use the tool from here: https://community.spiceworks.c.... If you still have problems, use this link: https://community.spiceworks.c...

One quote from the article sums it up.

[jimtheowl]

"This has been one of the more ridiculous debates in the FOSS realm, far outdistancing the Emacs-vi rift", said Larry Cafiero

controversy for the sake of controversy

[klindsay]

If one were intentionally trying to get people to argue with each other, and to induce animosity, they just might put topics like this forward. Is that the goal of this article, and the posting of it here? I see no upside to Linux Journal publishing this article, or slashdot highlighting it. It's not news, it's flamebait.

what's in a name?

[senatorpjt]

Linux.

Stallman is looking at the naming as an issue of who gets credit. For everyone else, the point of the OS having a name is primarily to denote where something can be run. If I have some software package that "runs on Linux" that means it runs on Linux, whether or not it depends on some other available software that also runs on Linux. That is why Android isn't "Linux", even though it uses the Linux kernel - Android software depends on things that are only available on Android. Likewise, "GNU" doesn't mean anything, software written for "GNU/Linux" will not run on Windows even if you have all the GNU tools installed, whereas it's likely to run on Linux with musl and busybox.

Re:what's in a name?

[wertigon]

So, your software package for "Linux" runs on Android/Linux then? Or is guaranteed to run on Azure/Linux?

I get where you are coming from, but Android is not compatible with "Desktop" Linux or "Server" Linux.

I recently started to use GNU/Linux in order to differentiate it from the other aforementioned operating systems, but to be fair, it is a crutch and as I said in a different comment thread, I welcome any suggestions for names that encompass the GNU/Wayland/Linux/systemd userspace. Would be GNU/X/Linux/systemd, but what is the point in renaming a software that is soon going to die anyhow...

Depends

[drolli]

if i compile a linux kernel with a single process loaded into the init ram disk and running as init and just doing what it should (I could imagine something like this for embedded systems) without any of the usual GNU binaries/programs, then it's just "linux"

GNU / Linux / systemd

[Zobeid]

We should continue honoring the importance of GNU and Linux to the systemd project.

So it's only bad when *I* quote Stillman "politica

[raymorris]

You criticized me for pointing out that for Stillman, free software is a political issue, then you linked to one of his articles in which he says it's a "political camp" and that to "the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem".

So you're upset that I said he thinks that, then you link to him saying that? I'm confused.

> to advance your own views

What views do you think those are? My views I'm trying to advance, you say, what views do you think I'm trying to advance?

Would I be advancing a certain view if I said Linus thinks proprietary, closed development is a "suboptimal" way of developing software? Which view would that advance? Would stating Linus' view in those terms be advocating for or against what Stallman says?

* Stallman. Darn autocorrect.

[raymorris]

My autocorrect likes to call Stallman "Stillman". I suppose that's not the worst thing he's been called.

In my opinion, yes, and no.

[wertigon]

No, it does not really matter if we call it Linux or GNU/Linux.

Except, these days, GNU/Linux is not the only Linux based operating system in town. I count at least four different major flavors, those being GNU/Linux, Android/Linux, systemd/Linux and now recently Azure/Linux.

Except, as many has pointed out, there is also GNU/BSD, BSD/Linux, et cetera. So, calling it Linux doesn't really say anything anymore. Linux could be Android. Or Azure. Or heck, even BSD.

What I do know is that we need to come up with something new to call this systemd/wayland/Linux OS frankenmonster of modern Linux that is emerging, because Linux is just no longer doing a good job at explaining it anymore. Perhaps a recursive acronym such as SULSAW - SULSAW Use Linux, Systemd And Wayland. Or something. Whatever. Don't care what you call it, just that you call it *something*.

Because I, for one, would love to keep referring to a family of operating systems that includes Fedora and Ubuntu but excludes Android, Azure and anything else that isn't compatible with the applications running on Fedora / Ubuntu.

Re:In my opinion, yes, and no.

[loonycyborg]

I tend to call the set of OSes like Fedora/Ubuntu/Debian "desktop linux". Maybe even freedesktop linux, because they're based on freedesktop.org standards and all use same low level libs like xorg/wayland/freetype/fontconfig/etc that are even mostly hosted as projects on freedesktop.org. The same doesn't apply to android.

Re:Is it Windows or Adobe/Windows ?

