On Fri, 30 Aug 2002, Andy Sy wrote: > RMS should be thankful enough as it is that Linus > chose the GNU utilities instead of say, the BSD > ones (which would serve the purpose equally well), > and thus, because of that decision, GNU is as > popular as it is now.
The GNU development utilities (gcc, g++, bison, gawk, sed, emacs, etc.) have been popular even before the arrival of Linux. This is why Linus used the GNU devtools for writing Linux. In fact gcc is so popular that is was, for a long time, the only free tool available for writing huge (>64K code + > 64K data) programs on DOS+DPMI. I am referring here to DJGPP, which, by the way, some people still use. Of course, Linus's use of GNU devtools increased the popularity of GNU, but it was already popular even before. One nice side effect is that the Linux-GNU relationship became a synergy, in which the speed of development of the linux kernel prompted a corresponding improvement in the GNU c/c++ compiler. In the end, the open source developer, denefits from this synergy. I only wish that gcc-3.2 and glibc-2.2.5 could work together properly, so that we do not have to keep two sets of compilers (gcc-2.95.3 and gcc-3.2). PMana _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
