pygy_ 2 days ago

It is the same thing, just emphasizing that the OS is more than the kernel, and than the userland comes from the GNU project.

The latter had been designed to be a full OS but didn't have a functional kernel when Linux was released, and Torvalds adopted the GNU userland for his project.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd

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coryrc 2 days ago

Android/Linux also exists.

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  • craftkiller 2 days ago

    And Chimera Linux which is GNU-less. I guess you could call it FreeBSD/Linux but I think that'll just confuse people.

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kachapopopow 2 days ago

linux is the kernel gnu is the full operating system

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  • bigstrat2003 2 days ago

    Linux is both the name for the kernel and the full operating system.

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    • kachapopopow 20 hours ago

      yah it's silly, linux typically refers to "everything" using the linux kernel. Aka Linux.

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    • andrewmcwatters 2 days ago

      Linux is definitely not a "full operating system."

      Here's Linux built on GitHub Actions, with Grub[1], and you can't do anything with it. I include a reference init that does nothing, per kernel.org. 17.8 MB image.

      GNU is by every practical measure, everything else. People memed on Stallman for the whole GNU/Linux naming, but he's basically right. There's also Android/Linux, that another user mentioned, and some distributions which don't use a GNU userland at all.

      But the wide majority of people are using GNU/Linux, or some ecosystem derivative of it, like people using GNOME, which was formerly a part of the GNU project.

      [1]: https://github.com/andrewmcwatters/linux-workflow

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