When is it worth saying it's Linux? (The H)
When is it worth saying it's Linux? (The H)
Posted Jan 30, 2010 10:48 UTC (Sat) by drag (guest, #31333)In reply to: When is it worth saying it's Linux? (The H) by flewellyn
Parent article: When is it worth saying it's Linux? (The H)
BSD userland on Linux would be just as much 'Linux' as Android or Debian.
Calling everything Linux was such a horrible idea anyways. Linux software,
Linux community, Linux kernel, Linux OS. All of it is confusing and just
kinda difficult to understand. Just a bad idea all around.
It's like Smurfs using the word Smurf for everything. Sure if your a smurf
and you grew up around smurf and understand the politics and usage then you
can usually discern the meaning based on context, but even then it gets
confusing in long discussions with lots of people.
Sure GNU/Linux is awkward and is either too-'PC' or un-'PC' depending on
the crowd your running with). But at least it does a better job explaining
what is going on. It's certainly more accurate to say GNU/Linux then to
just say 'Linux'.
Right now I see three major variants of Linux out there. There is
Busybox/Linux for embedded systems, GNU/Linux is the most full fledged
version, and then you have Android. If that is not good enough and
GNU/Linux is too political and stupid then that is fine, but so far nothing
better has really come along. Not unless you want to stop using Linux
altogether except to talk about the kernel and start calling things Debian,
Fedora or whatever to reference the entire OS.
