News from the embedded world

[_wb_]

Oh God, we're back to the "Linux is not an OS" topic.  Great.

GNU is not an operating system without Linux. I'm still waiting for the Hurd to reach a usable state. https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/

There is also GNU/kFreeBSD (http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/).

 

[is_dead]

I was under the impression that GNU by itself cannot act as an operating system, and that it requires the linux (kernel? idk) in order to be considered an operating system? Can anyone explain? I'm not too linux savvy, damn my windows upbringing!

Also, since I'm posting, might as well say, I've been monitoring your slogan thread, and I thought of something that might be useable.

Power(ing)

Your

Reality

Alternat(ive)ly, Actually, Amazingly, Alchemically, Atomically, Accordingly, Automatically, etc.

I think it's nice, has a good ring to it.

 

[God Ginrai]

Also, since I'm posting, might as well say, I've been monitoring your slogan thread, and I thought of something that might be useable.

Power(ing)

Your

Reality

Alternat(ive)ly, Actually, Amazingly, Alchemically, Atomically, Accordingly, Automatically, etc.

I think it's nice, has a good ring to it.

Then why didn't you post this in the Slogan thread?

-God Ginrai

 

[is_dead]

Also, since I'm posting, might as well say, I've been monitoring your slogan thread, and I thought of something that might be useable.


Power(ing)


Your


Reality


Alternat(ive)ly, Actually, Amazingly, Alchemically, Atomically, Accordingly, Automatically, etc.


I think it's nice, has a good ring to it.

Then why didn't you post this in the Slogan thread?

-God Ginrai

Because I am a guest, and guests cannot post in the General Discussion area <_< ; If I were going to post regularly I would make an account, sorry.

 

[God Ginrai]

I see, I was not aware that guests were disallowed from posting in the GenD.

-God Ginrai

 

[ZetaNeta]

Oh God, we're back to the "Linux is not an OS" topic.  Great.

This topic should be ended some day.


And i find that the last end still doesnt satisfy everyone.


(Thats why i started calling "it" just GNU)

Oh God, we're back to the "Linux is not an OS" topic.  Great.

GNU is not an operating system without Linux. I'm still waiting for the Hurd to reach a usable state. https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/

All systems need a kernel, unless you are doing something really tricky and special.


So yes, if you take a Windows kernel (NTKERN afaik) out of the Windows, its no longer a OS.


I already thought of basing my system upon hurd kernel... but didnt really try.

 

[ssokolow]

Oh God, we're back to the "Linux is not an OS" topic.  Great.

This topic should be ended some day.


And i find that the last end still doesnt satisfy everyone.


(Thats why i started calling "it" just GNU)

A fair enough rationale.


I choose to call it "Linux" because:

1. Stallman's insistence on GNU/Linux is obnoxious
2. The amount of GNU code (including GCC) as a percentage of "the platform" is less than X.org and continues to shrink.
3. The Linux dialect of the ELF binary format is part of the platform ABI (Technically, the platform is X11/glibc/Linux by ABI)
4. On non-desktop distros (Pandora included), GNU is often an even smaller part of the system because BusyBox is used for the core userland instead, yet we still think of them as "Linux" and not something different like "Android".
5. Were ED to decide to replace glibc with musl-libc for the Pyra, producing a system which runs Xfce on top of BusyBox+musl+Linux, we'd still recognize it as "Linux" rather than something new like Android.
6. Generally the compiler doesn't influence the name of a platform but, if it did, patching is in progress to enable building the Linux kernel on top of LLVM.
7. Anything longer than three syllables is not going to catch on, so we can't use something like "GNU/Linux" or  "X11/Linux".

 

[_wb_]

1. The amount of GNU code (including GCC) as a percentage of "the platform" is less than X.org and continues to shrink.

That seems weird to me, do you have a reference on that?

Anyway, I still prefer the name "GNU/Linux", "GNU" because of the philosophy, "Linux" because the kernel is very important.

Can I ask why you don't call Android "Linux" too?

 

[Exophase]

Can I ask why you don't call Android "Linux" too?

Because we can't really run Android programs directly on the other things he calls Linux, nor vice-versa to a large extent. There are drop in replacements for most or all of the stuff GNU does that'd be considered a core part of an OS. Which kind of figures since most of that stuff served as drop-in replacements for proprietary ancestors to begin with.

