Linux or GNU/Linux

[Ian Malone]

On 30 July 2012 15:48, Chris Tyler <chris at tylers.info> wrote:
> On Sun, 2012-07-29 at 23:53 -0700, John Wendel wrote:


> "Linux" is shorthand. "GNU/Linux" is still shorthand. I personally run
> GNU/Linux/Xorg/Apache/BSD/LibreOffice/MySQL/Mozilla, but don't usually
> refer to it that way, and that's still an abbreviation.
>
> The GNU project is awesome and deserves credit; so do all the other
> communities that have contributed [tens of millions of lines of code] to
> the free software and open source systems I use. Mentioning them all in
> the name of the system is awkward and impedes communication. Anyone who
> knows what I'm talking about knows about the FSF and the GNU Project;
> anyone who doesn't isn't enlightened by expanding the name.
>

I suppose the distinction is that a lot of the basic infrastructure of
the OS is GNU, the kernel isn't the whole thing, glibc is a big
component. So GNU/Linux is maybe more precise, but also a bit
redundant most of the time.

> I find that "Fedora" is pretty descriptive shorthand and identifies both
> the universe of software and the community I work with most closely;
> "Linux" also works for me personally.
>

I find it interesting that blogger's stats record OS types 'Windows',
'Mac', 'Ubuntu' and 'Other Unix'

-- 
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk