When is it worth saying it's Linux? (The H)

Sure, the kernel manages resources and provides a nice abstraction and interface to those resources, but so does a "third party" GUI toolit, or external library, or shell. Just because something runs in user mode doesn't mean it isn't part of an operating system. I mean, any interactive system needs some tools that can actually make use of the kernel. Hence why we have the actual distinction between a kernel, which we can say provides access to and manages a machine's resources, and the actual software that allows us to "operate" and utilise the system. Making a blanket claim that binutils or coreutils or indeed bash are not part of the operating because they are merely wrappers to system calls or plain applications doesn't make much sense because linux as it's used in 99% of instances would not be very useful or operable without these out-of-kernel applications. Of course, for my mp3 player, it makes a lot of sense to suggest that the operating system is what is directly managing the hardware.

I also don't really understand the panic around this particular naming convention anyway. I hardly see kernel devs or gnu-chain devs adding bloat just because they are confused as to what the "official" definition of an operating system is.