1 yr. ago • 88%

Ackchyually, not every Linux is a GNU Linux

Some examples:

Android
Alpine: Alpine Linux is built around musl libc and busybox
glaucus: A simple and lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and toybox
Chimera (alpha stage): Chimera uses a novel combination of core tools from FreeBSD, the LLVM toolchain, and the Musl C library

51 comments

"I use Linux as my operating system," I state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. He swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision. "Actually", he says with a grin, "Linux is just the kernel. You use GNU+Linux!' I don't miss a beat and reply with a smirk, "I use Alpine, a distro that doesn't include the GNU coreutils, or any other GNU code. It's Linux, but it's not GNU+Linux.

The smile quickly drops from the man's face. His body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth and drops to the floor with a sickly thud. As he writhes around he screams "I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT'S STILL GNU!" Coolly, I reply "If windows was compiled With gcc, would that make it GNU?" I interrupt his response with "-and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. Even you were correct, you wont be for long."

With a sickly wheeze, the last of the man's life is ejected from his body. He lies on the floor, cold and limp. I've womansplained him to death.

136
- I have read this a hundred times and it's still as beautiful as the day I first read it.
  
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  First time for me — I look forward to finding it again someday
  
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- Beautiful
  
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- brought tears to my eyes
  
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Also, Unix ≠ Linux.

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- It’s only called UNIX if it comes from the Santa Cruz region of California, otherwise it’s a sparkling POSIX.
  
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  Fucking hell, I'm stealing this
  
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- Technically, no, indeed. On paper, most (outside UNIX purists) refer to it (and MINIX) as Unix-like, as they don't share much from UNIX outside the underlying philosophy. Ritchie himself still thought of Linux as mostly Unix in essence. Same kind of Ayckchyually, basically lol
  
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- Linux is not Unix
  
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  That's what i said.
  
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  I can see the value of this. Linux \not \in Unix, and also Linux \not = Unix.
  
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- Linux stands for Linux Is Not UniX
  
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given Android, it might even be that most linuxes aren't GNU/linux

When Android came out, it really hit this and the limits of the GPLvII home for me

33
And not all GNU is Linux! Beyond the world famous GNU Hurd, there's also Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, and Nexenta (GNU/Illumos, which is the OpenSolaris kernel).

I think the most esoteric of them, though, is GNU Darwin (GNU/XNU). Darwin is the open source parts of OS X, including its kernel, XNU. There used to be an OpenDarwin project to try to turn Darwin into an actual independent operating system, but they failed, and were superseded by PureDarwin, which took a harder line against anything OS X getting into the system. GNU Darwin took it one step further and removed just about all of Darwin (except XNU) and replaced it with GNU instead.

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Android is exactly why I think it's important not to ditch GNU in GNU/Linux. I don't care about codelines, I care about the philosophy.

16
- Philosophy probably did play a significant role: Google could have chosen BusyBox, which is GPL licensed, if their concern was solely the GNU user space’s comparative bloat.
  
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Yes, officer. This blasphemer right here.

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Chimera (alpha stage): Chimera uses a novel combination of core tools from FreeBSD, the LLVM toolchain, and the Musl C library

Who was the incredible smart person to name a new distro with a similar name to another, older, Linus distro? ChimeraOS
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- Honestly when I first read that I just assumed that ChimeraOS decided to go in an new direction. Also it's not like ChimeraOS is some small super niche distro it seems relatively popular.
  
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- Also, on their main page:
  
  Chimera aims to eliminate legacy cruft where possible to deliver a modern, general purpose, fully featured operating system that is simple but complete.
  
  While on their Community page:
  
  Our primary means of communication is IRC. [...] We ask you to refrain from using advanced Matrix features, such as reactions, editing, message removal, markup and multi-line messages while using the chat. This is because users on IRC side will either not see that or it will clutter the channel. Stick to simple, plain text messages, like you would if you were on IRC.
  
  Do you think they're aware of the irony of relying on crusty old IRC while touting about Linux having legacy cruft and their code being better?
  
