On Jul 20, 2008, Thomas Cameron <thomas.cameron@camerontech.com> wrote:

> You don't see them making asinine demands that we go around calling
> it Sendmail/Linux or Apache/Linux, do you?

> Inflammatory language like this does *not* make someone more likely to
> agree with you.

:-)

As for "demands", it's quite a misunderstanding to take the requests
to correct the "asinine demands" to the contrary as demands, rather
than as what they are: requests for cooperation, or at least respect,
from people who are hopefully not enemies of the Free Software
movement.

Of course there are those who *are* enemies of the movement, or the
FSF, or of RMS's, and who feel so strongly about any or all of them to
the point of disputing the request with excuses that they themselves
reject when presented as counter arguments.

Nobody is telling or demanding GNU/Linux systems to be named as such.
What I do, and what I know the FSF does, is to request people to not
refer to the combination as just Linux, for that's harmful to the Free
Software movement and unfair to the GNU project. Names that don't
refer to any other minor component of the operating system in
detriment of its major component are perfectly fine.

>> because Linux is an even smaller part of Fedora than GNU/Linux is.

> I don't think anyone on this list is claiming that Fedora == Linux.

No, but some people claim it's Linux, rather than GNU/Linux.

> I think what has been said over and over is that Fedora is a Linux
> distribution.

Exactly.

> The vast majority of the community and the industry calls
> Linux distributions just plain old "Linux."

Err... Let's see... Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE,
gNewSense, BLAG, Insigne GNU/Linux... I don't see any "Linux" without
"GNU/" in this list of names of GNU/Linux distributions.

I'm sure you can come up with some examples of distros, especially
commercial ones, that prefer not to promote the philosophy carried by
the GNU brand, but, seriously, "vast majority of the community"?!?

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Alexandre Oliva wrote:

>>> >> Bizarrely, it seems one has to pay for a "Live Hurd CD".
>
>> He might be inclined to charge for shipping and handling
>
> I agree any reasonable person would. But he seemed to object to the
> idea of having to pay anything for Free Software. I thought I'd try
> his implied offer and hope he'd see how bizarre his surprise was.

Sigh.
I didn't "object" to paying for a CD.
I simply pointed out that the long article on Hurd did not mention -
what I would have thought would be the first thing to mention -
namely, where one could download this OS.
It only listed places where one can buy a CD.
Surely 99% of the people who might try Hurd would have broadband access?



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Alexandre Oliva wrote:

> That people made this silly and childish mistake of renaming the GNU
> operating system to Linux is unfair *and* it works against the very
> evangelization you claim to support.

There is no such thing as the GNU operating system,
unless you mean GNU/Hurd, which no-one would call Linux.


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Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> trying (fruitlessly it seems) to get some
> consistency in the use of terminology,

That's what I'm trying to achieve too. Or if it isn't possible to get people
to agree on terminology, then I'd like to at least understand what people
mean when they use a word. To that end I'm asking people what they mean when
they say "Linux", but so far I'm not getting very clear anwers.

Would you like to tell us where *you* draw the line? What is part of Linux in
your mind, and what is not part of Linux?

Björn Persson

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Colin Paul Adams wrote:
> I myself almost always say Linux. It is just quicker.

And would you like to tell us what *you* mean when *you* say "Linux"? What is
part of Linux in your mind, and what is not part of Linux?

Björn Persson

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>>>>> "Björn" == Björn Persson <listor3.rombobeorn@tdcpost.se> writes:

Björn> Colin Paul Adams wrote:
>> I myself almost always say Linux. It is just quicker.

Björn> And would you like to tell us what *you* mean when *you*
Björn> say "Linux"? What is part of Linux in your mind, and what
Björn> is not part of Linux?

There is the kernel.

But then there is also all the supporting infrastructure, such as X11,
GNOME, sendmail, etc. etc.

So I may mean different things at different times. I talk about
running Linux. This is a shorthand for running GNOME in X11 with a
Linux kernel plus lots of other software. Not all of that software
comes from Linus Torvalds, Red Hat or the FSF. Some of it isn't even
GPL .
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Preston Lancashire

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Björn Persson wrote:

Colin Paul Adams wrote:

I myself almost always say Linux. It is just quicker.


And would you like to tell us what *you* mean when *you* say "Linux"? What is
part of Linux in your mind, and what is not part of Linux?




Linux has always been just a kernel. But what you usually describe is a
complete distribution. I can't recall ever having any reason to have a
name for a subset of a distribution that only included the GNU
components and the kernel. Can someone who uses this term explain the
circumstances where it is useful? This subset rarely/never exists by
itself and it doesn't make much sense to name it, although you might
need to talk about the kernel specifically or the complete distribution
as a whole.


