On Jul 22, 2008, Timothy Murphy <gayleard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Look at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu. You'll find a lot of software >> there, that is all part of the GNU Operating System. Follow the link >> to The GNU System, in the README. That page describes what the GNU >> Operating System is. > I didn't find a file called README at that URL. Sorry, I meant the text displayed before the directory list, which ftp servers generally take from a file named README or somesuch. > At a quick glance, the term "GNU operating system" does not appear in it. Oh, I assumed you knew that GNU is just the name of an operating system, and a lot of its software is in the URL over there. You'll see that www.gnu.org's heading is "GNU Operating System". GNU is not a random collection of Free Software, it's the name of a Free Operating System. > you are using the term "the GNU operating system" to mean > "any operating system that uses GNU software". Not quite. It's more like "any operating system that is a minor variation of the GNU operating system". It helps, but isn't strictly necessary, that GNU be a larger part than any other single part in the operating system. Using a few GNU packages doesn't make an operating system GNU. Using pretty much everything that makes GNU GNU does. > Personally, I have never heard anyone except you > refer to "the GNU operating system". And this is precisely the problem. It's precisely the reason why those fanatics renamed GNU to the name of their kernel. So that you wouldn't hear about why GNU and Free Software even exist. So that you would think they created it all. So that you would regard it as an attack on them when we asked you to help us to stop this attack on us. > If someone did, I would assume they meant a system using the Hurd > kernel. That would be a valid guess, but not necessarily correct, for the GNU operating system runs on several different kernels. That GNU runs on top of Linux (among several kernels) doesn't make "GNU" be "Linux", any more than that Linux runs on top of an x86 (among several processors) makes "Linux" be "x86". -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
