Ok when did linux become an OS? Grammar, please, we are English.

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ade

A

ade

Did I miss something, when did linux become more than a kernel?

Everyone seems to want to call it an operating system when it isn't.
If you wish use the GNU project please call the OS 'GNU/Linux' which is nearly a POSIX standard OS.

And while I'm whining a bit more.
X-Window has no 's' on the end. Please remember this. Keith and Jim get quite upset when their XFree86 efforts are degraded to 'X-Windows'.
 
Originally posted by Nozzer
And when did trolls become articulate?
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I don't describe myself as a 'troll'. Far from it.

Surely a troll comment is akin to:

'w0000t you twits use like a naff OS cos like it got a penguin like for a mascot like init whoop yeah. Tie me kangaroo down sport."

hmm.
It just pains me to see people using the wrong terms when they should know better.
Please please don't take this as a troll comment, it was never intended to be. Mearly a tongue in check way to point out that people are starting to fall deeper into shortform language. It's a small one man stand for 'Campaign for Better English in Computing'.

I'm fed up having to see elite hacker's speech. Perhaps the 'good old days of English' have went, but maybe we can correct this at source.

It is easy to reduce GNU/linux to just linux but you lose the half the creditation in doing so. The FSF has worked hard on behalf of the opensource community and yet get swept aside because people are becoming lasier with every generation. It's getting to the state when people idly remark about their code as GPL'ed but forget to say which version.
I don't think it's too much to ask people to type the full name of the item they are describing. The children of today grow up confussed without a keyboard infront of them, and are capable of more than 40 words per minute, an extra few letters will hardly slow them down.

One more thing as a side note. Anyone else scared by the fact that there are now people happily coding to X11R6 standards that weren't even born in 1984 when X first came out ?

Now were did I put my slippers and pipe, ah yes I left them by the open fire, really must clean that harth tomorrow.
 
Yo dawg wurd up 4 proper English, wez all should show proper edumucation!

Peace Out
Epi*
 
According to the rest of my class mates now KDE IS Linux.
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Yea and I bet you'll have a hard time convinicing them that you know more than he does.

Does anyone else find this with course's, they all seem designed for morons that get 2 instead of 10 when you add 1 and 1 ;) and they are probably created by those people as well.

Honestly tho' I'm on the second year of a Comp Sci degree and havent actually learnt anything yet. We recently added an open access point for laptops, to be awkward, I phoned inquiring what I need to do to set up for my Linux laptop (of course I knew how ) and was told that Linux was not supported and wouldn't work on the "Windows" network. Huh??
Since when has TCP/IP been a windows only network, was there a major upgrade and no one told me? People shouldn't just think up answers because they don't know or are too lazy to find out.

Needless to say, I'm typing this while plugged into their "Windows network" I hope when I send it it can make its way through the plethora of "Windows traffic" to the OC forum.

I really don't know where some of these people get their information


Epi*
 
Originally posted by Shak
This is irrelevant, when did GNU become something that was Linux? GNU has got a lot of tools for Linux but never powered it, surely an OS is no more than its kernel.

That can be seen by looking at GNU Hurd, it doesnt seem to be progressing as fast as Linux does it? And thats all by GNU.

Linux is the power behind the GNU tools :)

Shak
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I am sure I said..
If you wish use the GNU project please call the OS 'GNU/Linux' which is nearly a POSIX standard OS.
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At no time did I say that GNU is the OS alone.

A system requires 3 basics:

A loader
A kernel
A program to run

Linux is mearly 1 part out of the 3. Ever tried using a kernel by itself. Interesting idea.
An OS is described as being the last 2 items which allow further programs to run.

I prefer it when people read my posts before slating them.

I like the fact that you show some interest in Hurd. Its about time someone did. I think you will find that debian GNU/Hurd has released more test CDs lately and their project is well regarded. More testers are needed but alas people don't understand that Hurd exists because people use 'linux' and forget the GNU part (if GNU is used) so are unaware that GNU/Hurd is an alternative to GNU/linux. People view GNU as part of linux, oh the irony.

As for starting a flame thead:

Before I started typing this, there were 11 follow-up posts of which 2 say I am a troll, 1 humour post and the rest are pointing out where other people have failed to use the correct langauge and leave new users in disarray.
Is discussion trolling ? No.
 
Originally posted by Shak
In response to your argument that a OS needs 3 things to run:

A loader - LILO isnt GNU
A kernel - Not GNU
A program to run - Doesnt have to be GNU

So why GNU/Linux?

Shak
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An OS is described as being the last 2 items which allow further programs to run.
Click to expand...

A system requires the three above.

On your system what libc do you use? glibc?
what shell do you use? bash?

compiled by? gcc ?