[RhettLivingston]

NT OS kernel is not a name. It's a description. As I remember it, the scuttlebutt at the time was that it was just an avoidance of carrying through or limiting it to the Mach name.

GCC ...

[geggam]

Without GCC where are you ?

When standing on someones shoulders its common respect to acknowledge it.

Re: Linux

[kurkosdr]

The thing is that Linux-based set top boxes are gaining in popularity, and quite often they advertise "Linux" but they mean Linux kernel only (aka you get no GNU userland), so the distinction between "Linux" and "GNU/Linux" finally makes sense from a practical standpoint, and doesn't serve only to stroke FSF egos. Funny that *flies away*

Is it "Black" or "African-American?"

[TheOuterLinux]

Before you know it, Ubuntu people will be like "What up my GNU/Linux?" And the rest of us will be like, "Hey! That's our word!"

Uh

[christurkel]

Linux+GNU

List the most central dependency

[tepples]

If you're going to name via dependencies then why would you only list one of the dependencies in its name rather than all of them?

It's a matter of correlation. If a system has the dependency that forms part of a platform's name, then it's far more likely than not that the system has, or that its administrator can practically install, common dependencies of other applications for the same platform. By this measure, perhaps GNU is most central to server applications and programming tools designed for Linux, and X Window System to desktop GUI apps. Hence the names "GNU/Linux" and "X11/Linux" to contrast with "Android/Linux".

And what constitutes a GNU/Linux system?

Free Software Foundation acknowledges use of Linux apart from the GNU OS while intentionally declining to give a precise definition. This has led David Johnson to write an article titled "By Any Other Name" making the reduction to absurdity argument you may have been anticipating, largely by replacing GNU with an adaptation of the FreeBSD userland. But my personal definition, based on correlation with installable dependencies, is GNU Coreutils plus two other major components of GNU, such as Bash, GCC, glibc, and Emacs. This means that Cygwin, MinGW with MSYS, and Microsoft WSL are GNU/Windows, and a full installation of DJGPP is GNU/MS-DOS or GNU/FreeDOS.

And further to your question does an application written for the GNU C runtime not run on bionic for example or do you need to include that as part of your naming convention?

Some applications are specialized to run on glibc, the implementation of the C language and POSIX standard library included with GNU. Others will run on any reasonable implementation of the C library that provides varying level of support for POSIX, such as Bionic. But many applications built for Bionic have a more central dependency they can cite, namely the Android userspace.

Re:List the most central dependency

[tepples]

I wish there were some other way to short-circuit forum pedants who think they can score a point by reminding readers that devices locked down to run otherwise incompatible userlands happen to have the same kernel.

"Why can't I find a decent Linux laptop in stores?"
"There are plenty of laptops that run Linux, namely Chromebooks and Android detachable tablets."
"But they don't run Linux applications, or at least they self-destruct if you try."

The actual dependencies for my work flow are POSIX, Python, GNU Make, X Window System, and Wine. So how should I go about expressing that concisely without making the question too specific to my particular work flow?

Re:List the most central dependency

[tepples]

No they dont "self destruct" if you do, don't be such a drama queen.

For someone who lives with other people, what's the difference between "self destruct" and firmware that encourages whoever turns on a device to wipe its installed operating system, installed applications, and not-yet-pushed commits?

And actually they will support non-chromeos applications officially soon.

From the cited article:

All in all, it means that Google developers can finally create Android, Chrome OS, and web applications directly from their Chromebooks

Excluded are X Window System and therefore Wine. I use Wine for FamiTracker and FCEUX (debugging version), which are free software whose source code has a dependency on MFC or Win32.

It's one line, literally 5 things. Why does it need to be more concise?

Because in the past, I've received replies to the effect "Anyone who needs that combination of things is an edge case. Because there aren't enough others like you, the market has chosen to chase economies of scale because it is more profitable than serving you." The fewer dependencies I can name, the more sympathetic the replies tend to be. But I think I can cut it down to four: GIMP, Wine, Pillow, and what Debian and Ubuntu call "build-essential".

Re:List the most central dependency

[tepples]

Come on, take some responsibility and start finding solutions rather than problems.

What steps should be taken toward finding a solution? Is asking other Slashdot users whether they have found a solution, and if so, what it was, an acceptable angle?

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[supremebob]

I have most of those above mentioned UNIX utilities on my Mac as well. Does that mean that I should be referring it as GNU/Mac OS X?

Isn't it simple?