 

[ssokolow]

Can I ask why you don't call Android "Linux" too?

Because we can't really run Android programs directly on the other things he calls Linux, nor vice-versa to a large extent. There are drop in replacements for most or all of the stuff GNU does that'd be considered part of an OS core. Which kind of figures since most of that stuff served as drop-in replacements for proprietary ancestors to begin with.

Exactly.

1. The amount of GNU code (including GCC) as a percentage of "the platform" is less than X.org and continues to shrink.

That seems weird to me, do you have a reference on that?

I do but I've been having trouble finding the right search keywords to dig it up in either Google or my Firefox Scrapbook archive.

If you find it before I do, you'll know it when you see it. It goes into a lot of detail and the author even took the effort to generate pie charts.

The key point is that all the little things which aren't GNU like D-Bus, udev, the system logging daemon, the init system, the cron daemon, NTPd, *Kit, SSH, package manager, non-GNU utilities (eg. unzip, bzip2, less, mlocate), and non-glibc libraries that core stuff links against really add up... and as you move to smaller core distros, that relationship is preserved as GNU components get swapped out for more compact things like BusyBox.

(And X11 is huge compared to everything else. I don't remember exact numbers but I think that GNU componentry (including GCC) and X11 each contributed about 10-20% of  the average Linux distro's core platform content.)

 

[_wb_]

Can I ask why you don't call Android "Linux" too?

Because we can't really run Android programs directly on the other things he calls Linux, nor vice-versa to a large extent. There are drop in replacements for most or all of the stuff GNU does that'd be considered a core part of an OS. Which kind of figures since most of that stuff served as drop-in replacements for proprietary ancestors to begin with.

But isn't that mostly the same kind of thing as, say, KDE vs Gnome? If you only have the KDE environment installed, you can't directly run Gnome programs, and vice-versa. Yet people are happy to call both of them Linux. What makes Android fundamentally different?

Anyway, my position is that there are two aspects to it: the technical aspect, and the philosophical aspect. Regardless of the technical merits of GNU software and "lines of code" pissing contests, it cannot be denied that the GNU philosophy captures the essence of the spirit of the FOSS movement; whether a project is officially part of the GNU Project or not, or uses the GPL or the MIT license or whatever FOSS license, that's not really the point. The point is that GNU started the FOSS movement and still is one of the most influential components of it. That alone is enough for me to credit them.

To me, the philosophical aspect of a project is, in the long run, at least as important as the technical aspect.

 

[Exophase]

But isn't that mostly the same kind of thing as, say, KDE vs Gnome? If you only have the KDE environment installed, you can't directly run Gnome programs, and vice-versa. Yet people are happy to call both of them Linux. What makes Android fundamentally different?

No it's not the same, the whole userspace model is fundamentally different between what we call Android and what we call Linux. You can always make a system that needs some particular dependency to run some particular app, and in the example you gave it's trivial to augment a system with those missing dependencies. This goes far beyond that.

 

[ZetaNeta]

Oh God, we're back to the "Linux is not an OS" topic.  Great.

This topic should be ended some day.
And i find that the last end still doesnt satisfy everyone.


(Thats why i started calling "it" just GNU)

 
A fair enough rationale.


I choose to call it "Linux" because:

• Stallman's insistence on GNU/Linux is obnoxious
• The amount of GNU code (including GCC) as a percentage of "the platform" is less than X.org and continues to shrink.
• The Linux dialect of the ELF binary format is part of the platform ABI (Technically, the platform is X11/glibc/Linux by ABI)
• On non-desktop distros (Pandora included), GNU is often an even smaller part of the system because BusyBox is used for the core userland instead, yet we still think of them as "Linux" and not something different like "Android".
• Were ED to decide to replace glibc with musl-libc for the Pyra, producing a system which runs Xfce on top of BusyBox+musl+Linux, we'd still recognize it as "Linux" rather than something new like Android.
• Generally the compiler doesn't influence the name of a platform but, if it did, patching is in progress to enable building the Linux kernel on top of LLVM.
• Anything longer than three syllables is not going to catch on, so we can't use something like "GNU/Linux" or  "X11/Linux".

1. Stallman, is the man who made the GPL, which still lets me (!!!) put whatever OS i want on this dmn old router, because their developers used Linux.


