Bug#301266: Always advertises 'Debian GNU/Linux'
On Sat, Mar 26, 2005 at 03:52:00PM +1100, Adam Conrad wrote:
> Robert Millan said:
> >
> >> Why don't we just put "(Debian)" in instead?
> >>
> >
> > There's a reason because hardcoding "Linux" is wrong: Debian supports
> > (or at least intends to support) other kernels. I can't see a reason why
> > hardcoding "GNU" would be wrong, though. So in this case maybe you want
> > to make it "Debian/GNU" as it used to be in 1.x?
>
> I agree with willy that using just "Debian" seems more reasonable to me.
> I've heard 1001 argument about why we should and shouldn't have GNU in our
> system name, and they're all mostly moot to me.
When you say they're all mostly moot, do you include your own argument, quoted
below? :)
> If we have a Debian *BSD
> port that uses a BSD libc rather than glibc, is it still a GNU system?..
> Perhaps one can argue it is because of the plethora of GNU tools on the
> system, other may argue it isn't from Apache's POV, since Apache isn't
> really making use of a whole bunch of GNU utilities, mostly just the
> kernel and libc, really.
Debian GNU/kFreeBSD uses Glibc. There's another prospective port, based on
kernel of NetBSD and BSD libc, whose developers call "Debian GNU/kNetBSD".
When either of these ports becomes official, these will be the official names
for them.
There are archived discussions about it, and in the opinion of the developers
of each of these projects, there are enough reasons to justify the inclussion
of "GNU" in their names.
The Technical Committe jurisprudence stablishes how the the porting team are
generaly the right people to decide on this (see
http://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2004/06/msg00115.html).
> The bottom line is that if we scrap the kernel name, we can likely scrap
> the "GNU" as well, since most people who insist on using "GNU" are
> complaining that "Linux" withou "GNU/Linux" misrepresents "Linux" as a
> complete OS. TO be fair, though, the complete OS in our case is "Debian",
> not GNU, Linux or anything else.
I never asked to scrap the kernel name. This discussion is pretty much
confusing me:
- I just asked to print the kernel name we're actualy using, instead of
assuming "Linux".
- Someone proposed that it's easier to scrap it (ignoring the fact that I
already provided a patch).
- Then you propose that since we're going to scrap it, why not scrapping
"GNU" too?
This kind of argumentation makes no sense to me. Let's start again:
I hereby propose to replace the constant string "Debian GNU/Linux" with a
dynamic string that detects the kernel and becomes "Debian GNU/$kernel".
--
.''`. Proudly running Debian GNU/kFreeBSD unstable/unreleased (on UFS2+S)
: :' :
`. `' http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu
`-
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