[Trogre]

I thought this was all just whether or not any given distro shipped with the GNU core utilities by default.

eg:
Debian - GNU/Linux
Fedora - GNU/Linux
Android - Linux
My DVD player - Linux
My router - GNU/Linux
FreeBSD - BSD?

Great or horrible

[raymorris]

> . One of great thing about python is you can built portable environment around it, with particular python version, libs, etc.

One of the horrible things about Python is that to run a simple script you have ship an entire separate environment for each script, with particular python version, libs, etc.

Perl, PHP, and other similar languages don't have this requirement. Perl scripts I wrote 15 years ago still run fine in an up-to-date environment, because they don't break the language with every update. They add new features and facilities, rather than removing commonly-used things, or worse, changing things around with no real benefit - just because the Python maintainers decided that they prefer left instead of right. Either way works, but switching things around without a clear need to do so is silly.

Re: Great or horrible

[DamnOregonian]

Oh, it's quite relevant.
It's not popular, but the infrastructure you use to send data to this site uses it all over the place. Perl is the duct tape that keeps the internet together.

OS/X

[tigersha]

Or is it OSX/BSD? Or MacSD? Or LSD/X? Who cares?

Submission said;

[BeCre8iv]

" although operating systems are pretty much apolitical by nature as far as I can tell."

I assume you are new here.

For normal consumers

[bursch-X]

Might as well be Ubuntu...

Sorry St IGNUtius, but I couldn't afford XENIX

[darkharlequin]

And the only thing that I could walk with two 20" long 3.5" floppy cases worth of floppies from the computer lab at school down to my apartment computer was Slackware. Therefore, for me, at least, it was Linux, then GNU. Yes I use EMACS, and for that I will be forever in your debt, but prior to that, the last time I used UNIX was on my daddy's lap in the 70s on a Bell Telephone central office computer somewhere on the east coast of america, and Dad didn't even know VI...

Go dev here

[snadrus]

It's Linux. My servers run without GNU or any other user space even installed. DLL wrangling is over and lightweight containers are replacing distros fast. Security is a cinch when only your app and Linux is installed.

Depends on the system

[The123king]

To boil it down to it's simplest elements; if it has a GNU userland, it's GNU/Linux. There's other OSes based on Linux without a GNU userland, and there's other OSes that user a GNU userland without Linux. For example, i wouldn't call Android GNU/Linux, because it lacks much of the GNU userland, and i wouldn't call Debian/kFreeBSD GNU/Linux because it uses the FreeBSD kernel.

In short, if it's GNU/Linux, call it GNU/Linux

Who cares?

[TJHook3r]

Is it tomato or tomato? Yes! Move on, clickbait story!

Windows is late to the game

[stooo]

With windows porting Ubuntu it will be interesting
GNU/Linux/Ubuntu vs GNU/Windows/Ubuntu, leave out any part you wish....

GNU/kFreeBSD, /Hurd, etc.

[DrYak]

Well actually, Debian do call their "GNU/Linux", for the very practical reason that they also try other combinations such as Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, Debian GNU/Hurd, etc.

(And if you squint at it you'll notice that none of the Linux distribution in the microsoft app store actually still has bits from Linus' kernel.
Per Stallman's classification, those should be called GNU/NTkernel, it's still your garden variety distro, but running agaisnt the WinNT kernel and it's ability to also speak a minimalist subset of Linux kernel API.
So they are thing called "Linux" distro that litteraly contain no bits of the actual Linux kernel)

Re:GNU/kFreeBSD, /Hurd, etc.

[DamnOregonian]

Not so minimalist. Pretty damn comprehensive, actually. In my line of work, I've written quite a few pieces of software that use some esoteric calls. So far, they all work. The only things that don't are mostly things that shouldn't be there in a kernel that isn't really in control of the host OS.

What will Joe the Plumber recognise?

[Apostalypse]

Lets stop the debate once and for all and use a memorable name that the average consumer can recognize and just as importantly, pronounce. Ladies and gentlemen, geeks and nerds, please support "PC Android". *ducks*

Why Don't We All Just Call It 'NIX?

[X!0mbarg]

Or is that too simple?

Heaven knows, there's so very many iterations of the OS. If we use a blanket term for the whole shebang, can't we all just get along?

Why GNU project should be given some priority ?

