Re: Bug#220401: ITP: linux-experimental -- Linux 2.4 kernel [EXPERIMENTAL PACKAGE]
Robert Millan wrote:
>Just thought I should give you a better reply.
>On Wed, Nov 12, 2003 at 07:24:52PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>> Robert, your (frankly autistic) worldview worries me. What do you
>> believe would be in a freebsd-kernel or netbsd-kernel package? What do
>> you believe would be in a linux-kernel package? When someone says
>> "Linux", do you think they generally mean something massively different
>> to when they say "NetBSD"?
>
>These questions are ambigous. Any response I could came up would fit on them.
>The relevant question here is not what "someone generaly means", but rather
>what "something is".
No, when thinking about what packages contain, people are more likely to
use the general meaning of the word or phrase rather than a narrow
pedantic one.
>The following question would make more sense:
>
> "Do you think Linux is something massively different than NetBSD?"
>
>(You could respond to it, btw)
The term "linux" is often used to mean an operating system based around
the Linux kernel. The term "NetBSD" is often used to mean an operating
system based around the kernel from NetBSD. In a specific, narrow
definition, Linux refers only to the kernel whereas NetBSD may refer to
the entire OS. This is not a widely understood definition. So, no, I
don't think they're massively different. When people say "I've just
installed linux", they're not just talking about the kernel.
Calling the package linux-kernel (or in this case, perhaps,
linux-kernel-experimental) resolves any ambiguity without making it any
less clear what the package contains. Where's the issue?
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.devel@srcf.ucam.org
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