Eventually the proper name for the operating system will just be the full configuration.nix file, and we'll all rename our backups to "FullLegalName"OS
In this future, NixOS replaces all other distros as the defacto standard way to manage packages
If only nix wasn't such a pain to read, with all the conveniences it has like automatically looking up variables in all of the places available.
I understand the thought, but it feels like a lot of things done to simplify writing the code makes it way harder to read, and nix's design is decades old and it really shows
Also, there are sometimes issues with nix on macos, but I'm inclined to blame it on Apple
I made the joke that we’ll have SystemD/Linux replacing GNU/Linux and the number of “well asckuallys…” that popped up was simultaneously humorous and saddening.
https://github.com/uutils/coreutils - I'm waiting for a distro to switch to this, and clang base, and then musl. But glibc compatibility still lacking usually - one day!
What's the point? Move from a free license to a corporate cuck license is not something that values normal users, only if you are a corporation and you need a more permissive license for some reason
and a giant "fuck you" to Lennart Poettering for that. Not for creating an init system option - but for lobbying it into major distributions, instead of letting the users decide what they prefer. May he forever stub his toes on furniture.
Systemd is also horrible project because it has sd-dbus - a dbus implementation, that requires systemd. And some projects(like Anbox) when migrating from abstraction layer to direct use of dbus accidentally choosen sd-dbus instead of dbus. And devs genuenly belive that sd-dbus is not systemd-specific.
I'm not blindly hating. I despise the asshole responsible for the choice being taken away from me for many major distros and I wish him the plague for his manipulative approach in getting there.
The choice of making way more things than just the job of an init system harder than it has to be, especially when both flavors have to work. Feel free to call generous people who work for the community "assholes", but it's you who's that, if anyone
People who lobby with decision makers at major distributions for their software to be made the de-facto standard, instead of leaving it to the userbase, have a deeply anti-democratic mindset, and that makes them assholes.
I didn't know much about Linux when Systemd was adopted by Debian. And how would I make myself loud enough for people to notice? I still don't have the technical knowledge to completely grasp the operating reasons why people chose it, all I know is that systemd was meant to be an init system, and now it is no longer just an init system. It's in things it shouldn't be in. I'm sure people worked hard on it but one program edging out general alternatives shouldn't have been the way of development
You don't know the details of why it was chosen, yet you complain about people with obviously more knowledge on these topics having chosen it… reminds me of science deniers.
All I'm saying is that it shouldn't have gone beyond being an init system. Is it so hard to understand that one might want one application to do one thing and do it well?
Your opinion is that systemd is objectively better being more than an init system?
I prefer my software to work as single units which can communicate using standard, agnostic technologies to one another, not be a gigantic binary blob which is too hard for even some of the most brilliant people in the community to understand
It's not even a single binary blob. Shows your competence around this topic. Feel free to continue rambling and whatever without knowing anything about it.
That's weird as fuck. Major distros use it because it's the most functional. If the other ones were as good, they'd be used. There is no "lobbying" lol, it just makes the most technical sense and is significantly more than just an init system. I'd rather users have a system that "just works" instead, since arbitrary choices aren't necessarily a good thing.
Poettering is a douchebag, a Royal fucking asshole, who happened to code a usable, performant, well coded project hosting subprojects that does a better job for the users than all their predecessors.
He’s the guy people love to hate, and he’s really damn good.
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as GNU/Linux, is in fact, systemd/GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, systemd plus GNU plus Linux. GNU/Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning systemd init system made useful by the systemd daemons, shell utilities and redundant system components comprising a full init system as defined by systemd itself.
Many computer users run a modified version of the systemd init system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of systemd which is widely used today is often called GNU/Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the systemd init system, developed by the Red Hat.
There really is a GNU/Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the init system they use. GNU/Linux is the os: a collection of programs that can be run by the init system. The operating system is an essential part of an init system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete init system. GNU/Linux is normally used in combination with the systemd init system: the whole system is basically systwmd with GNU/Linux added, or systemd/GNU/Linux. All the so-called GNU/Linux distributions are really distributions of systemd/GNU/Linux!
No, Richard, it's 'Linux', not 'GNU/Linux'. The most important contributions that the FSF made to Linux were the creation of the GPL and the GCC compiler. Those are fine and inspired products. GCC is a monumental achievement and has earned you, RMS, and the Free Software Foundation countless kudos and much appreciation.
Following are some reasons for you to mull over, including some already answered in your FAQ.
One guy, Linus Torvalds, used GCC to make his operating system (yes, Linux is an OS -- more on this later). He named it 'Linux' with a little help from his friends. Why doesn't he call it GNU/Linux? Because he wrote it, with more help from his friends, not you. You named your stuff, I named my stuff -- including the software I wrote using GCC -- and Linus named his stuff. The proper name is Linux because Linus Torvalds says so. Linus has spoken. Accept his authority. To do otherwise is to become a nag. You don't want to be known as a nag, do you?
(An operating system) != (a distribution). Linux is an operating system. By my definition, an operating system is that software which provides and limits access to hardware resources on a computer. That definition applies whereever you see Linux in use. However, Linux is usually distributed with a collection of utilities and applications to make it easily configurable as a desktop system, a server, a development box, or a graphics workstation, or whatever the user needs. In such a configuration, we have a Linux (based) distribution. Therein lies your strongest argument for the unwieldy title 'GNU/Linux' (when said bundled software is largely from the FSF). Go bug the distribution makers on that one. Take your beef to Red Hat, Mandrake, and Slackware. At least there you have an argument. Linux alone is an operating system that can be used in various applications without any GNU software whatsoever. Embedded applications come to mind as an obvious example.
Next, even if we limit the GNU/Linux title to the GNU-based Linux distributions, we run into another obvious problem. XFree86 may well be more important to a particular Linux installation than the sum of all the GNU contributions. More properly, shouldn't the distribution be called XFree86/Linux? Or, at a minimum, XFree86/GNU/Linux? Of course, it would be rather arbitrary to draw the line there when many other fine contributions go unlisted. Yes, I know you've heard this one before. Get used to it. You'll keep hearing it until you can cleanly counter it.
You seem to like the lines-of-code metric. There are many lines of GNU code in a typical Linux distribution. You seem to suggest that (more LOC) == (more important). However, I submit to you that raw LOC numbers do not directly correlate with importance. I would suggest that clock cycles spent on code is a better metric. For example, if my system spends 90% of its time executing XFree86 code, XFree86 is probably the single most important collection of code on my system. Even if I loaded ten times as many lines of useless bloatware on my system and I never excuted that bloatware, it certainly isn't more important code than XFree86. Obviously, this metric isn't perfect either, but LOC really, really sucks. Please refrain from using it ever again in supporting any argument.
Last, I'd like to point out that we Linux and GNU users shouldn't be fighting among ourselves over naming other people's software. But what the heck, I'm in a bad mood now. I think I'm feeling sufficiently obnoxious to make the point that GCC is so very famous and, yes, so very useful only because Linux was developed. In a show of proper respect and gratitude, shouldn't you and everyone refer to GCC as 'the Linux compiler'? Or at least, 'Linux GCC'? Seriously, where would your masterpiece be without Linux? Languishing with the HURD?
If there is a moral buried in this rant, maybe it is this:
Be grateful for your abilities and your incredible success and your considerable fame. Continue to use that success and fame for good, not evil. Also, be especially grateful for Linux' huge contribution to that success. You, RMS, the Free Software Foundation, and GNU software have reached their current high profiles largely on the back of Linux. You have changed the world. Now, go forth and don't be a nag.
Mansplaining (a blend word of man and the informal form splaining of the gerund explaining) is a pejorative term meaning "(for a man) to comment on or explain something, to a woman, in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner"
It's not meant to be a stereotype applied to all men, just the a thing that some men do. It happens when a man assumes, perhaps subconsciously, that the woman he is speaking to is his intellectual inferior and would surely benefit from his opinion on whatever topic without any regard to her possible expertise on the topic, or even his own lack thereof. I've rarely witnessed it myself, but know women who have had to put up with it. Stereotypeing all men as "manslainers" would be rude, but mocking the men who actually behave that way is cool with me.
Even the term itself is a generalising stereotype. But it we are to have a somewhat serious discussion about it, I'd say It's a human condition, not a gendered condition. For example, given what is (not) known about our respective genders, you felt the need to explain this.
Who's obsessed? It's a joke about a dude attempting to man-splain even when they're wrong (I'm a dude and I've definitely seen it) and her turning the tables on him. That's it. To get defensive about that is... weird.
What are you talking about? I've witnessed it several times now at work, especially regarding programming or EE. Have you not yet suffered through a programmer condescendingly explain trivial matters to others, especially to women?
The post is obviously a hyperbole but it's not too far off from reality.
I've come to the conclusion that lumping in Android/ChromeOS to the broad term is a stat padding exercise. It makes the whole of Linux look like it's the most used OS in the world. But I'm OK with if you want to do so.
Call it GNU/Linux or Linux I don't care. I just refer to it as whatever distro I've hopped to for this month. So to me, right now I'm typing this on my laptop running Fedora 40 KDE and my mini-desktop is running Fedora 40 Atomic Budgie.
Can someone explain to me why people get upset about it being referred to as gnu+Linux or gnu/Linux? I'm not the most techy person, so maybe I'm missing something obvious, but like, objectively, isn't it just as much gnu code as Linux?
Again, not super techy, so please explain it to me like I'm the average Facebook aunt.
It's not a meme, people genuinely get upset about this. There was a post on a lemmy about the Comptia A+ study guide that had the question "What is GNU" with the answer of "It has to do with Linux" and people were writing essays on why this was not correct.
It isn't just a copypasta. As KnowYourMeme points out, it comes from Richard Stallman. Wikipedia has a good article about it here.
The term GNU/Linux is promoted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and its founder Richard Stallman. Their reasoning is that the GNU project was the main contributor for not only many of the operating system components used in the subsequent development of modern "Linux" systems, but also the associated free software philosophy.
