Hacker News Reader

Comment by ho_schi | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn’t label Google/Android as GNU/Linux. Neither MacOS as UNIX. Nor ChromeOS as GNU/Linux. Why? Linux is the shorthand for GNU/Linux.

SteamOS is actually Archlinux which is a mere Linux. Archlinux can be considered as clean sheet Linux, they avoid patching and modifications if possible. So probably even the FSF people would accept it as GNU/Linux?

Even more. The SteamDeck is using a X86_64 CPU and RDNA2 GPU. No hidden firmware locks. So it is an IBM-PC. It counts therefore 100% as Linux. I would even say 120% because it comes pre-installed.

View on HN

To say nothing of your other points, MacOS is demonstrably UNIX. It's certified UNIX, in fact: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

> Linux is the shorthand for GNU/Linux.

It shouldn't be. For the same reasons you would shorten TCP/IP to TCP, you should shorten GNU/Linux to GNU. This avoids all of the confusion about what is "really Linux", because when people say that they actually mean GNU.

it's ubiquitous to shorten TCP/IP to TCP in the context of it not being UDP

Exactly. It should also be ubiquitous to shorten GNU/Linux to GNU in the context of not being Android, Alpine, or other Linux-based operating systems.

There's now at least one Linux distribution that kicks out all the Gnu stuff. See https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/13/chimera_non_gnu_linux...

There are a few: Android and Alpine are two other notable ones. It's important to note that these are not the same operating system as GNU/Linux. Just like there are many transport protocols that can be used on top of IP that are not TCP.

Yes, they are Linux, but not Gnu/Linux. That's the point.

Yes, but it's uncommon to actually want to lump this 4+ operating systems under a single term. People do it by accident, and it causes a lot of confusion about "what's really Linux", as evident by this thread.

There are reasons to want to talk about Linux, but it probably shouldn't be much more common than NT in day to day vocabulary.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com