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Thomas Cameron wrote:
> I'm talking about Linux
> as a Linux distribution in very generic terms. Whether it's Fedora,
> Ubuntu, Slackware, whatever.
[...]
> > so you probably consider Debian, Gentoo and
> > others different versions of Linux or something like that.
>
> Of course.

OK, all distributions are equal, and they're all Linux in your mind.

> > I guess your idea of Linux is "all software that is included in at least
> > one distribution based on the kernel Linux" – a bit narrower than Joe
> > Klemmer's concept of "all software that can run in a Unix-like
> > environment".
>
> No,

OK, so that's not it.

> the current most common use of the term "Linux" really talks more
> about a Linux distribution with all the associated applications. Many
> if not most of those apps have zero relationship to the GNU project.

How about this then: There isn't one set of software that is Linux. There are
many distributions based on Linus Torvalds' kernel. They are all Linux, but
they're different Linuxes. All the software that is included in one of them
is part of that Linux, but you don't apply the name "Linux" to the superset
of all the software in all the Linuxes. Is that more like it?

But in that case, how do I know which of the Linuxes you mean when you say
something about "Linux"?

> You don't see
> them making asinine demands that we go around calling it Sendmail/Linux
> or Apache/Linux, do you?

When people talk about Sendmail they typically call it "Sendmail", and I don't
think anyone believes that Linus Torvalds wrote Sendmail, so I don't see why
the Sendmail Consortium would complain.

> I don't think anyone on this list is claiming that Fedora == Linux. I
> think what has been said over and over is that Fedora is a Linux
> distribution. The vast majority of the community and the industry calls
> Linux distributions just plain old "Linux."

Fedora isn't Linux, it's a Linux distribution, but everyone calls all Linux
distributions "Linux", so Fedora should be called "Linux" even though it
isn't Linux? Is that what you're saying? Unfortunately that doesn't help much
with defining what Linux *is*.

Or do you mean that Fedora isn't *equal* to Linux, it's just *a* Linux, but
everyone calls all Linuxes "Linux"?

> It's easy, it makes sense,
> everyone knows what is being said.

No, that's exactly the problem. I do *not* know what people are saying when
they say things about "Linux", because I don't know what "Linux" means to
them.

I'm more and more getting the impression that "Linux" is a word without a
meaning, or with a meaning just as vague as "thingy". There seems to be lots
of people who think they know what Linux is, but when asked to explain what
Linux is they just answer with some hand-waving and a lot of arguments for
why it shouldn't be called "GNU/Linux".

Should a thingy be called a thingy or a doodad? How can we answer that
question without first specifying what thingy we're talking about?

Björn Persson

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Björn Persson wrote:


Fedora isn't Linux, it's a Linux distribution, but everyone calls all Linux
distributions "Linux", so Fedora should be called "Linux" even though it
isn't Linux? Is that what you're saying? Unfortunately that doesn't help much
with defining what Linux *is*.


Or do you mean that Fedora isn't *equal* to Linux, it's just *a* Linux, but
everyone calls all Linuxes "Linux"?


It is kind of like the difference between a car, a Ford, and a
Mustang. A car does not have to be a Ford to be a car. A Ford doea
not have to be a Mustang. But it is still correct to call a Mustang
a car.


Mikkel
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for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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Les Mikesell wrote:
> Linux has always been just a kernel. But what you usually describe is a
> complete distribution.

And when you talk about a complete distribution, do you call it "Linux" or do
you call it "Fedora" or "CentOS" or "Slackware"?

> I can't recall ever having any reason to have a
> name for a subset of a distribution that only included the GNU
> components and the kernel. Can someone who uses this term explain the
> circumstances where it is useful? This subset rarely/never exists by
> itself and it doesn't make much sense to name it, although you might
> need to talk about the kernel specifically or the complete distribution
> as a whole.

The application I work on in my job uses some Linux-specific features and some
GNU-specific ones. It wouldn't be nearly as good if we'd use only POSIX
interfaces. We could probably port it to one of the BSDs for example, and we
might achieve similar performance there, but currently it requires GNU and
Linux so it could be described as a GNU/Linux application.

But I mostly agree. I often make statements about Linux that have nothing to
do with GNU, and then I say "Linux". I also often make statements about
various GNU programs, and then I say "Bash" or "GCC" or "Emacs" or whatever.
When I say something about a whole distribution, it's usually not true for
all distributions, and then I say "Ubuntu" or "Gentoo" and so on.

But sometimes I want to say something about all distributions that are based
on GNU and Linux. Then I call them "GNU/Linux-based distributions". If I
wanted to include Debian GNU/Hurd and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD too, but not
FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD, then I'd say "GNU-based distributions".

Björn Persson

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