I find that Linux, is the part which should be removed. I like GNU platform. On Hurd, on Linux, even on FreeBSD. On machines which should stay windows, i prefer using CYGWIN, which also provides some GNU.


2. Nice weeds heh... Can i try? X bigger than GNU? Wow :3


4. Are we talking about embedded? I never saw any actual use for BusyBox but on "very very" embedded systems. On desktops and servers, i rarely see anything but coreutils.


BusyBox "as init" is not GNU anymore. Yet, "even android is on linux". If we called OS by their names, we would have no such confusion.


5. Again, put yea weeds down, and understand what is Linux and what is GNU. You router is not GNU, you router is BusyBox. You phone is not GNU, you phone is android. YET! They are all Linux.


You desktop bubunty is GNU. What you call "we still think of them as Linux", is "we still think of them as GNU".


If ED were to decide to replace GLIBC with anything else, it would still be Linux. Dont mix those things up.


6. But it doesnt. If Visual Studio (or what those wingdows users got there) could compile Linux, it would still be a Linux kernel.


7. Thats why i call it GNU. It is GNU actually. I dont want Android on my tablet, but i want a pure GNU experience, so thats why i bought a cheap Allwinner tablet, to install Gentoo on.

Can I ask why you don't call Android "Linux" too?

Because we can't really run Android programs directly on the other things he calls Linux, nor vice-versa to a large extent. There are drop in replacements for most or all of the stuff GNU does that'd be considered a core part of an OS. Which kind of figures since most of that stuff served as drop-in replacements for proprietary ancestors to begin with.

We can run linux binaries on Android. But the thing is that most software was meant for GNU. Some wont work even with BusyBox.


Android got another design of "software". It got less support for customization. It got a "one, and the only true way" to format disks.


It got its own limited changeability of design. If in GNU you can change entire DE, in Android, its limited maximum to launchers.


Android is always a android because its hard to change.


But GNU, or BusyBox, goes in so much "colors and shapes", that its just called Linux today.


You can change tools, you can change init, you can change interfaces... So far that you wont recognize it.

Can I ask why you don't call Android "Linux" too?

Because we can't really run Android programs directly on the other things he calls Linux, nor vice-versa to a large extent. There are drop in replacements for most or all of the stuff GNU does that'd be considered part of an OS core. Which kind of figures since most of that stuff served as drop-in replacements for proprietary ancestors to begin with.

 
Exactly.

• The amount of GNU code (including GCC) as a percentage of "the platform" is less than X.org and continues to shrink.

 
That seems weird to me, do you have a reference on that?

 
I do but I've been having trouble finding the right search keywords to dig it up in either Google or my Firefox Scrapbook archive.


If you find it before I do, you'll know it when you see it. It goes into a lot of detail and the author even took the effort to generate pie charts.


The key point is that all the little things which aren't GNU like D-Bus, udev, the system logging daemon, the init system, the cron daemon, NTPd, *Kit, SSH, package manager, non-GNU utilities (eg. unzip, bzip2, less, mlocate), and non-glibc libraries that core stuff links against really add up... and as you move to smaller core distros, that relationship is preserved as GNU components get swapped out for more compact things like BusyBox.


(And X11 is huge compared to everything else. I don't remember exact numbers but I think that GNU componentry (including GCC) and X11 each contributed about 10-20% of  the average Linux distro's core platform content.)

I am sure, that most people who use Steam, got more games than the system on their drives :3


(X11 isnt huge by it self, even with all the drivers. You are adding all kind of thirdparty libraries to it )


Distros are made to provide the "ready userspace", otherwise you are going to get what people experienced with early versions of "GNU/Linux: The ultimate DIY constructor"

Can I ask why you don't call Android "Linux" too?

Because we can't really run Android programs directly on the other things he calls Linux, nor vice-versa to a large extent. There are drop in replacements for most or all of the stuff GNU does that'd be considered a core part of an OS. Which kind of figures since most of that stuff served as drop-in replacements for proprietary ancestors to begin with.

 
But isn't that mostly the same kind of thing as, say, KDE vs Gnome? If you only have the KDE environment installed, you can't directly run Gnome programs, and vice-versa. Yet people are happy to call both of them Linux. What makes Android fundamentally different?


