How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux? • Hacker News Board

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#61

Post by tzs » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 5:08 AM UTC

zohebv wrote: post #44

cookiecaper wrote: post #9

FSF's insistence on "GNU/Linux" has always been childish, but now it's just silly really. For years the proportion of GNU software that actually gets run has been dwarfed by the code from Mozilla, KDE and/or GNOME, and other major desktop software vendors. The GNU/Linux argument has never been persuasive and I'd say it's high time they let it go.

I looked at the article and it seems to strengthen the argument for calling it a GNU/Linux distribution. The top contributors as per the chart. 1. kernel 9% 2. gnu 8% 3. kde 8% 4,5 java, mozilla 6% 6. gnome 3% If you combine gnu with gnome, we have 1. gnu 13% 2. kernel 9% Also considering that java/mozilla are platform agnostic, the candidate names we have are linux-gnu-kde OR gnu-linux(-kde) If you are not running K…

It's all irrelevant because operating systems in general are NOT named after their prominent components. It does often happen that the kernel and the OS have the same name, but that is not because the OS is named after the kernel but rather the other way around--that is, the creators of the OS name the OS, and then the kernel is known as the X-kernel, where X is the name of the OS.

If I choose to take the Linux kernel, GNU utilities, and assorted other free software and put them together to form a complete OS, I can call it whatever I want, and BY DEFINITION that is the correct name for my operating system, since I'm the one who put it together.

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#62

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 5:12 AM UTC

ryanpetrich wrote: post #8

Lines of code is a poor way to measure contribution.

[deleted]

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#63

Post by silentbicycle » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 5:15 AM UTC

Yet another case of pie charts being a poor choice for presenting data.

Besides, GNU mainly shows up because lines-of-code is the metric. If cat -v is considered harmful, what is cat --verbose? ;)

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#64

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 5:17 AM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #9

FSF's insistence on "GNU/Linux" has always been childish, but now it's just silly really. For years the proportion of GNU software that actually gets run has been dwarfed by the code from Mozilla, KDE and/or GNOME, and other major desktop software vendors. The GNU/Linux argument has never been persuasive and I'd say it's high time they let it go.

[deleted]

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#65

Post by Schmidt » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:19 AM UTC

zohebv wrote: post #44

cookiecaper wrote: post #9

FSF's insistence on "GNU/Linux" has always been childish, but now it's just silly really. For years the proportion of GNU software that actually gets run has been dwarfed by the code from Mozilla, KDE and/or GNOME, and other major desktop software vendors. The GNU/Linux argument has never been persuasive and I'd say it's high time they let it go.

I looked at the article and it seems to strengthen the argument for calling it a GNU/Linux distribution. The top contributors as per the chart. 1. kernel 9% 2. gnu 8% 3. kde 8% 4,5 java, mozilla 6% 6. gnome 3% If you combine gnu with gnome, we have 1. gnu 13% 2. kernel 9% Also considering that java/mozilla are platform agnostic, the candidate names we have are linux-gnu-kde OR gnu-linux(-kde) If you are not running K…

You're only using a fraction of the kernel as well at any given time... (As they count by LOC in the article...)

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#66

Post by hasenj » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:45 AM UTC

bxr wrote: post #57

foob wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know, GNOME stands for GNU Object Model Environment. Not that that negates your point, but I still disagree with you for other reasons. Firefox is in no way part of the operating system itself. I would argue that Bash and the core-utils on the other hand are. Also keep in mind that the GNU Project created the whole idea of a Free alternative to Unix and created the culture and licenses that made it possib…

>the whole idea of a Free alternative to Unix I don't mean to marginalize the gnu project, but there were already free -nixes out there. Starting over from scratch isn't much of an accomplishment other than the license... >and created the culture and licenses that made it possible The GPL has ultimately done more harm than good for open source. The only time proprietary software vendors are forced to release anything…

> there were already free -nixes out there

Not true, the various "Free" BSDs came much later. As far as I know, BSD existed but wasn't Free. If it was already free, then RMS would probably not have launched the GNU project.

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#67

Post by pedrocr » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:48 AM UTC

rwl wrote: post #32

"I picked Ubuntu natty (released in April) as a reference, ... and am considering only the “main” repository, supposedly the core of the distribution, actually packaged by Ubuntu and not repackaged from Debian." I'm not sure I understand Ubuntu's "main," or what's "packaged by Ubuntu and not repackaged from Debian." Does this mean the author is not counting code that appears in both Debian and Ubuntu? Because I would…

Pretty much everything that is in Ubuntu is also in Debian. What Ubuntu "main" means is those packages are actually built by Ubuntu with their own patches and quality control. Wheres "universe" has everything that is not in main and is repackaged from debian to Ubuntu by the community without official support.

The assumption is that the "main" archive is a fairer representation of the important stuff in the distribution than including "universe" as well. You actually have to manually enable universe on an Ubuntu install to be able to use it.

See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu for more details

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#68

Post by pedrocr » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:49 AM UTC

bxr wrote: post #59

rwl wrote: post #32

"I picked Ubuntu natty (released in April) as a reference, ... and am considering only the “main” repository, supposedly the core of the distribution, actually packaged by Ubuntu and not repackaged from Debian." I'm not sure I understand Ubuntu's "main," or what's "packaged by Ubuntu and not repackaged from Debian." Does this mean the author is not counting code that appears in both Debian and Ubuntu? Because I would…

The author is mistaken, as you point out there wouldn be nothing to look at (well, effectively nothing) if the code from debain was removed. Also the methodology is a bit suspect. The main non-free and contrib repositories are divided along GPL-compatibility lines, so just looking at main doesn't really paint a full picture.

You're thinking of Debian. Ubuntu doesn't have non-free or contrib.

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#69

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:50 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#70

Post by wazoox » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:53 AM UTC

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #47

sdkmvx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PCC would probably be easier, and it is still open source. Although a BSD-userland Linux would be interesting, I think the GCC compiler has become so widespread that it is almost impossible not to use it (except for Windows, of course). Even the BSDs, which are thoroughly against copyleft licenses, use GCC.

LLVM built a working linux kernel 218 days ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1832712 Why not just run FreeBSD?

Even FreeBSD comes with some GNU software (gcc, gdb and emacs at the very least).