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  @entropicdrift would you mind elaborating how the choice of a chat protocol is connected to technical aspects of an operating system? i feel like i'm not galaxy brain enough for that
  
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- @ChristianWS @davel https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq#what-about-chimeraos
  
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The fsf website actually separates distros. There is GNU/Linux and nonGNU/linux

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I would argue that Android has very little to do with Linux. You don't even have to go far into the quirks of the userland, the kernel is a heavily modified flavor of it to which the linux documentation simply does not apply, or not really accurately.

With recent versions it might be better now, but holy guacamole it is very bad in those before that, basically it's filled with nonstandard modifications (well, probably depends on what you call standard, though..)

9
- android works on upstream kernel fine. in fact, you can even run a linux chroot inside of a booted android perfectly fine. android, especially newer ones, really arent that far off normal linux at all anymore, hell Waydroid is literally running android inside of an LXC container with some patches to get proper integration with the host working
  
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Its nonGNU/linux

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Blasphemy!

/s

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For people who still don't grasp the difference:

GNU/Linux - for example debian

Linux - for example kernel (android)

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- These examples didn't actually clear anything up for me 🙃
  
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Alpine's great, it's my go-to lightweight/server distro, just really wish they had an option for glibc, musl is just way too limiting for a daily driver...

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- Doesnt play ball with Zerotier anymore.
  
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The GNU project gave birth to and spread the idea of free software worldwide. Would they not have started with the GNU operating system (they wrote a LOT of code) and doing activism then free software would surely not exist in the magnitude it does today.

The Linux kernel would not be this mainstream at all. Spiritually, this makes every popular free OS a GNU system. Even BSD was only freed because Stallman explicitly requested it. Credit where credit is due.

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- Cool. It doesn't change how Linux should be named or referenced, and still doesn't mean all Linux systems depend on GNU.
  
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  I was not talking about the technical aspects, although there is much more GNU code than Linux code in most GNU/Linux distros.
  
  doesn't change how Linux should be named or referenced
  
  Of course the kernel should be referred to as Linux, anything else would be inaccurate :)
  
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- Arguably yes, but none of that is a good reason to put GNU in the name. I don't think even Stallman argued that Linux distributions should use the name GNU to give credit to GNU's influence.
  
  The reason always given is a different one: it's because distros traditionally took a lot of code from the GNU project, which is a different matter. That reasoning does make some kind of sense, even though I don't fully agree.
  
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  It's not that they "took a lot of code from the GNU project", it's that "Linux" is the kernel, which is just the core of the OS, by itself it's not very useful. All the stuff around it that constitutes the rest of the operating system, like the command line and the vast majority of the commands you might run from there, are the GNU project. And I'm not even getting into desktop environments.
  
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I take GNU Linux to be GNU-flavoured Linux. Musl and Busybox still behave like GNU, since they were written as alternatives to GNU (at least busybox). Alpine belongs in the same category as regular Linux distros - unlike Android.

More important than this distinction though, is the philosophy behind them. Despite the difference in license, Musl and Busybox still value freedom, like GNU. Android is a monstrosity - a wolf in sheep's clothing. A malware masquerading as open source.

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- This takes the alternate history to a crazy new level.
  
  GNU was written to mimic / replace UNIX—POSIX specifically. The standard core utilities and the idea of a C library pre-date GNU.
  
  BSD was already a complete and free UNIX system when the GNU project was started and long before the Linux kernel was conceived.
  
  MUSL is in no way “GNU-flavoured”. It is an an alternative C library sure. That is what Glibc is. They are both implementations of the same standard. MUSL prides itself in being more standards compliant. What critics dislike about MUSL is that it is not enough like GNU.
  
  BusyBox is an alternative to the standard UNIX userland. I think it is fair to say it is an alternative to the GNU utils as those are the most common but the history of most of these tools goes back further than GNU.
  
  Would you consider FreeBSD a GNU-flavoured system too?
  
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Aaaand Redox. Which is not Linux, but may some time in some Future replace it.

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- 🤞 I’d rather chew glass than deal with C again.
  
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  I really think the existing maintainers need to strengthen this. A microkernel sounds like a very good concept, and new college graduates often dont know C or even C++ anymore. Me included, if I would learn a low level language I see no purpose for anything but Rust
  
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