[Vapula]

In a Linux distribution, you see

LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice
X11 + KDE/GNOME/...
Mozilla/Chrome
The Linux Kernel
Perl, Python, Tk/TCL, PHP
The GIMP, Audacity, Blender, ...
WINE, Vir(tualBox, ...
TeX, LaTeX, ...
And so on... None of these products are part of GNU...

The GNU parts are emacs (that most Linux users don't use), GCC (which is sometimes replaced by LLVM), basic unix tools (minor programs),... These are less than 10% of what is installed on a Linux system...

Linux is not about Free software (as in free speech) and has never been... it's about creating a whole system where everyone can find something... including the corporate world... And the most of the corporate world understood that playing nice about linux also benefit them...

Who even uses Linux on here?

[thegarbz]

Best I can tell no one on Slashdot uses Linux. Plenty of people use Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, CentOS, and Android. Hell the crazies here may be found running BSD or Slackware. But no one here actually uses Linux anymore do they?

Re:Who even uses Linux on here?

[arkane1234]

.... I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

Re:Who even uses Linux on here?

[thegarbz]

It is 50% sarcasm, and 50% marketing reality. Go to www.ubuntu.com and see if you can find the word Linux anywhere on the front page.

2018, The year of GNU\Hurd on the desktop?

[Quarters]

hahahah, no.

if only Slashdot had memes and animated gifs

[acroyear]

Because this one is asking for one of the "Dead Horse" images like none before.

Neither - Linux is just the kernel

[r_a_d_9710]

You start off by referring to "the Linux operating system", but there is no such thing. Linux is just the kernel, and it takes a lot more to make an operating system. Hence what you are really referring to are "Linux based operating systems". What you call the collection of components that come together to form the operating system is entirely different.

"GNU/Linux" is not correct either. I would best describe this as the operating system framework. There is no "GNU/Linux" operating system to download and install. You must install what are typically called "distributions". So in effect, the actual operating system name is the distribution name (e.g. CentOS, Ubuntu, etc...).

Most Linux based operating systems will also heavily depend on GNU software, so you may be tempted to lump everything under "GNU/Linux". However you also have systems that use the Linux kernel with little or no GNU software (e.g. Android, OpenWRT).

You are trying to reconcile a name for two different things. Once you understand the composition of an OS and how Linux and GNU contribute to the entire system, your question becomes moot.

GNU/Linux, to differentiate from Android et al.

[sombragris]

I agree with Stallman's position which maintains that GNU/Linux is the correct usage; but there's an additional point.

Right now I think using "GNU/Linux" is useful as a shorthand to differentiate our regular "Linux distros" from Android (which uses a Linux kernel) and similar projects (such as Chrome OS). All of them are "Linux". So, GNU/Linux conveys the idea that is Linux at the kernel as well as a standard GNU userland as its base.

Emacs or vi?

[gotan]

ed!

Re:

[605dave]

I've never thought of it that way, and it puts this stupid argument to rest. It's Linux.

Lol. Yeah not even version 3.x

[raymorris]

That's funny. I'm not sure sure if you're being serious or sarcastic, but that's about right. Can't even say you have a Python 3 script. Wrote some code for Python 3.2? Next month you get to rewrite it for Python 3.3. No other language does that.

  If you're lucky, it just stops working entirely. If you're unlucky, it continues to run, but does something completely different under 3.3.

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[amazingxkcd]

wish I had mod points to mod this up.

Thanks. Not as good as source, but helpful

[raymorris]

Thanks for that. It's not the same as having the source code, but it may be helpful at times.

Thanks. Bookmarked for next time

[raymorris]

Thanks for that. I've booked that for next time.
Finally, over the weekend I got my WMI issue almost solved I think. Apparently it has to do with ntlm versions and such. Windows 10 made a change in that regard.

What do you mean. FOR Linux vs IS Linux

[raymorris]

I'm not sure what point you're making. I'm sure you have a good point, I'm just missing it.

I notice that I can download "Firefox for Windows" and "Firefox for Mac". "Firefox for Windows" contains no Windows code. Windows Subsystem for Linux seems similar to me - it's FOR Linux (programs), not IS Linux.

Secret brand deodorant for women doesn't contain any women. And?

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[tepples]

Now imagine a herd of wildebeest stampeding all over suit-clad businessmen who want to lock down the act of computing.

Turning point at Python 3.3

[tepples]

I'm under the impression that there were a lot more breaking changes from 3.0 through 3.3 than from 3.3 through 3.6 (stable) or 3.7 (beta). It took time for a much-needed reboot of Python to stabilize, and in particular, 3.3 was the first version that could coexist with 2.7 on Windows through py.exe. Is this a wrong impression?

