It’s systemd+gnu+linux these days
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.
systemd
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.
It’s not just an init system. Look up what it does and why it exists, instead of blindly hating some software for some obsessive reason.
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.
I’m pissed off because he didn’t limit it to just being an init and made it into a much bigger mess
Hnng yeah thats right womansplain to me, whip out those big beautiful FACTS and correct me till I BLEED
wow, I could read and entire book of this. It’s a new genre of erotica I think. Very high quality
What’s the deal with Alpine not using GNU? Is it a technical or ideological thing? Or is it another “because we can” type distro?
It’s because we can to an extreme. Extremely lightweight distro. Very nice in containers and vms. One of the most loved ones out there.
I don’t know if people use it on desktop but with its minimal size it’s convenient as hell for docker images that don’t need a lot of dependencies installed
A typical ActivityPub+Lemmy post.
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.
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.
Certain people get angry if you do not refer to it as GNU/Linux.
I’ve never seen this happen. I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about these people, though.
It’s like veganism. I’ve never met a militant vegan, but I’ve heard tons of people complain about them.
I think it’s an effective strategy to avoid taking about real issues.
It would seem that GNU/Linux or Linux (whatever the user-accessing operating system is called) is the only OS that must mention its kernel. No one calls Windows the NT operating system, nor does anyone call Mac OS the Darwin operating system. So why should Linux be the exception?
When I think of GNU, I think of a project that had a very particular goal in mind: build an operating system that replaces Unix with entirely free software. The project got nearly all the way there, but before they got a usable kernel working, Torvalds licensed his kernel with the GPL. With the Linux kernel combined with GNU, we have an OS the GNU project set out to create. So why should Torvalds get all the credit? Without calling the OS GNU, most people don’t even know how or why it came to be.
I could see a valid argument to just simply call the OS GNU. It was the name the original team gave the project to have a fully functional OS made with entirely free software. True, Torvalds didn’t write Linux for GNU, but neither did the X Window System. A Kernel is essential for operation though, so I can see why the name GNU/Linux was proposed.
Maybe it just boils down to “Linux” simply sounding better when pronounced
Just like e.g. most people just say “velcro” and not “hook-and-loop” as the company Velcro itself wants people to call it.
And that’s a tragedy because that convenience of pronunciation comes with the cost of losing credit for the group that started the whole thing. Because only “Linux” is used, many people think Linus Torvalds developed/invented the entire operating system.
Hook and loop being called Velcro doesn’t hurt Velcro the same way because they still have all the credit for making it. The only problem they face is losing a trademark.
“The OS” doesn’t exist. The operating systems you’re talking about are called Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, RHEL, etc etc. The main work of making an actually usable OS from the various free software components others have written has always been done by the teams responsible for these products.
But we still need a way to refer to them collectively, and it used to make sense to call them “Linux” because they were pretty much the only operating systems that used the Linux kernel, but now that Android is the most widely used OS on the planet, it doesn’t anymore, and this alone is a reason to say GNU/Linux unless you want to include Android.
Systemd/GNU/Linux/GTK or Systemd/GNU/Linux/QT, really…
GTK being a part of GNU (at least originally)
Sure, I should have gone further.
Systemd/GNU libc/GNU Coreutils/GNU BASH/Linux/X11//GTK/GNOME
Systemd/GNU libc/GNU Coreutils/GNU BASH/Linux/X11/GTK/LXDE
Systemd/GNU libc/GNU Coreutils/Zsh/Linux/X11/GTK/GNOME
Systemd/GNU libc/GNU Coreutils/Zsh/Linux/X11/GTK/LXDE
SysVInit/musl/Busybox/tcsh/Linux/csh
Systemd/GNU libc/GNU Coreutils/Zsh/Linux/Wayland/QT/KDE Plasma
Systemd/GNU libc/GNU Coreutils/Zsh/Linux/Wayland/QT/LXQTetc, etc.
There are thousands of combinations of the possible layers needed to make an OS.
Because the thing people refer to when they say “linux” is not actually an operating system. It is a family of operating systems built by different groups that are built mostly the same way from mostly the same components (which, themselves are built by separate groups).
