LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@topology.org>
  To  : LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 17:35:58 +0930

linux is not GNU/linux [was RedHat 7.1 reliability?]

On Sat, Jun 23, 2001 at 11:18:06AM -0400, Tim Fairchild wrote:
> On Friday 22 June 2001 18:24, Richard Sharpe wrote:
> 
> > What's with this GUN/Linux shit? Has RMS been browbeating you as well :-)
> 
> I don't get the GNU/linux thing. Sure, I accept the massive contribution, but 
> I don't feel the need to call it GNU/linux. After all, since HURD was so long 
> in coming the kernel must be the hard bit :-)
> 
> But seriously, do I have to call the thing running my box 
> GNU/KDE/QT/GTK/XFree/BSD/NVidia/.../etc/.../Linux
> 


Tim,

I agree with you.
Despite the huge amount said on this subject in too many forums,
including a response I got from RMS in about 1995 about this
to an e-mail I sent him on a related subject, I'll say this:

Does RMS think that he lives in a country called England/USA?
After all, the USA takes its language and many of its
institutions and people from England.
And do we live in Britain/Australia?
I don't think so.
I wrote a little essayette on this subject here:
http://www.topology.org/linux/lingl.html

In summary, it all comes down to what you define an
operating system to be.

Even back in about 1985, I remember a comp sci lecturer
(in Kentucky) telling me that one of the terms projects for
his students that year was to write a compiler. I think this
might have been second-year uni.
So writing a compiler, even at the time when rms was writing
gcc, was not any more the onerous task it ws 10 years earlier.

I'd propose this as the "correct name" for linux:

Linux/minix/Unix/X/GNU/TeX/Postscript/Perl/C/C++

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the device drivers make up
the majority of the linux kernel, and I don't think that rms would
ever have found intellectual satisfaction in writing device drivers.

Here's what a recent kernel consists of:

==============================================
akenning@dog> du -s *
20      COPYING
76      CREDITS
4857    Documentation
36      MAINTAINERS
16      Makefile
16      README
4       REPORTING-BUGS
12      Rules.make
468     System.map
26819   arch			15.50%
4       cpbz
81524   drivers			47.10%
16370   fs			 9.46%
24305   include			14.04%
45      init
177     ipc
911     kernel
173     lib
774     mm
11104   net			 6.42%
2335    scripts
2780    vmlinux   
akenning@dog> du -s
173069  .
=============================================


If you split up the "include" directory between drivers
and other stuff, it probably brings the total for
drivers up to at least 50%.

I think that the drivers area is where the real hard hack
work goes in.
But certainly writing a portable kernel to the POSIX spec
with support for all the junk that manufacturers put on
their expansion boards is of a totally different order
to writing a compiler and an editor and the basic
system utilities.
Typical linux distributions have been estimated by various
people as being about 3% to 5% GNU code.

I seem to recall that someone once proposed rewriting the 
linux utilities to create a GNU-free linux.

But it doesn't really matter, because it's looking at the
moment as if Microsoft may convince the US government to
declare open source (especially GPL) software illegal anyway...

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.
Britain/Australia.

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