Untitled topic • Hacker News Board

#1

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:22 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: undefined

#2

Post by sdafssd » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:24 PM UTC

You said "GnuLix" in the original subject line. Gag. Awful, awful. Lix = licks = round appendages. Linux = Line-ucks = Linus = Torvalds. Don't shorten it please.

As for Stallman- GNU has a branding problem. Sticking it in front of Linux may bring GNU up but it will bring down Linux. GNU should be called Free. Free has better connotations. Free Linux? Well that is just unnecessary. All Linux is free. Only those wishing to have a false sense of security pay support for Linux.

Re: undefined

#3

Post by asolove » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:54 PM UTC

Proposal: GNU ships a working operating system that someone not a member of GNU wants to use, or they give this nonsense up.

"But RMS made the C toolchain work" you say. Great, and lots of electric engineers made my computer work, but their names aren't on the operating system, because that's a different level of work. Everything we've seen from GNU shows that RMS can make wonderful tools for his own use, but not a particularly coherent operating system for anyone else.

So he (and GNU) get credit for the C toolchain, and get credit for Emacs, and don't get credit for Linux. Until they build one that we would like to use. Then they can call it what they want.

Re: undefined

#4

Post by gaius » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:58 PM UTC

sdafssd wrote: post #2

You said "GnuLix" in the original subject line. Gag. Awful, awful. Lix = licks = round appendages. Linux = Line-ucks = Linus = Torvalds. Don't shorten it please. As for Stallman- GNU has a branding problem. Sticking it in front of Linux may bring GNU up but it will bring down Linux. GNU should be called Free. Free has better connotations. Free Linux? Well that is just unnecessary. All Linux is free. Only those wishin…

Interestingly when Linus first uploaded Linux to an FTP site he called it "Freeix". Some random person came along later and renamed the directory.

Re: undefined

#5

Post by viraptor » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:58 PM UTC

I thought this debate died around 10 years ago. If they didn't manage to change anything when name Linux mattered, they're even less likely to change it now that distributions matter more. (gnu/ubuntu?) General public didn't care... I'd rather they just let it go, whining about it every couple of years won't help them much.

Re: undefined

#6

Post by nobody314 » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:59 PM UTC

asolove wrote: post #3

Proposal: GNU ships a working operating system that someone not a member of GNU wants to use, or they give this nonsense up. "But RMS made the C toolchain work" you say. Great, and lots of electric engineers made my computer work, but their names aren't on the operating system, because that's a different level of work. Everything we've seen from GNU shows that RMS can make wonderful tools for his own use, but not a p…

Is there a distribution of Linux built with say Intel's icc compiler and using their standard library?

Then we can remove emacs and have InteLinux

Re: undefined

#7

Post by mooism2 » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:59 PM UTC

That's your proposal, not GNU's proposal. Please don't attribute it to GNU like that.

Linux is Linux. GNU is GNU. Debian, Fedora etc are combinations of Linux, GNU, and much else besides. IMO it's better if the distributions don't incorporate GNU or Linux into their names.

Re: undefined

#8

Post by Ideka » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 3:01 PM UTC

sdafssd wrote: post #2

You said "GnuLix" in the original subject line. Gag. Awful, awful. Lix = licks = round appendages. Linux = Line-ucks = Linus = Torvalds. Don't shorten it please. As for Stallman- GNU has a branding problem. Sticking it in front of Linux may bring GNU up but it will bring down Linux. GNU should be called Free. Free has better connotations. Free Linux? Well that is just unnecessary. All Linux is free. Only those wishin…

"Line-ucks"? Isn't it Lee-nucks?

Re: undefined

#9

Post by lukejduncan » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 3:01 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #4

sdafssd wrote: post #2

You said "GnuLix" in the original subject line. Gag. Awful, awful. Lix = licks = round appendages. Linux = Line-ucks = Linus = Torvalds. Don't shorten it please. As for Stallman- GNU has a branding problem. Sticking it in front of Linux may bring GNU up but it will bring down Linux. GNU should be called Free. Free has better connotations. Free Linux? Well that is just unnecessary. All Linux is free. Only those wishin…

Interestingly when Linus first uploaded Linux to an FTP site he called it "Freeix". Some random person came along later and renamed the directory.

That's an interesting bit of trivia! References?

Re: undefined

#10

Post by Apreche » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 3:02 PM UTC

Proposal - we leave the names as Linux. There is no reason to change it or confuse the entire world to satisfy the pet peeve of one toe-fungus eating nut.