PC Magazine (online) on Linux & Linuxworld

PC Magazine Online has published some articles about Open Source, Linux world and reviews of Slackware, Caldera, Debian, Redhat, Gecko, and Apache. Worth a read. Those articles will be published on the next issue of PC Magazine in the March 23rd issue. (thanks to Eli Marmor for telling me about it).

Comments

GNU/Linux good -- nomenclature IMPORTANT!

[jimduchek]

RMS is an interesting personality. I don't think he wants the GNU in there for personal reasons. I think, really, he couldn't care less if noone knew who HE was. But he's right in wanting GNU in there, for the reasons he says. People _need_ to be exposed to what the Free Software Foundation stands for. People are really getting the wrong idea from people who advocate Open Source (TM), I think people need to see and understand free software. _freedom_ is what it's about really, not openness -- openness is just a part of freedom. While I love Linux and Linus as much as the next guy (probably more than most ;) and I see nothing wrong with commercialization, I'd like to see the GNU in there. For several reasons.
Firstly, to give credit where credit is due! The free software movement is often enough about ego and contributions from the masses, and it's _very_ important to give credit to the people who provide a certain service. While there are definitely other parts to my system than GNU and Linux, they are by far the MAIN parts that we can all agree on.
Secondly, to expose people to GNU. I know a lot of people who USE Linux-kerneled systems who haven't heard of GNU or if they have, don't really know what it is. The FSF is the most important free software organization.
Thirdly, it provides an understanding of how what some people call 'Linux' really works. I run WindowMaker. Often enough non-geeks will ask me 'Is that Linux?' I don't know what to say to this question. If I say no, I have to go through a pretty long explanation they won't understand. If I say yes, I feel as if I'm lying to them. If we call the system GNU/Linux it'll make things a little more understandable.

Just as a note, perhaps we should refer to our systems as 'Debian' or 'Red Hat'.. since that's really the name of an entire OS.