Infact nearly all of the OS is GNU (sysvinit is not GNU but is GPL iirc), perhaps the programs you run on top of the OS aren't GNU such as X, KDE etc.

see http://ftp.gnu.org and find out how much of the OS is there. GNU also has other software outside of the OS which can be used such as gzip, gnuchess etc etc. Whatever your favourite distribution is the OS is mostly GNU based, with 'extras' on top, plus a linux kernel.

Yes indeed people (RedHat, Suse, bob-the-fish) add/change code to these original sources but they are still released as GNU's. Thats the point of opensource, change code and let others see.

I do see that microdistributions don't have to be GNU/linux , using uclibc busybox etc which aren't GNU. But for the most part normal systems use GNU/linux with lovely utils/apps on top.

Now class, if you return to page 51 we may continue with todays lesson.
 
This is not trolling, but opening your eyes to the faults in your language surrounding opensource.
Learn from it and don't argue.
At no time have I directly said that any one person is responsible, it is the community in general. I too have faultered on various occations. But in this post I hope that one day you will learn that linux is not synonymous with opensource and you will recognise that GNU was here before linux. The full title being GNU/Linux is valid if and only if you use the GNU project as the basis of a distribution comprising a linux kernel.
 
RTF edit button :p

Or...were you bumping/stirring when you didn't get a swift reply to your flamebait?


Ooh! I used the edit button :) Someone should go and grab Beaky, he appreciates a good old fashioned trolling :)
 
Originally posted by Baloo
In fact you will find that on most Linux systems (99.9%) the program that is called first is login (http://nodevice.com/sections/ManIndex/man0731.html) which is nothing to do with GNU.
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Where did init go ?
or in singlemode /bin/sh perhaps.
getty, ifconfig, losetup, hostname, bind, cardmgr, fsck, mount, setserial, syslog, etc etc come way before login
I'd love to see login at pid 1. It would be very interesting indeed.
 
final word?

Hi,

I quite agree, the OS is called GNU/Linux (hey check my .sig!!).

However in the real world, people do not refer to it as GNU/Linux, In fact to the majorit of Linux users if you refered to GNU/Linux (verbally) they would say ".. instead of the old Linux?" (Geddit?).

Anyway to me, Linux refers to a lot more than just the kernel. OK the kernel is called Linux, but IMHO so is the OS.

Never heard of Ibiza being the capital of Ibiza?

OK it is a shame that RMS/FSF feel aggrieved that their work is not being credited, but in the interests in the popularisation of this thing we call linux, I think the simpler the better!!

Oh and on a lighter note, the original poster refers to dropping standards of english grammar. Well there are dropping standards of spelling as well. It's "Hearth" not Harth" :-) (joke, honest!!!)

Cheers
Ferg
 
Originally posted by Shak
Mr ade, you are obviously a troll. But tell me this, I'd like to see a Linux machine run ANY of the GNU tools without the kernel.

This is why Linux is bigger than GNU in this case.

I agree with what you are saying about the power of GNU.

You are now trolling and I am going to ask for this thread to be closed.

Shak
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A 'linux machine' without a linux kernel is by definition impossible.
If a device is to run GNU tools without a linux kernel this is very easy, glibc is designed to run on multiple archs and kernels. Linux is just one of them.

simple:
linux 2.5.46 ~27mb compressed.
glibc 2.3 ~ 17mb compressed
gcc ~ 26mb
binutils ~ 10mb

So to even compile a linux kernel you need at least twice as much source as the kernel. Try building your own toolchain to compile a kernel for an arch other than the host. You will soon find the linux kernel to be a small part of what is needed to run a system.

Alas some people don't see beyond the blickered view that the linux kernel is the be all and end all of source which *must* be compiled in /usr/src/linux with /usr/include/asm -> /usr/src/linux/asm, which is very much not the case. The sooner people see that linux is just a 'module' that can be swapped in or out of a system. The further the development of opensource can continue.

By the way, trolling is slagging off someone or thing. I, however, am premoting discussion of matterial to do with opensource and language.

THIS IS TROLLING:

Perhaps I should stop this and go back to question/answer of lesser intellectual content about cdfs and needing to recompile my entire kernel for only one module as is the normal advice.
make clean dep oldconfig bzImage modules modules_install &

Q) Help my JFS root partiontion can't boot.
A) Use a boot disk, then recompile your kernel with CONFIG_BLK_DEV_LOOP=y and CONFIG_JFS_FS=m and CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD=y so that you can boot an initrd image then load the JFS module and then mount your JFS root image on /
remember JFS can only do 4k block size at the moment so you will need to recompile your kernel again if you want to use anyother block size.

hmmm.
oh I forgot to recompile my kernel again, silly me. Will do that now before bedtime.
 
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