Re:Turning point at Python 3.3

[DamnOregonian]

I started reading that comment with the intent of being educated... but after the 4th version number, my eyes glossed over and I determined parent was correct in his original assertion.

Isn't the distinction extremely obvious?

[ron_ivi]

Seems easy:

• Android absolutely is a Linux system. As are Tivo, "smart thermostats", and some kitchen appliances.
• Android is absolutely NOT a GNU/Linux system.

In contrast, Microsoft's "Windows Subsystem for Linux" is absolutely NOT a Linux, but has a GNU environment because it does include:

• Bash (part of GNU)
• glibc (part of GNU)
• GNU coreutils (part of GNU)
• gcc (part of GNU)
• GNU grep (part of GNU)

so should more properly be called GNU/NT or whatever their kernel is called. Microsoft seems to have kept everything except the Linux part of GNU/Linux.

Re:Isn't the distinction extremely obvious?

[DamnOregonian]

They actually only provide the kernel, period (as well as some non-GNU glue sauce (init))
It's up to distributions to provide the user-space, which of course use GNU in nearly all cases. However, (minus missing implementation specifics) any userspace that supports generic Linux will likely work.

I only know that Python is normally broken

[raymorris]

> I'm under the impression that there were a lot more breaking changes from 3.0 through 3.3 than from 3.3 through 3.6

That's may well be right. I only know that most of the time, a Python script (any Python script) won't run on a system that has Python installed. Because of that and several other reasons, I tend to avoid Python. For simpler scripts it's quicker to write something similar in another language than to try to get the Python script working.

Once in a while breaking changes are needed. Most projects make breaking changes at a major release, such as Apache 1.x vs 2.x, rather than breaking different things with every minor release. It's also common to have a feature used in 1.x, marked it deprecated in 2.x, then remove it in 3.x.

Re: Linux

[dougmc]

It would be hard to find a Linux distribution that doesn't use *anything* by GNU.

Even FreeBSD and OpenBSD have traditionally used gcc to do their compiling, though both are now moving to clang or have already done so ... and as I understand it this is mostly due to the GPL. Even outside of clang, OpenBSD uses a few GNU packages in their base system ... though they don't sound happy about it.

Whatever...

[JoeDuncan]

I just call it "NotWindows"

Re:So it's only bad when *I* quote Stillman "polit

[jbn-o]

You criticized me for pointing out that for St[a]llman, free software is a political issue [...]

No, nor am I upset by that. Please read my answer more closely. I said "Software certainly is political" because it is. I also asked what you meant when you used the word "political", a question you haven't answered. You should explain your own views on the matter more clearly if you want people to understand you instead of asking them to clarify your thoughts on the issue.

It's important to learn how things came to be

[jbn-o]

The problem is that GNU elbowed its way into a lot of areas of the Operating System that its maintainers allowed but didn't really agree with.

This argument needs sources to back up your claims. It's easy to make claims on behalf of other people's projected behavior, not so easy to back up those claims and clarify your terms (saying "many of the "GNU" contributors and leaders would have just forked the projects", for instance, is not only making claims on behalf of others but vague; how many is many?). The quotes around the terms you use are unexplained as well; GNU is the name of the OS RMS started. Also, what operating system did "GNU elbow its way into"? The way Stallman tells it in his talks and writings, which seem to be backed by how things unfolded, he posted to Usenet announcing GNU on September 27, 1983 as a "a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix)". Work on the GNU Project would actually begin in January, 1984 by pressing various programs into service as well as programs people wrote under the aegis of the GNU Project. He also clarified the philosophy of free software as his own work on the GNU Project continued.

How many people that have contributed to all of the components in Linux even knew that the FSF was the "owner" of the project?

I don't see how this question is relevant even if its terms weren't so ironically unclear. The Linux kernel is not owned by the Free Software Foundation and never has been. Perhaps you're unwittingly underscoring the very problem this /. thread brings up by using unclear terms (like "Linux" to mean an operating system instead of a kernel).

And what does it even mean for an open source project to be GNU or not? GNOME is the perfect example.

