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Comment by TallGuyShort | Hacker News Reader

Does the Hurd team go around lecturing people who call it "Hurd" about how it's actually "GNU"/Hurd, how Hurd is the kernel and that's only one part, or is that only when the kernel wasn't their idea?

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Hurd is a GNU project so it doesn't even really need a second mention, it only needs that mention because there is a competing kernel (Linux) that is used with the system. Otherwise it's just known as the GNU system. The kernel is pretty irrelevant for most users, we don't call it Android/Linux or Windows/NT for a reason. A kernel is not an operating system. Calling the whole OS Linux is both inaccurate and does not introduce anyone to the whole reason why the GNU project was started, which is having the freedom to really own and control your computer. Linus Torvalds doesn't give a shit about that and is happy with chromebooks as long as they use his kernel. Freedom is irrelevant to him and most of the "open-source" community. That should be reason enough to not call the entire system Linux.

You're argument holds water, but the problem is when we start getting into OS's that actually don't ship any of the GNU userland. The classic example is Alpine Linux. Do we call that BusyBox/Linux? WSL 1 was a super weird anti-example where Microsoft skipped out on the Linux and shipped GNU stuff and still called it Linux. I think the colloquial naming convention became something like Kleenex or Google where we default to blowing our nose with (generic usage, not brand usage) "kleenex" with off-brand tissues or had our parents (generic usage, not brand usage) "google" something on Bing (as thats the default search engine of Windows).

Depends on what you mean by Linux. The ABI Microsoft were attempting to emulate was absolutely Linux. (This API business is exactly the issue with Oracle vs Google over Java).

I assume Linus is a pragmatist who doesn't want to torpedo his own product by putting a slash and abbreviation in its name and forcing the whole world to only call it that. I think accusing him of not caring about freedom because he balances pragmatism and ideology differently is throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water.

I don't think it's nice to spit in the face of a person that hands you half of the cake you wanted. The GNU project has the freedom to get their own HURD kernel into a sufficiently working state and compete, which does not seem to be that trivial a task for all the years I've been following this drama.

I don't disagree on any particular point, but I'd love to be able to post about network stacks and system calls on the Internet without someone butting in with, "Actually... I think you mean GNU/Linux. Linux is just a kernel..."

> The kernel is pretty irrelevant for most users

For most users, so is the command line. So when a user is on a Gnome desktop, we can call it Gnome/Linux right? Since a normal user doesn't touch the terminal?

Hell, for most users what matters is the browser, let's just go with Firefox/Linux.

Hurd is the official kernel of GNU project, so essentially it's just GNU. You could call it Debian GNU but I guess since that's confusing they decided to call it Debian GNU/Hurd.

We've come full circle.

Debian GNU/GNU?

I mean "GNU/Linux" is supposed to mean "GNU with Linux" i.e. GNU userspace with Linux kernel. GNU/GNU makes some sense but clearly is redundant. It's just GNU as in GNU userspace and kernel.

Yes. It was a joke, to poke fun at the people who refer to linux OSes as GNU/linux.

also Hurd/Hird

I don't believe I've ever seen someone refer to a full system as "Hurd". It probably doesn't come up much.

I've been considering switching my servers to Alpine just to annoy the GNU people when they try to pull this.

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