Since Alpine uses musl and busybox, can we just call it "Linux" without the "Gnu/Linux" advocates contradicting? (I think we can all agree that calling it "Musl/Busybox/Linux" is too verbose for general conversation)
You can call any distro "Linux". Just because you're using GNU software doesn't mean you have to specify it every time you want to talk about your system. Although the best way in my opinion is using the distro's name + Linux.
Maybe you're out of the loop but GNU fanatics always make a fuss about "Linux" without the GNU part.
Ok, but it’s fine to just ignore their petty naming arguments.
Richard Stallman had a whole speech about this. From memory, his main point was that most of a Linux distribution was built with GNU tools and the kernel was only a (key) component of it. So he was asking to say GNU/Linux to show some appreciation.
Richard Stallman is right for some things and wrong on many others. His hit rate on naming is generally pretty bad.
Stallman seems to be somewhat jealous that Linux did what his software couldn't. And I'm saying this as a person who loves GNU software, philosophy and greatly respects Stallman. Just because your used a few GNU build tools, doesn't mean you should call it GNU.
Most distros aren't just using "a few GNU build tools", though - nearly everyone's using bash as their shell, GNU coreutils for basic system tools, and glibc as the underlying libc that runs almost every binary in the system, and I feel like that deserves a mention. Frankly, I think most people would find GNU/kFreeBSD more familiar than Alpine/Linux.
And GCC.
I was ignoring gcc (and binutils) as build tools.
I'm definitely not out of the loop. It has been a meme since forever. I also get that parent comment was making a joke.
It is still built with gcc afaik. But in general you are free to call it whatever you want I guess.
It is hard to dodge GNU completely. Bash is developed by them.
uutils or busybox instead of coreutils, musl, ash instead of bash (or really any non-gnu posix compliant shell, theres lots) and clang instead of gcc.
Default Alpine install uses ash, not bash. But they compile everything with gcc although they probably could substitute with clang at this point.