Last Tuesday 02 November 2004 03:00, Jack O'Quin was like: > Jan Depner <eviltwin69@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > On Mon, 2004-11-01 at 15:15, lau@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > > > On Mon, Nov 01, 2004 at 02:04:36PM -0600, Jan Depner wrote: > > > > No disrespect intended to Richard Stallman and the GNU crowd. > > > > The OS wouldn't exist without those tools but the tools are not > > > > part of the OS. They are merely applications that are bundled > > > > in with the distribution. > > > > > > > > Given the more widely accepted definition of an operating system > > > > I think it is perfectly acceptable to speak of Linux as a > > > > standard. > > > > > > This is a gray area, but I think that you cannot just say that the gnu > > > tools are _not_ a part of the operating system. > > > > > > Would you say that the startup scripts are _not_ a part of the OS ? > > > All the startup scripts that I've seen rely are parts of gnu coreutils. > > > > > > I think that qualifies as being _part_ of the OS. > > > > Nope. A startup script is just a startup script. Grub is not part > > of the operating system either. The OS is, by definition, the > > kernel. An interesting thing to consider is RTLinux. Linux is > > *not* the OS in RTLinux. The RT microkernel is the OS. Linux is > > merely the idle process. I guess you could say it's part of the OS > > since it is in the inner loop so to speak. > > I suppose reasonable people could disagree about the definition of > "Operating System". I know what it means to me, and that's a heck of > a lot more than my friend Jan's minimalist definition. > > In the commercial world, when you buy Solaris from Sun, AIX from IBM, > or Windows XP from M$, they call what they sell you an "operating > system". The kernel and all its device drivers represent about 5 or > 10 percent of those products. The rest is all the shells, utilities, > install programs, startup scripts, etc. that are needed to actually > "operate the system". Without an OS, your computer is useless bare > metal and silicon. > > It is useful to make a distinction between "applications" which are > programs users actually *want* to run and "system utilities" which are > all the programs needed to install and run those applications. The > system utilities are traditionally part of the OS. > > There are some grey areas in the realm of development tools. IBM > sells their compilers separately (not all users are programmers), but > the linker is part of the OS, because some applications run a > link-edit step when installing. In an open source world, compilers > *are* needed for installing many applications. So, while the IBM > compiler is not part of AIX, GCC arguably *is* part of GNU/Linux. > > In traditional Unix, the basic development tools were included in the > OS. (Anyone remember the Portable C Compiler?) Thompson and Richie > invented the "nut metaphor" for talking about this stuff. The > "kernel" was the seed in the middle of the nut, while the "shell" was > the outer wrapping seen by users on their teletype machines. Even in > 1969, Unix was a great deal more than the kernel. The scope of > operating systems has grown considerably since then. > > I think Richard Stallman is right to say that "Linux" is only the > kernel and that most of the GNU utilities are needed to make a > complete OS. And, I agree that GNU/Linux is a reasonable name for > that OS. > > By this definition, Debian is much more than just an OS. It also > contains tens of thousands of applications. So do Red Hat and the > other distributions. This is much of the power of open source > software. Thanks for clarifying. I like this explanation best :) I fully realise I'm being a bit of a Debian/GNU/DeMuDi chauvinist here. Respect to all tim hall