GNU predates the open source development methodology and the Open Source Initiative. GNU is one example of a free software OS. All of the software in GNU is free for the user to run, inspect, modify, and share. GNOME was initially a response to the non-freedom of KDE at the time KDE began. KDE had a nonfree dependency (Qt was proprietary software until mid-1999) so KDE was unsuitable for GNU. There was a project called the Harmony toolkit which aimed to provide an API-compatible replacement for Qt (so one could use Harmony instead of Qt) but when Qt was relicensed as free software this project was no longer needed.

the API is king

[epine]

Joyent is able to do what it does (double-hulled Docker) because Linux is fundamentally the Linux kernel API (and not even the core OS). So there's your external API to the hardware environment. Internally, the programmatic interface is mainly POSIX. Third on my list are the kernel interfaces and coding conventions surrounding Linux device drivers.

I suppose that GNU can lay some residual claim over the Linux ABI, but Clang generates Linux executables just fine (alongside actual Unix), and Clang is Certainly Not Not Unix.

However, like Knuth, I do respect my computer history, so I'll end off on +1 GNU/Debian, because Debian officially onboards politics, GNU's primary calling card.

The word "Debian" was formed as a portmanteau of the first name of his then-girlfriend Debra Lynn and his own first name.

That's the only mention of Debra in Wikipedia's Debian article. Therefore it seems we can legitimately simplify this to GNUbian, even if just aurally.

Answer is

[spitzak]

Linux

Next question?

Thanks, but I'm still curious to hear

[raymorris]

Thanks for replying. I'll explain my use of the word "political" shortly.

I'm still very curious to hear what you meant when you said "you're using the word 'political' to advance your own views".
What views do you think I was advancing?

On that basis, you then said "Frankly, your overmoderated post is all too typical of what passes for acceptable".
Clearly you're bothered by how I "advance my views", so I'd like to know what you think those are.

Wow!

[bankman]

It doesn't get much lamer than this. Vi vs. Emacs anyone? FFS...

Call it whatever you want; just shut up about it

[fuzzyinterval]

It's Linux. It's GNU/Linux. It's whatever you want to call it as long as you just shut the fuck up about it and let me just use my computer running whatever distro makes me happy.

Missing API

[DrYak]

- Everything even remotely container-related (Cgroups & Co) is missing. No LXC/Docker*/systemd-nspawn/etc. for you.
- Filesystems are limited to either mount an NTFS directory as a data dir, or a special NTFS directory with some metadata as a POSIX-compliant root. You can't get any other typical Linux filesystems, even the popular one, so forget about modern facilities like free snapshotting, and most of the weird stuff is either poorly supported (different visibility of mounts) or missing (layers).

And these are the first two out of the top of my head.

(We could add : no DRM gfx stack, you're limited to X forwarding over SSH, so no wayland compositing either)

(Also, in the perspective of what Microsoft wanted to achieve before pivoting to WSL: it still can't run the Android user-space successfully.
So, still no app ecosystem on Windows 10 phone that isn't a joke. But at least they got WSL to run on ARM too).

Basically, all you get is enough API to work with cli tools and daemons.

But hey, at least WSL doesn't work with systemd so at least this will keep the Devuan whiners crowd happy~~~

---

* : apparently, the latest linux docker on the latest WSL insider built could successfully run hello-world. By basically skipping and/or ignoring most of the missing stuff. It's basically a glorified chroot. You're still better off installing the windows version of docker and use WSL to control it with the CLI (and the long term path would probably be having the Windows docker able to start a separate WSL context for each container).

Re:Missing API

[DamnOregonian]

- Everything even remotely container-related (Cgroups & Co) is missing. No LXC/Docker*/systemd-nspawn/etc. for you.

No, cgroups & co are there and functional. Namespacing, what I think you really meant, is not yet globally enabled, so no containers.

- Filesystems are limited to either mount an NTFS directory as a data dir, or a special NTFS directory with some metadata as a POSIX-compliant root. You can't get any other typical Linux filesystems, even the popular one, so forget about modern facilities like free snapshotting, and most of the weird stuff is either poorly supported (different visibility of mounts) or missing (layers).

Yes, this is because as a guest, it's not supposed to be interfacing directly with hardware, this includes block devices.

(We could add : no DRM gfx stack, you're limited to X forwarding over SSH, so no wayland compositing either)

Again..... hardware.

(Also, in the perspective of what Microsoft wanted to achieve before pivoting to WSL: it still can't run the Android user-space successfully.

Android userspace requires, among direct hardware access, non-mainline kernel extensions....

