this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023

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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Ackchyually, not every Linux is a GNU Linux (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Some examples:

Android
Alpine: Alpine Linux is built around musl libc and busybox
glaucus: A simple and lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and toybox
Chimera (alpha stage): Chimera uses a novel combination of core tools from FreeBSD, the LLVM toolchain, and the Musl C library

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The GNU project gave birth to and spread the idea of free software worldwide. Would they not have started with the GNU operating system (they wrote a LOT of code) and doing activism then free software would surely not exist in the magnitude it does today.

The Linux kernel would not be this mainstream at all. Spiritually, this makes every popular free OS a GNU system. Even BSD was only freed because Stallman explicitly requested it. Credit where credit is due.

[+] kadu 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was not talking about the technical aspects, although there is much more GNU code than Linux code in most GNU/Linux distros.

doesn't change how Linux should be named or referenced

Of course the kernel should be referred to as Linux, anything else would be inaccurate :)

[+] kadu 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

the implication that any popular piece of libre software owes anything to Stallman by the mere virtue of being libre is totally wrong.

Considering Linux: Linux was proprietary at first, until Torvalds was inspired by the free software movement to free it, even using GNU's GPL. He later said that making Linux open source was the best decision he ever made, and I'm pretty sure that this would not have happened without the popularity of GNU and the movement reaching him. Linux would've been just another small proprietary kernel. So Torvalds owes a lot to Stallman.

Also, without GNU, Linux would not have been practically usable. Only after the hard work of combining Linux with the already huge codebase of GNU could Linux be meaningfully used and become popular.

In fact, Stallman's version of "open" is deeply intertwined with the American version of what it means to be "free" politically

Well, "open source" gives you exactly the same freedoms as "free software" gives you, so proponents of "open source" can't be that far off ideologically.

it has manifested so many times that there are several open projects with the entire goal of not using GNU components, code or licenses.

The code is already there and it's usable. Not using it because you don't like the person/organization seems a bit... misguided.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Arguably yes, but none of that is a good reason to put GNU in the name. I don't think even Stallman argued that Linux distributions should use the name GNU to give credit to GNU's influence.

The reason always given is a different one: it's because distros traditionally took a lot of code from the GNU project, which is a different matter. That reasoning does make some kind of sense, even though I don't fully agree.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not that they "took a lot of code from the GNU project", it's that "Linux" is the kernel, which is just the core of the OS, by itself it's not very useful. All the stuff around it that constitutes the rest of the operating system, like the command line and the vast majority of the commands you might run from there, are the GNU project. And I'm not even getting into desktop environments.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

GNU wants people to believe that Linux distros took the GNU project, replaced the unfinished GNU Hurd kernel with Linux, and called it a day. But distros collected a lot of other stuff too.

XFree86 and various window managers (back in the early 90s there were no free/open source desktop environments yet; KDE (1996) was the first I think, or at the very least earlier than Gnome. I don't know what you mean by "And I’m not even getting into desktop environments.": the way I see it, the topic X and everything running on it doesn't exactly support your point.

Editors vi and vim are not from GNU, and neither are mail clients Pine and Mutt, and the popular pager less.

There was probably quite a lot of BSD code in Linux distributions too.

So, I agree that calling a Linux distribution Linux is perhaps not entirely correct, but calling it GNU/Linux gives too much credit to GNU and too little to all the other people who wrote software that got included in Linux distros. GNU thinks their collection of software is essential enough to be included in the name, exclusively, and I don't agree. Don't get me wrong, GNU does deserve respect, and a lot of it, for all their accomplishments and contributions to the free source world in general and Linux distributions more specifically. But their insistence on the name GNU/Linux doesn't seem the best way to get that respect. It has always felt somewhat childish to me.

At the same time, no one is stopping the GNU project from creating their own operating system distribution using their userland tools and the Linux kernel, and calling it whatever they want, including GNU or GNU/Linux or GNU Guix System or whatever, I don't care. It would be quite hypocrytical if they wouldn't include Linux in the name though, since including Linux is equivalent to how they're asking others to include GNU.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

XFree86 and various window managers (back in the early 90s there were no free/open source desktop environments yet; KDE (1996) was the first I think, or at the very least earlier than Gnome.

As a point of historical interest, XFCE actually holds the title of the oldest extant DE project; it beat KDE to first release by about a year.

KDE was also famously not entirely open source when it was founded (Qt was closed until v2), which is why GNOME was founded (initially by the GNU Project) exactly for this reason.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I mostly agree with you, but I want to add that GNU was the leader from the start with the aim to create a complete, integrated operating system, rather than just a bunch of unrelated programs tossed together. It was not important to them that all the code was written by GNU, more so that there was a complete free system.

The idea was that one project worked on the display server, another on the desktop environment and so on, with the intent that all come together as "GNU".

And then Linux came and took the name of what GNU anticipated to become.