On Jul 27, 2008, Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Memtest runs under the bios operating system. Nope. It does rely on probing and some BIOS configuration tables to find out what it's running on, but that's about it. No operating system involved. > No program runs without some sort of kernel, except the kernel > itself. That's just not true. Have a look at all of the *-elf or *-coff configurations available in the GNU toolchain. Those are aimed at creating applications for embedded targets without any operating system whatsoever. They run on bare hardware, *sometimes* with a loader that enables arbitrary files to be loaded over say a serial line or over NFS, *sometimes* configured to just start the program stored on (P)ROM. > And I hope we all agree that giving the name to a distro based on > the bootloader is plain silly. And why wouldn't naming the distro after the kernel be just as silly? >> Even Fedora includes yet another, called xen. And then xen >> starts Linux. Why is the xen virtual machine monitor not more >> essential than Linux, per your proposed measuring stick? > I am not very familiar with the working of xen, but it looks just like an > additional step to booting the kernel. Most hypervisors are microkernels of their own (the exceptions being full-fledged kernels). Xen is slightly different from most in that, even though it is a microkernel, it depends on and redirects to another kernel that runs under it a lot of interaction with the hardware. All the kernels running under xen are under constraints determined by xen, so they're not as special as they were before, but this one kernel (called domain 0) is not as constrained, so it remains a bit more special than the others. But it definitely isn't just a loader. > As I said above, grub [...] has nothing specifically to do with the > [GNU/]Linux os or distro (except that it is convinient to include it there > and that it is GPL'ed). Ok, this is a new criterion you've introduced. It's a good one. So, if we take out the kernel Linux, and put on another kernel, like some have done, if you still get the same operating system, then Linux also has "nothing specifically to do with the os or distro (except that it is convenient to include it there and that it is GPL'ed)". Right? What other artifical exceptions and work-arounds are you going to have to invent to make it seem like Linux deserves to be more relevant than GNU in a distro? Isn't that an indication of something about both your intent and about the truth of what you're trying to dispute? > If you remove the whole distro, including the kernel, > you are left with the bios and its applications (grub, memtest, etc.). That > is a *different* os, Agreed. Just like, if you remove all but Linux, you're left with a different OS from this one we're talking about. In fact, I said so myself in the first message under this new subject, and you agreed this wasn't a good measuring stick. > So grub simply does not deserve its name in the name of the distro > or the os. s/grub/linux/ CQD -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
