Jonathan Hutchins ([email protected]) wrote:

On Tuesday 26 October 2004 12:42 pm, D. Joe wrote:

...

... they screw-up [by] calling Linux an "operating system" rather than a kernel.

Linux is more than an Operating System or a Kernel. It's a philosophy and for some people a lifestyle, maybe even a religion.

Seriously, when most people say "Linux" they mean the GNU Linux Suite with a FOSS GUI, desktop, and a load of useful software - in short, they mean a whole distro, not a kernel.

I believe Stallman was the one to ask it be called GNU/Linux because of the GNU utilities added onto the Linux kernel. However, we now have a melting pot of all sorts of GUI libraries, desktop environments, server applications, etc. It's no longer just a kernel and unix-like utilities.

My favorite clip I read recently was about Debian's package management system, dpkg, which used to stand for "Debian GNU/Linux package manager." Now, dpkg is used is non-Debian and non-Linux environments, so it no longer stands for anything. Maybe they could rename it to asdf and make it easier to type. =)

Jeremy

"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.

Vote Linux! (I'm Tux, and I approved this message.) [Paid for by the Linux for Operating System Committee]

On Tuesday 26 October 2004 04:01 pm, Zscoundrel wrote:

The part I love is when they say "converting original ideas into software products". They do not really do that. They buy (or steal) software from other firms and then coerce them into signing contracts with non-disclosure clauses so they can CLAIM it is their own work. . .

Well, they did do a ground-up rewrite of the mosaic code for their second release of Internet Explorer - something that would be a vast improvement if Mosaic were to do the same, especially with modern considerations and security.

There are still bugs in Mozilla that I recognise from very early releases of Mosaic.

On Wednesday 27 October 2004 09:30 am, D. Joe Anderson wrote:

On Tue, Oct 26, 2004 at 04:47:40PM -0500, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:

...

[Microsoft] did do a ground-up rewrite of the mosaic code for their second release of Internet Explorer - something that would be a vast improvement if Mosaic were to do the same, especially with modern considerations and security. There are still bugs in Mozilla that I recognise from very early releases of Mosaic.

Isn't that what Firefox is about?

I don't think so. From what I understand it's just regular Mozilla that's been stripped of some "features" and cleaned up a lot. Not a ground-up rewrite.

This is PC code that dates back to 1992. Mozilla has never gone through and integrated all the accumulated cruft, or re-written the code that says "if 2+2=5 the answer=4". The patches that fix patches that fix problems that are still in the code are still in the code.