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Re: [LUG] What IS an operating system ?

 

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Tom Brough wrote:
|
| Then you need utilities (Ahh GNU)

You seem to have omitted things like libc, shells and binutils, which I
regard as somewhat closer to what I perceive as an operating system than
file utilities. Last I looked the libc project itself was huge, but no
one talks about it much.

| If I use Apache or MySQL or OpenOffice I don't hear anyone from the
| Apache team or the MySQL team or the OpenOffice team suggesting that I
| should call my operating system Apache/Linux or MySQL/Linux or
| OpenOffice/Linux.

These are all applications and run on more than one operating systems.

Whilst the GNU project set out to create a free software operating
system, and free software applications to run on it, the key
contributions are probably in the tools to build and link software, and
the implementation of the libraries to support the core standards for
the many languages and tools they provide.

i.e. the reason Apache and OpenOffice run on GNU/Linux at all, is that
GNU/Linux implements well enough the standards, such as POSIX, that
porting these applications to GNU/Linux was not too onerous. I'm not
sure on the history of MySQL it may have started on GNU/Linux and
migrated elsewhere.

| 4. I will not be offended by anyone who refers to this group as DCLUG,
| DCGLUG or any other derivative they feel comfortable with.

Me neither, for as long as the names are decent, legal and honest ;)

I prefer the term GNU/Linux.

If Neil comes across as enthusiastic for GNU, consider his perspective,
he is working on a GNU project (gnucash), for a GNU environment (GNOME),
written in C, preprocessed and compiled by GNU C compiler suite,
configured for each platform it runs on (Macos X, BSD, Solaris, HP-UX,
AIX, any others?, oh and GNU/Linux) by GNU autoconf tools, and an OS
called "Debian GNU/Linux".

He includes largely GNU include files, in his source, and links against
an extensive range of libraries many (most?) of which are part of the
GNU project. The restraints of writing portable code preclude him from
being directly involved in much "Linux" specific code (for this project)
unless it is part of the macro suite (usually written in m4 handled by
the GNU m4 processor).

Oh and the bits he has trouble with are Linux hardware support, and
XFree86 configuration. Just kidding.

For a similar perspective, write a "hello world" program (or use the GNU
projects "hello world" if you believe in code reuse), and try and figure
out which bits of the process of compiling and running it aren't part of
the GNU project.

Sure application development is fairly distinct from system development,
but many similar comments apply to system development.

It is fairly challenging these days to separate out GNU and Linux from
an end user, perspective, as a lot of system software has been written,
or re-written, primarily for the GNU/Linux combination. Similarly some
bits were rewritten largely outside of either project because people
just wanted a better version, although many of these borrowed from both,
hence comments in the documentation that Debian passwd includes extracts
from GNU su, and such like, and as a result are under the GNU GPL (which
is the really clever invention).

On a pragmatic note, I don't think end users care too much about names,
most people don't know much about any of this (or care), so the name
change won't matter to them. Indeed you are far more likely to migrate
people to free software with a few little steps be it OpenOffice,
Mozilla, or GNU applications.

Indeed to the uninitiated the GNU "free software" story of "sharing",
and the way the development process works, is far more approachable than
many aspects of comparing the technical advantages of one piece of
software over another, or even "what as Operating system is".

Oh dear I'm rambling again...
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