"D. Joe" [email protected] wrote:
Also, they screw-up (whether intentionally, or out of negligent ignorance) the difference between non-proprietary and non-commercial; as well as calling Linux an "operating system" rather than a kernel. And, they don't acknowledge at all that
I'll go further. Linux isn't even 'a' kernel. It's a toolkit that allows someone to build a kernel, around which an operating system can be constructed. That's why we have Debian, Fedora, Slackware, Gentoo, and variations thereof.
And just like everything else about Linux, it's in keeping with, and in many cases an extension of, the design philosophy of Unix. Unix was supposed to be a very minimalist OS, under the theory that more complicated things could be done at higher levels. That's why we have the notion that X is separate from *nix itself, and window managers, desktop environments, etc. galore. Call it 'forking' if you want, but I call it healthy competition, which allows SOME combination of all these components to be optimal for any particular situation. And companies like Red Hat, IBM, and Novell are showing the corporate world that this works better than the status quo. The only thing slowing it down is inertia, which, as Newton pointed out, goes both ways. Unless some legal shenanigans (software patents, required 'trusted' platform, etc.) can be concocted to derail the momentum, it's going to happen.
And because Linux is so many different things, it will assimilate the better ideas that come along, and improve from within. Precisely because it's about empowering people to use what's best for them, as long as those ideas are allowed within Linux, nothing else outside it can be better.
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