that old GNU/Linux argument

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jul 19, 2008, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> 
>>> The core of the distribution is the kernel, called Linux.
>> 
>> What about GNU *core*utils? :-P :-D
>> 
>> And then, again, what if you remove Linux, install kFreeBSD or
>> OpenSolaris in its stead, rebuild glibc to export the same ABI but use
>> the system calls of the new kernel, and reboot?  How come that would
>> still be Linux?

> It wouldn't be Linux.

With all those "Linux" applications, libraries and tools, even lots of
GNU programs built "for Linux"?  How could it possibly not be "Linux"?
:-)

Oh wait, maybe it wasn't before either.  That would explain it.

> It might be http://www.nexenta.org/os.

Not quite the scenario I described.

Nexenta actually rebuilds all packages.  What I proposed was to
rebuild *only* GNU libc to retarget the entire system to the
replacement kernel.  In some cases, not even that is required, for
some kernels can emulate Linux system calls.  Then, the
allegedly-Linux operating system runs pretty much unmodified without
any Linux around.  Odd, wouldn't you say?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}