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Posts: 226 | Thanked: 59 times | Joined on Sep 2010 @ Mierlo, Netherlands
#22
Originally Posted by Alex Atkin UK View Post
Its only wrong if you are coming from the GNU side, for everyone else its perfectly viable. The fact there is such a big debate what is the right way to refer to Linux is proof enough to me that there is no wrong/right way, its just the GNU folks spitting their dummies out because want the recognition for making Linux what it is today. I'm not saying they do not deserve that recognition, but if its at the cost of confusing the end-users and as such stifling the use of Linux by novices, they are just hurting themselves in the long run.

By their logic Ubuntu is GNU/Linux but Maemo or DD-WRT is not, because they are using BusyBox and so the core OS may not be using GNU at all. Exactly how much GNU codebase do we need to be running to call it GNU/Linux? What should we call Maemo and DD-WRT? By branding them all as Linux you get the point across, that they are for all intents are purposes the same tools, even if the underlying code might be from different sources. The end user doesn't need to know if they are using GNU coreutils or not and in fact it just confuses them. Do we really want to get back to the confusion of the DOS ages? That won't help anyone.

I mean just think, its perfectly possible to start off with a none-GNU Linux (is Maemo an example of this?) and then turn it into GNU/Linux by installing the GNU coreutils, etc. That is just plain confusing and should not mean you suddenly have to refer to your distribution differently unless its specifically relevant to a problem you are having. If that is the "right" way to do things, I am happy to be doing it wrong.
I personally don't like their ideas very much, but it's stupid to call the OS Linux anyway... Well, if it's a shortcut, it's OK, but from what you wrote, I think you don't realize what important things GNU has done...

The OS you are probably using, and I am using on my PC, N900 and servers I work on, is GNU. For me I can say Debian, which means Debian GNU/(Linux OR kFreeBSD OR whatever the kernel is).

Right now, developers are doing most stuff, so we can't say all packages are for GNU, but think of all the licenses... Where does GPL come from?

Saying Linux is not right... If you know that it's a shortcut, it's cool... But people are starting to forget what the OS they are using is, and that's bad...

I'm also against saying something like Debian GNU.. That's totally wrong, because you are not mentioning the kernel, which plays a very important role.

Maemo is based on the standard gcc library.

If you like to say Linux, do so, but personally I'd like to let people whom I think deserve it, know about the fact that it's GNU/Linux, not Linux.

Think of it as a Maemo-guy, giving info to another Maemo-guy.
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Last edited by AMLJ; 2011-02-20 at 16:22.