Anyway, my position is that there are two aspects to it: the technical aspect, and the philosophical aspect. Regardless of the technical merits of GNU software and "lines of code" pissing contests, it cannot be denied that the GNU philosophy captures the essence of the spirit of the FOSS movement; whether a project is officially part of the GNU Project or not, or uses the GPL or the MIT license or whatever FOSS license, that's not really the point. The point is that GNU started the FOSS movement and still is one of the most influential components of it. That alone is enough for me to credit them.


To me, the philosophical aspect of a project is, in the long run, at least as important as the technical aspect.

Whatever you call "KDE program" or "GNOME program" is just software depending on special libraries.


GTK doesn't mean GNOME, QT doesn't mean KDE.


Its just the libraries which the DE officially supports.


Those libraries are just libraries to make interfaces.


For ex. WICD can be built with both interfaces in separate tools.


GTK will work in KDE, QT will work in GNOME just as good.


Its just the matter of what library the DE itself uses.


"Dont let the 'Dependencies' field fool you"


That is also true.


But thats the FSF/FOSS movement you are talking.


GNU, even though the community which "cares" also "cares" about the FOSS, is still a OS.


I know, its hard to figure out what OS it is when the Userspaces and Kernels are "Mix and match".


In Windows, we surely know that its Windows. In OSX, we know its OSX.


But no one says that Minix is NetBSD.

 

[WizardStan]

I can give one very good reason why people can call it *just* Linux and no one can say anything against it: because the GPL guarantees them the freedom to do so.

You might not like it, but it's rather hypocritical to espouse the benefits of freedom and then complain when someone uses those freedoms in a way you don't like.

 

[Exophase]

Does the GPL actually protect naming, or even intend to? There have been trademark wars over GPL forks before ;p

 

[Neelix]

Anyway, my position is that there are two aspects to it: the technical aspect, and the philosophical aspect. Regardless of the technical merits of GNU software and "lines of code" pissing contests, it cannot be denied that the GNU philosophy captures the essence of the spirit of the FOSS movement; whether a project is officially part of the GNU Project or not, or uses the GPL or the MIT license or whatever FOSS license, that's not really the point. The point is that GNU started the FOSS movement and still is one of the most influential components of it. That alone is enough for me to credit them.

To me, the philosophical aspect of a project is, in the long run, at least as important as the technical aspect.

Enough to Credit them? By all means. They certainly deserve credit for that. Does that mean they deserve naming rights in perpetuity over any system using their any of their tools? No, there really isn't any basis for that.

- Neelix

 

[WizardStan]

I may have jumped the gun, yeah. The GPL doesn't explicitly protect naming; I was thinking along the lines of downloading the source, changing the name within it, and then building and distributing that, but that's a very specific example and I'm having difficulty wrapping it around the very general case of "everything that makes an operating system".

 

[TrashyMG]

Well I'll call it whatever I damn well please and the snobs will just have to deal with it.

 

[_wb_]

ZetaNeta could you please relax and stop fueling decade-old flamewars? You have an account for exactly one week now, and already more than 100 posts, most of them smelling like trolling..

But isn't that mostly the same kind of thing as, say, KDE vs Gnome? If you only have the KDE environment installed, you can't directly run Gnome programs, and vice-versa. Yet people are happy to call both of them Linux. What makes Android fundamentally different?

No it's not the same, the whole userspace model is fundamentally different between what we call Android and what we call Linux. You can always make a system that needs some particular dependency to run some particular app, and in the example you gave it's trivial to augment a system with those missing dependencies. This goes far beyond that.

In what sense is it fundamentally different then? Lots of dependencies that are normally available are missing in Android (e.g. GNU libs and tools, X11, etc), and I guess Android does not make it particularly easy to install those missing dependencies; also it kind of enforces a specific framework to be used by apps, but I don't really see the fundamental technical difference. There's a big philosophical difference though.

 

[Exophase]

_wb_, the distinctions are subjective, we're probably not going to get far arguing over this. Suffice it to say, I've used enough different things commonly called Linux (not necessarily with all of the typical GNU trimmings, I've used embedded with little GNU) and I've used things called Android, and I perceive a huge gap between getting software running on one instead of the other. I have a feeling ssokolow can say something similar. If you don't feel there's enough of a distinction then so be it, there isn't much in the way of hard barriers outside of ABI like ssokolow mentioned.