Basically, all you get is enough API to work with cli tools and daemons.

Yes... see... Linux.
All of the major libc implementations work. So do all the major userspaces (GNU, busybox). All X apps that don't require special hardware extensions work.

But hey, at least WSL doesn't work [github.com] with systemd [github.com] so at least this will keep the Devuan whiners crowd happy~~~

It doesn't work with systemd running as init, because WSL requires its own init that provides the glue-y magic to interop with windows.

You have a very strong opinion about something that you apparently have very little knowledge about.

Re:Missing API

[DrYak]

No, cgroups & co are there and functional. Namespacing, what I think you really meant, is not yet globally enabled, so no containers.

Namespacing is what I meant by "& co" - i.e.: and all the other kernel bits that make container isolation possible but written shorter.

Yes, this is because as a guest,

No, it's not a "guest". There's no virtualization going on, it's not Hyper-V based.
It's supposed to be just a different set of API made available by the NT kernel, in addition to win32.
The same way a OS/2-like API was available a long time ago.

it's not supposed to be interfacing directly with hardware, this includes block devices.

WSL's "linux-like" API is just one of the API exposed by the NT kernel.

in Win32 API mode, the kernel *does* expose to application some hardware including block devices (used by several user-space utilities. Including disk-image writers, and including user-mode tools to access Ext2/3,ReiserFS, etc.)

in WSL mode, ELF are just regular applications running on top of the kernel. But they don't get access to block devices.
Neither in kernel-mode (forget about installing a linux filesystem driver)
nor in user-mode (no FUSE for you).

They don't get access to USB (libusb works on Linux, work in Win32, but not in WSL).
They don't get access to tons of things.

(We could add : no DRM gfx stack, you're limited to X forwarding over SSH, so no wayland compositing either)

Again..... hardware.

Well okay, I was excessively condesning this one (the normal path is DRM(kernel API) -> DRI(user-land component) -> Mesa(OpenGL and co) -> Wayland)
But, compositing is *entirely* user-space on Linux.

It requires OpenGL, and a few extensions.
(NVidia wasn't providing them, until recently, when they started providing a different set than anyone else, forcing Wayland to feature different paths depending on the hardware.)

It's a normal userland library, whose call are availble to Win32 application (say, Quake3), but not in WSL.
Same goes for Vulkan.

Android userspace requires, among direct hardware access, non-mainline kernel extensions....

Android userspace is the whole reason Microsoft started the thing that is WSL now.
- Direct hardware access : not in any way more than what any other Windows application would ask access for.
- And whether Binder IPC is part of the mainline kernel or not has absolutely nothing to do with WSL. WSL does not use any bit of the Linus kernel. It just tries to expose the same API to applications. Binder IPC not being present in upstream vanilla kernel has nothing to do with microsoft not providing the API in WSL.

You have a very strong opinion about something that you apparently have very little knowledge about.

I've been successfully using WSL to run scientific computing software on Windows.
I've been following the various blog post of Microsoft on the subject.
I might have a tiny bit more experience and knowledge than you presume.

I'm just point out that currently WSL is just basically some high-level file I/O and some network socket binding and that's about it.

Which covers lots of devs' use-case, and end-user simple use-case (As said above, it worked for us). But that's about it.

Re:Missing API

[DamnOregonian]

No, it's not a "guest". There's no virtualization going on, it's not Hyper-V based. It's supposed to be just a different set of API made available by the NT kernel, in addition to win32. The same way a OS/2-like API was available a long time ago.

The WSL operates as a container within NT. Containers have long been referred to as guests, since the early day of containers, even.
The WSL isn't a "personality" of NT. It is a linux kernel implemented within an NT process. It is in essence, a hypervisor layer offering a bridge to actual NT syscalls.
So yes, it is a guest.

WSL's "linux-like" API is just one of the API exposed by the NT kernel.

I'm not really sure what you mean by this. It's an API exposed by the kernel in the same way that WINE, via binfmt and page 0 mapping is "just one of the APIs exposed by the Linux kernel". I guess you could argue that, but 99 out of 100 operating system engineers would simply say you don't know what your'e talking about.

But, compositing is *entirely* user-space on Linux.

So?? it's user-space because the kernel hardware access layer allows for it.
Making a bridge between a DRM interface and whatever driver is running on Windows, while possibly achievable, would be a mess. DRM components are highly specialized. They're closely tied to the card. DRM and DRI implementations are closely paired, which is why Mesa comes with card-family-specific drivers.

