No, Richard, it's 'Linux', not 'GNU/Linux'. The most important contributions that the FSF made to Linux were the creation of the GPL and the GCC compiler. Those are fine and inspired products. GCC is a monumental achievement and has earned you, RMS, and the Free Software Foundation countless kudos and much appreciation.
Following are some reasons for you to mull over, including some already answered in your FAQ.
One guy, Linus Torvalds, used GCC to make his operating system (yes, Linux is an OS -- more on this later). He named it 'Linux' with a little help from his friends. Why doesn't he call it GNU/Linux? Because he wrote it, with more help from his friends, not you. You named your stuff, I named my stuff -- including the software I wrote using GCC -- and Linus named his stuff. The proper name is Linux because Linus Torvalds says so. Linus has spoken. Accept his authority. To do otherwise is to become a nag. You don't want to be known as a nag, do you?
(An operating system) != (a distribution). Linux is an operating system. By my definition, an operating system is that software which provides and limits access to hardware resources on a computer. That definition applies wherever you see Linux in use. However, Linux is usually distributed with a collection of utilities and applications to make it easily configurable as a desktop system, a server, a development box, or a graphics workstation, or whatever the user needs. In such a configuration, we have a Linux (based) distribution. Therein lies your strongest argument for the unwieldy title 'GNU/Linux' (when said bundled software is largely from the FSF). Go bug the distribution makers on that one. Take your beef to Red Hat, Mandrake, and Slackware. At least there you have an argument. Linux alone is an operating system that can be used in various applications without any GNU software whatsoever. Embedded applications come to mind as an obvious example.
Next, even if we limit the GNU/Linux title to the GNU-based Linux distributions, we run into another obvious problem. XFree86 may well be more important to a particular Linux installation than the sum of all the GNU contributions. More properly, shouldn't the distribution be called XFree86/Linux? Or, at a minimum, XFree86/GNU/Linux? Of course, it would be rather arbitrary to draw the line there when many other fine contributions go unlisted. Yes, I know you've heard this one before. Get used to it. You'll keep hearing it until you can cleanly counter it.
You seem to like the lines-of-code metric. There are many lines of GNU code in a typical Linux distribution. You seem to suggest that (more LOC) == (more important). However, I submit to you that raw LOC numbers do not directly correlate with importance. I would suggest that clock cycles spent on code is a better metric. For example, if my system spends 90% of its time executing XFree86 code, XFree86 is probably the single most important collection of code on my system. Even if I loaded ten times as many lines of useless bloatware on my system and I never excuted that bloatware, it certainly isn't more important code than XFree86. Obviously, this metric isn't perfect either, but LOC really, really sucks. Please refrain from using it ever again in supporting any argument.
Last, I'd like to point out that we Linux and GNU users shouldn't be fighting among ourselves over naming other people's software. But what the heck, I'm in a bad mood now. I think I'm feeling sufficiently obnoxious to make the point that GCC is so very famous and, yes, so very useful only because Linux was developed. In a show of proper respect and gratitude, shouldn't you and everyone refer to GCC as 'the Linux compiler'? Or at least, 'Linux GCC'? Seriously, where would your masterpiece be without Linux? Languishing with the HURD?
If there is a moral buried in this rant, maybe it is this:
Be grateful for your abilities and your incredible success and your considerable fame. Continue to use that success and fame for good, not evil. Also, be especially grateful for Linux' huge contribution to that success. You, RMS, the Free Software Foundation, and GNU software have reached their current high profiles largely on the back of Linux. You have changed the world. Now, go forth and don't be a nag.
@eric@mischievoustomato This pasta is bad and is nothing compared to the original "Interjection".
It makes a lot of stupid assumptions:
It talks about lines of code, nobody makes this argument ever.
Only talks about what GNU serves to contribute to Linux, not the wider picture.
It assumes it is about which one is more important and what metrics to use.
It assumes it's about fame and credit.
In reality the situation is actually very simple:
Linux is a kernel, everyone who works on the project calls it a kernel, not an operating system. It's literally the name of their homepage (kernel.org).
GNU is an operating system. The project was started to create an operating system. Everyone that works on GNU agrees that GNU is an operating system.
@SuperDicq@eric@mischievoustomato Linux is quite more than just a kernel though, it also comes with linux-specific utilities, like a quick grep of kernel.org in my installed packages:
And given that you can have linux binaries without any involvement of GNU… Like say your average Go program targets x86_64-linux, the syscalls are the API/ABI, GNU doesn't defines those at all.
By the way, you can entirely have multiple libc in the same system, see how most people use dietlibc for example.
> GNU is an operating system.
Which one, Hurd? That's barely a base system. Guix? That's a distro.
The GNU Project as a whole? That's very much cat herding given the lack of cohesiveness of it all, like how Guix ends up using a bunch of GNU alternatives (tcc and musl, among others) to be able to bootstrap itself.
@lanodan@SuperDicq@mischievoustomato Well said, but GNU is an operating system. Yes I know it doesn't have a kernel but we have to act like GNU is a full operating system because one day Hurd will reach 1.0 and by then GNU will be an operating system. It will happen one day and I am willing to bet real money on it.
@mischievoustomato I'm very skeptical of the "We must rewrite everything in Rust because of muh memory safety even though Rust and its foundation are sketchy as fuck" crowd.
I'm leaning more towards the "Why fix it if it ain't broke?" side of things and I think GNU C is still very decent.
@SuperDicq@mischievoustomato Rust is for people that can't write C without it breaking all the time and like unnecessarily complicated language syntax. I can count the number of useful Rust programs on my one hand. GNU coreutils is a mess as is GCC and binutils, but it's a mess that works. Until Rust fixes it's many problems (no ABI, only statically linkable, slow compile times, usable without cargo) it will be a meme language.
@phnt@mischievoustomato One of the facts about Rust that offends me the most is that they are still incapable of compiling reproducible builds. And yes it is because of fucking Cargo being so closely integrated into the whole thing.
@eric@SuperDicq@mischievoustomato There's quite a difference between will be an operating system, and is an operating system.
Specially when we all know that GNU is used as a collection of software, somewhat (dis)organised together where Hurd is irrelevant for the most part.
I'd rather call GNU something like a software projects collective.
@SuperDicq@eric@mischievoustomato Because it's just not, what kind of definition of an OS would even be appropriate for what GNU is?
And at the same time gnu folks can't help but desperately disrespect the Linux project identity by forcing the GNU brand on it, it's not made by GNU and by far not the only system using (or formerly using) GNU a lot.
@eric@SuperDicq@mischievoustomato There's quite a difference between will be an operating system, and is an operating system.
Specially when we all know that GNU is used as a collection of software, somewhat (dis)organised together where Hurd is irrelevant for the most part.
I'd rather call GNU something like a software projects collective.
reality check: do you consider android an operating system? it doesn't have a kernel either, and indeed it relies on the same kernel that GNU relies on for most of their users.
@lxo Yeah, it's one, you get a cohesive whole to run programs with Linux among the requirements, and even programs that specifically require Linux can run inside it. Possibly with some modifications required but quite the same ones you'd get between distros as well.
Meanwhile GNU tends to target most POSIX environments if not even Windows, so no Linux requirement there, you get very widely different environments where you can't just ship a program targetting an environment with GNU software and call it a day without concerns about portability.
And on the other side, as seen numerous times, specially on embedded side of things (which includes Android), Linux itself doesn't requires GNU.
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