breakthrough on naming issue! [LWN.net]

breakthrough on naming issue!

Posted Aug 6, 2004 1:06 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: breakthrough on naming issue! by tjc
Parent article: LSB 2.0 and C++

I'm still waiting for the naming to go the other way: For "Linux" to start referring to a wider set of operating systems. A lot of people think it's vital to the definition of "Linux" as an operating system that the system contain the Linux Kernel. But I've always said that of all the things that characterize a "Linux" system, the kernel has relatively little influence.

Already, I believe most sentences that apply to all the so-called Linux systems also apply to GNU/Hurd, FreeBSD, etc.

And I remember a statement from Sun once claiming that Solaris was Sun's version of Linux. Why not?

IBM did a similar thing with AIX. With IBM's help, I once outfitted a system with an AIX kernel that was hard to tell apart from Linux-kernel-based systems I use regularly. In many conversations, I referred to it as a Linux system; to do otherwise would be misleading.

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breakthrough on naming issue!

Posted Aug 6, 2004 1:23 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

The word you're looking for exists. It's called "Unix" or maybe "POSIX-like" if you're really really pedantic.

Please let "Linux" mean the Linux kernel, otherwise we have no way to talk about it.

breakthrough on naming issue!

Posted Aug 6, 2004 2:43 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

It's called "Unix" or maybe "POSIX-like"

That's a different term, much more broad. It would include, for example, a standard AIX system, and that is quite distinguishable from Linux systems.

Please let "Linux" mean the Linux kernel, otherwise we have no way to talk about it.

I fought that battle valiantly when the name "Linux" was new. We have been beaten soundly. The vast majority of uses of the word "Linux" today are references to a class of operating system, not of kernel.

But it's not that big a loss -- we definitely still have a way to talk about the Linux kernel -- just add that one word - "kernel." That's what I do now. And as for a word for operating systems that include the Linux kernel -- I still maintain there's no need for one.

breakthrough on naming issue!

Posted Aug 7, 2004 22:51 UTC (Sat) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

I seriously doubt your AIX system provided a Linux-like /proc, or sysfs/udev, or was bug-for-bug compatible with whatever thread implementation was being used at the time.

> The vast majority of uses of the word "Linux" today are references to a class of operating system, not of kernel.

I know absolutely no one that does that. Even the dumbest journalists know Solaris, Linux and BSD are different OSs.

breakthrough on naming issue!

Posted Aug 7, 2004 23:50 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

I seriously doubt your AIX system provided a Linux-like /proc, or sysfs/udev, or was bug-for-bug compatible with whatever thread implementation was being used at the time.

True, but my point is those are minor OS characteristics. I'm sure in some applications, they are critical, but they pale by comparison to all of what was the same.

But more important: note that not all systems we call "Linux" share any of the things you mention (think of those that contain 2.4 kernels), yet we still use a single name for them. That's because they're minor differences on the whole.

I know absolutely no one that does that.

You're reading something extra, and absurd, into what I said, because when I said "Linux" is a class of OS, I certainly didn't say that Solaris and Linux are the same OS or even that Solaris is in that class called "Linux." Examples of OSes in the Linux class are Red Hat Linux, SUSE, and the myriad variations of those that their users create.

Journalists hardly ever even write about kernels, so they wouldn't use "Linux" to mean the kernel. They use it to mean something like Red Hat Linux, which comprises the kernel, a bunch of GNU programs, X, OpenSsh, and so on. They compare "Linux" to Windows, which is by all accounts a whole operating system, not just a kernel.

breakthrough on naming issue!

Posted Aug 8, 2004 2:54 UTC (Sun) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

> True, but my point is those are minor OS characteristics.

So what's a 'major' OS characteristic? If you refer to the toolset, we have a separate name for that already, too... I see no gain by calling an AIX system with the GNU tools "Linux". It's a lie.

breakthrough on naming issue!

Posted Aug 10, 2004 16:12 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

I don't think there are any indvidual major features. When the average person thinks of "Linux," he thinks of a vast array of features that, perhaps surprisingly, all the systems calling themselves Linux mostly have in common. Some major components that deliver these features are: the Linux kernel, Bash, GNU ls etc., sysvinit, X, KDE/Gnome, and lots and lots of other software. The kernel is less than 1% of Linux in many ways: lines and bytes of code, development effort, pages of documentation (description), questions asked about "Linux" in public mailing lists.

So it's hard to see why we would define a class of OS based on the identity of that one component.

breakthrough on naming issue!

Posted Aug 12, 2004 15:50 UTC (Thu) by AJWM (subscriber, #15888) [Link]

I see no gain by calling an AIX system with the GNU tools "Linux".

Agreed, but that's not what the original poster was saying. AIX-5L is certainly Linux-like, and it and several other Unix-derived systems will run Linux binaries (of appropriate CPU architecture).

It's a lie.

It is similarly a lie to brand all the FLOSS tools supplied with most Linux (and many other OS) distros as "GNU tools". Many (most?) are not part of the GNU project and many are not even distributed under the GNU license, but some other free/open license.

Perhaps we do need yet another name. POSIX and UNIX both have rather rigid (and somewhat dated) requirements as to their use, you don't like "Linux" as a generic term (probably a good thing, it dilutes the trademark), and calling anything with a mish-mash of GNU, non-GNU project GPL'd, BSD, Apache, Artistic, CPL, etc, etc, licensed tools should hardly be called GNU/anything. "Freenix" has been used as a generic term to cover Linux, the BSDs, etc, but there can be vast "feel" differences between those. (Not necessarily from a user view if he's just using a graphic desktop, but certainly from an admin point of view.) Something that conveys the flavor of a modern, user-oriented unix -- "muonix", perhaps? (Pronounced "moonix", so as not to confuse it with some new electronics-like technology based on muons ;-)