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Comment by mikekchar | Hacker News Reader

I've got this crazy idea. Since "Linux Desktops" are generally running GNU under the hood for providing user land services, why don't we call those systems... I don't know... "GNU/Linux"? That way we can distinguish them from systems that use the Linux kernel, but have a completely different user land infrastructure.

I know, I know. It's crazy talk....

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How many of them actually intimately use the GNU userland as opposed to Xorg and whatever libc's installed? GNU's an increasingly irrelevant portion of unix and unixlike systems -- most of the actually important userland portions are python, ruby, the aforementioned Xorg, etc.

> GNU's an increasingly irrelevant portion of Unix

Say what? Do you know what GNU means or what it includes? Here's a link so you can learn more:

https://www.gnu.org/software/software.html

Yes, I know what it means and includes. Android, which is one of the biggest unixes right now, doesn't use GNU. iOS, which is another one of the biggest unixes right now, doesn't use GNU. Most embedded linuxes don't use GNU. So yes, for the parts of unix which are visible to most people, the gnu parts are not very relevant at all.

But they are for the "Linux Desktop", hence the joke.

While this is true, there is still a unix-like userland typically, at least in the form of busybox or somesuch..

I think there is some value in denoting 'linux the kernel' from 'linux the unix-like system', especially in the face of those systems which mainly use 'linux the kernel' in a non unix-like way, such as here..

e.g.: the 'gnu parts' (e.g. unix-style userland) are hugely important for me in a workstation - I could not do work in a system that doesn't provide the 'gnu(unix) like' user interface. On a phone/consumer/browser device, this is not so much the case

A device using the linux kernel (or Mach kernel in iOS) doesn't make it a "Unix" or "Unix-like" system, despite that same kernel being used in other truly Unix-like systems. The user land (aka GNU in most Linux distros) is what makes it a Unix-like system. That doesn't mean GNU isn't relevant, it means what you considered a "Unix-like" system was overly broad.

This reply is a bit overly pedantic and I apologize, but you kept pushing so I wanted to clarify.

I actually don't think you are incorrect. GNU is not nearly as big a piece of the puzzle as it used to be. It's just that when most people say "Linux Desktop", the part where they say "Linux" usually means the part that GNU makes up. As far as I know, GNU libc is still by far and away the most popular libc installed on those kinds of systems.

So it was just kind of a snarky joke because the parent said that to be a "Linux Desktop" you had to be able to get ssh running (presumably they meant openssh). And while that's not GNU, GNU is what the vast majority of "Linux Desktops" will use to get you there -- so the implication really was that "Linux Desktop" == "GNU/Linux Desktop".

I thought it was funny, but probably I was being too obscure. Also, I should know better than to dive into politics for no good reason.

GNU is more than a collection of programs; it's an operating system:

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html

The chance of success would be higher if the term GLX would be used: Debian GLX, Ubuntu GLX, etc.

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