Not part of the operating system?

Posted Mar 17, 2009 6:00 UTC (Tue) by Janne (guest, #40891)
In reply to: Not part of the operating system? by flewellyn
Parent article: How the Linux kernel works (TuxRadar)

"I don't know if I would count X or the KDE core as OS components. It's possible to have a fully functional, usable OS without a graphical interface, much less a full desktop environment."

And if you want an oerating system with graphical interface, X, KDE, Qt, GNOME, GTK+ etc. suddenly ARE "core OS components"....

Not part of the operating system?

Posted Mar 17, 2009 17:55 UTC (Tue) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (4 responses)

Well, X, yes. But you can run a GUI with a simpler WM than GNOME or KDE, you know.

Not part of the operating system?

Posted Mar 18, 2009 6:08 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] (3 responses)

Of course you can, but the simplicity or complexity of the GUI is irrelevant here. The point remains: if you want an OS with graphical interface, then those graphics-subsystems ARE part of the core-OS. Saying that they are not part of the core-OS because you can have an OS without graphics is dishonest.

Besides, is OS "fully functional" if it doesn't have a GUI? If you installed a Linux without X and GUI to my laptop and started claiming that it was a "fully functional OS", I would have to respectfully disagree.

Not part of the operating system?

Posted Mar 18, 2009 6:47 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (1 responses)

Depends on what you're using it for. If you're installing a server, you can certainly have a full-featured Linux system without a GUI.

But regardless, the argument that "if you want this feature, it becomes part of the core OS" is just silly. There has to be a boundary at which you say "this stuff is core OS, this stuff here is applications and user libraries". If you aren't going to draw that line at the kernel boundary (which is arguable either way), a good suggestion I have is to examine your filesystem hierarchy. What goes in /bin, /lib, and /sbin could be called "core OS libraries and programs", but if it goes in /usr, /opt, or especially /usr/local, I don't think you could reasonably argue for that being "core" anything.

Not part of the operating system?

Posted Mar 21, 2009 13:50 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I've had endless arguments with various people about this (wasting
*months* in a epic flamewar with Peter da Silva, years ago) and have come
to the conclusion that we're all arguing over nothing. There is *no such
thing* as a 'core OS'; there is simply a nested set of layers, getting
less and less useful to users and more and more hardware-constrained the
closer you get to the centre. Some systems develop the layers
independently (e.g. Linux); some develop them as a unit (e.g. the BSDs,
even more than their MacOS X offshoot); some are just a bloody mess
(Windows) :)

What is part of the 'core OS' depends on the type of system you're looking
at.

Not part of the operating system?

Posted Mar 26, 2009 10:32 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

Well, I have a laptop with Linux and without X/GUI that is fully functional. It is a 12 years old Thinkpad Butterfly -- still working like a charm! -- with 16 MB main memory, just a few GB disk, and I use it successfully for network troubleshooting in data centers.

You might respectfully disagree, but frankly -- your worldview seems to be rather restricted.