The definition of "operating systems" is not really clear. Some say the operating system is what is called the "kernel". In the case of Linux operating systems, that kernel is called "Linux". Most people, however, say that the operating system is the whole thing you install. That is, the kernel + a bunch of other apps.
For example, in windows: notepad, internet explorer (now edge), paint, and all those apps are part of the operating system, that's what people mean when they say "windows". It's the whole package. Other less obvious parts are drivers for example.
In the case of Linux, most distributions ship with a bunch of GNU programs.
"Akschually people" argue that the GNU parts are as important (if not more) as Linux itself for the operating system, so they feel like all the hard work of the GNU developers is shadowed by the people that say "Linux".
I mostly understand all that so far. My main question is why people get upset at folks who refer to it as gnu/Linux? I've seen a couple arguments about it on reddit, but I'm not sure how common it is for people to be actually upset, or if it's more meme arguing. And I also I have no idea if I should say I use Linux or gnu/Linux since I use Fedora. Lol.
Not the person you originally asked, but the main reason is probably that referring to it as gnu/Linux is 1) already deeply associated with the Richard Stallman meme, to the point that referring to it in that way automatically comes across as either a joke or just a person being intentionally contrarian, and 2) just really weird sounding. In the minds of most people, there is no real reason to refer to it as GNU/Linux, because the actual operating system that does the things the operating system is expected to do - as in provide an API for syscalls, memory management, etc - is just "Linux." That it's routinely built alongside a set of core utilities designed and maintained by GNU is largely pointless. It'd be like referring to a hamburger as Buns/Hamburger or Buns+Hamburger. It's just...weird.
I'm one that finds the GNU/Linux naming annoying. I think calling it that is mostly silly, and am mostly annoyed at people who militantly argue it's the only way to describe a Linux OS (which aren't as common as they used to be).
To me, it's just overly verbose and pointless. For the most part, the GNU part has been implied for pretty much any mainstream form of Linux for decades. And even if it wasn't, who cares? Like, you wouldn't say that you run KDE/X11/wpasupplicant/neovim/docker/pacman/paru/systemd/GNU/Linux... Just saying KDE on Arch Linux is simpler and far more informative.
You refer to it as gnu/Linux, I won't be upset. I'll just slightly roll my eyes at your choosing to utter such an inconvenient word to make a point that doesn't really need to be made. But ultimately it's your breath that is being wasted not mine, so I don't really care.
You start arguing about it, then it gets annoying because give it a rest. I am perfectly aware that gnu is a core part of the whole thing, I just don't think it matters that I verbally pay tribute to it every single time I mention Linux. One word is enough to let you know wtf I'm talking about 99.999999% of the time, so I'm not adding another one that's already implied basically always. Still not upset though.
get upset about it being referred to as gnu+Linux or gnu/Linux
I would say it's the opposite. Certain people get angry if you do not refer to it as GNU/Linux. These people used to be technically correct.
GNU tried to rewrite Unix from scratch under the GNU GPL license. They view their copy left license (a license where if you incorporate any code under their license, you must release the code of your project as well) as morally superior. Their kernel didn't work out, but Linus Torvolds wrote another kernel for that GNU OS.
Obviously, GNU wanted credit for the OS components that were not Linux. That's where the copypasta about "What you are using is in fact GNU+Linux..." came from. GNU is the heart of the free software movement so they have their fans as well that of course would also make that claim.
Of course, as the meme in the OP suggests, you can now have a Linux distro that either does not use code owned by GNU or uses very little of their code. I would argue Ubuntu, Arch, etc still are technically GNU+Linux as they use GNU's C compiler, their C implementation, their userspace programs like Bash and grep, etc. However, Alpine uses alternatives to GNU software such as the musl C implementation.
Everyone has to hate something to feel better about themselves. I've tried alpine and no thanks. Its great if someone likes it but I'll just stick with what has been working for nearly 20 years.
My guess: it's a mouthful and not catchy. "Linux" is short, catchy and easy to pronounce. With "GNU/Linux" I don't even know if I'm supposed to spell out the GNU or pronounce it as a word, and I don't know if I'm supposed to say the "/" as "slash" or "plus" or "and" or if it should actually just be silent. I like to type how I speak, so if I don't know how to say it I'm not going to write it, and I'm not going to like reading it.
I can totally see the merits for "GNU/Linux" but don't underestimate the importance of catchiness. Maybe if it were shortened to "Ginux" it could stand a better chance, but then we'd have another gif situation.
Why are yall so mad about GNU and Free Software movement that it has started? Do you prefer to go to the old times? Apple microsoft fanboys?
Doing an entire OS and library to not use GNU it's like Apple doing the LLVM to not having to use the GCC. Instead you could be helping in the free software movement and development, but you prefer to go into a GNU vs. Linux fight.
The war should be all the free software movement vs the companies fake open source shit.
IDK, but I think it’s cool that people have the option. Maybe if you’re just coming up with new ways to do the same things, if they turn out to be better GNU can take inspiration and other distros can switch, benefitting everyone. Or it could just be as a fun hobby, many people do these sorts of things just because it’s what they enjoy doing. I guess it might be the sort of thing you do just to see if it can be done.