Android userspace is the whole reason Microsoft started the thing that is WSL now.

Correct.

- Direct hardware access : not in any way more than what any other Windows application would ask access for.

Untrue. Android's userspace often hinges upon user-space software components that use direct access to /dev/mem, direct access to block devices, and the existence of certain hardware interface entries in /proc and /sys. It doesn't have to, but it often does. Bare emulator android doesn't require those, of course, but it also has all kinds of fine tailoring to its emulator environment. As a test, I invite you to attempt to boot an android image on KVM with nothing but a linux kernel. You can't. It will take work. The same work could be made to make android's user-space bootable on WSL.

- And whether Binder IPC is part of the mainline kernel or not has absolutely nothing to do with WSL. WSL does not use any bit of the Linus kernel. It just tries to expose the same API to applications. Binder IPC not being present in upstream vanilla kernel has nothing to do with microsoft not providing the API in WSL.

Nobody said it did have anything to do with the Linux kernel, except their current target implementation is the linux kernel. Nothing stops them from implementing Binder, or ASHMEM for older version of android. They just haven't. But that's hardly a critique for their implementation of Linux, as those things are *not* Linux. They are android Linux kernel extensions.

I've been successfully using WSL to run scientific computing software on Windows.

Let me find a cookie for you...

I've been following the various blog post of Microsoft on the subject.

Lots of people follow things they don't fully understand.

I might have a tiny bit more experience and knowledge than you presume.

Possible.

I'm just point out that currently WSL is just basically some high-level file I/O and some network socket binding and that's about it.

You are *completely* wrong. And the fact that you say that tells me you don't actually follow the blog very well at all.
While those are absolutely components of the bridge in question, what's required for bringing in a foreign format binary, linking, and executing it, along with creating a bridge for APIs with no analogs is quite large.
I could explain all the technical reasons you are, but I leave that to your own discovery.

CCL0

[raymorris]

> done my best to say I retain no copyright over this code, and it can be considered public domain.

In Europe "public domain" means something rather different than it does in the US. You can't legally disclaim your copyright in some jurisdictions. Creative Commons 0 license is a good way to meet that objective, because it's designed to give users maximum freedom, with the laws of different jurisdictions in mind.

WTFPL is VERY short license that does the same, though less effectively and in a more entertaining way.

Re:CCL0

[DamnOregonian]

I was advised of the same thing in the past by some people who wanted to use my code in an open-source project. I told him he was more than welcome to slap a creative commons license on it, or re-license it however he saw fit. He wasn't comfortable doing it still, so I slapped a creative commons license on it for him. No biggy. It is stupid that I just can't renounce copyright on my work, though

Thanks, btw. Also, suits, compliance work

[raymorris]

Btw thanks for contributing.

Another thing I've run into has been wanting to use a chunk of code for work and it's pretty apparent that the author intended it to be free for anyone to use. For compliance with whatever, management has to have records showing what license we have for all of our code, with some documentation that we are complying with licenses. A company lawyer checks licenses to make sure we know what can mix with what. We wouldn't want to accidentally mix GPLv2 or GPLv3 code in with our "secret sauce" proprietary code. They get real nervous about "Damn Oregonian said it's cool". Their form has a checkbox for Creative Commons.

Re:Thanks, btw. Also, suits, compliance work

[DamnOregonian]

That actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the insight

There is no Linux OS

[Unknownus]

There is no such thing as “the Linux operating system”. “Linux” is an operating system kernel. Many different operating systems make use of it. Some also make use of GNU libraries and core utilities. The intersection of these two sets is noteworthy, for historical, philosophical, and practical reasons. I call them Linux/GNU-based operating system distributions, or Linux/GNU systems for short. (I put “Linux” first, since I see the slash as denoting a top-to-bottom hierarchy, and the kernel is the lowest level, on top of which every other component runs—including the GNU C Library.)

If there is an unavoidable need to shorten that description further, it should be to “GNU”, not to “Linux”. Using “Linux” (alone) to refer to an operating system, a system distribution, or a set thereof is conflictive. “Linux” is the name of a specific kernel. “GNU” is supposed to be an entire operating system. So one can at least say that these are incomplete versions of the GNU system.

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[Unknownus]

I notice that you didn't list a desktop environment or web browser.

The parent did list GNOME. And there is IceCat.