On Fri, 15 Nov 2002 11:23:43 +0100 Martin Baehr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 10:37:36AM +1300, Mark Tomlinson wrote: > > > Whoa! He made an OS, not a universe. sheesh - perspective :-) > > And I thought he only made a kernel. I'd rate the gnu tools/compiler as > > being a more significant part of the OS. > > but those tools run on windows too. > GNU/windows??? > surely the kernel is the most significant part of the OS. > the rest are tools to control the OS, they don't make it up. > > greetings, martin. yes greetings martin i'm sorry but i just can't let that go by uncommented. surely you know the history? you know, the one about rms and co building a free alternative to all the commercial unices that were around at that time - from the self describing recursive lispy joke "Gnu's Not Unix" on up. most of those wonderful tools we use all of the time had been done, or were nearly so, and virtually the only thing missing in order to have a complete os was a kernel. so a fsf team was busily beavering away on creating a micro kernel, based on the mach one(i think?) - an endeavour still continuing and now known as the hurd - when linus torvalds made his announcement, and the rest as they say is whats its name. so no the kernel's not really the most significant part of the os at all (in the sense that i've taken you to be meaning) - yes it's the kernel which distinguishes "linux" from the other free unixens but the gnu system predates the kernel - if you see what i mean - and sometime in the next year or so, when a releaseable hurd *is* (released(sic)) the gnu project will have come in to it's own - and colonisation can begin. and yes, as you will have guessed, i am one of 'those'. ie i think we should refer to the object of this user group's attentions as gnu/linux in the same manner and spirit that the debian community do, but i realise that i'm probably in a minority on this one and stand by to be toasted in silence. by the by, please don't take any of this to mean that i have an axe to grind agin torvald's baby, i've long been more than happy with it, it's only the /. style church of holy linus that drills my teeth. cheers peter ps: i've just read over this late night burble but send it none the less, apologies rendered for the many inaccuracies errors and distortions. -- Of all the forms of hidden persuasion, the most implacable is that imposed by the way things are ~Pierre Bourdieu
