Hacker News Reader

UNIX is a proprietary operating system (not a kernel) and GNU aims to be quite the opposite, hence that acronym (GNU is Not UNIX). As for the decision to leave the kernel at last, well just give a look at how long is it taking for HURD to be completed... also I am guessing he needed other stuff to be created first (compiler, etc)

View on HN

What is the difference between an operating system and a kernel? (HaHa) Well, if you can point me out to some ressource regarding my questions about RMS' decisions, that would be cool. Regarding the GNU name, as far as I am informed RMS wanted to point out that the GNU is a UNIX-like OS as opposed to a non-UNIX like VMS. He decided to go with a unix because it had proven itself to be portable (unlike ITS for example).

A kernel is part of the operating system, but the operating system is not composed by the kernel only. Take MacOSX: it is an operating system, its kernel is XNU. Linux itself is a kernel, not an operating system, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com