Re: View on UNIX purism in Linux Community
On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 13:25:16 -0400
Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:
> Gian Uberto Lauri wrote:
> > Doug writes:
> > > On 09/16/2014 03:00 AM, Gian Uberto Lauri wrote:
> > >
> > > > And the GNU project started in 1984, so in the early '90 we
> > > > already were working on bash an gcc and start enjoying the
> > > > GNU version of some command in an improved Unix experience.
> > > >
> > > AH! You said it yourself! "...an improved _Unix_ experience."
> > > (Emphasis added.)
> >
> > Yes, I said "improved". But I said "Unix experience" because it was
> > still a full Unix experience.
> >
> > The improvement was from some GNU commands being more feature rich
> > than the standard counterpart (but work perfectly well if used in
> > the standard way): the bash shell has better editing and history (a
> > bit better than ksh) but run all the Bourne Shell scripts; with the
> > GNU tar you could have used the shorter "tar -zxvf file.tar.gz" and
> > type less, but "gizip file.tar.gz | tar -xvf -" worked perfectly.
> >
> > If you turn GNU/Linux in a Windows-poor-lookalike it is no more a
> > Unix experience.
> >
> > Often in the past young people arrived screaming "We have the great
> > new thing that will change all", and a lot of "great new things"
> > were lost in time like tears in rain...
>
> Just to be clear, here - since the point of this exchange seems to
> have drifted:
>
> 1. Linux is a kernel; not an o/s, and not a distro.
> 2. Debian is full operating system, and a distribution, consisting of:
> - a Linux kernel (usually, but not always)
> - a packaging system (APT)
> - a collection of packages - starting with a lot of GNU libraries and
> a GNU userland
> 3. An awful lot of Debian depends on the GNU toolchain
>
> So... to whomever it was that said GNU is irrelevant, or words to
> that effect... Debian, and most (all?) Linux distros are very much
> dependent on GNU. Arguably, Debian is more intertwined with GNU than
> with the Linux kernel (can you say Debian GNU/kFreeBSD?).
>
> Miles Fidelman
>
>
> >
>
>
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