# Final words on Linux is just a kernel crank



## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 23, 2020)

When we said Linux, we implied GNU/Linux, which is: Linux kernel + GNU userland. GNU/Linux is a *complete OS*. The Linux kernel and the GNU userland are also closely integrated. The GNU userland is portable, but it's mostly developed for Linux. There is no mismatch between the Linux kernel and the GNU userland. So people said Linux is a mess because it comprised of a kernel and a userland separately developed are clueless at most.

Linux as a kernel and could be fused with any userland not just the GNU one depending on view point could be considered as both a pros and cons. Some would say it's a cons since it caused inconsistent. I personally don't agree with this kind of reason as I have addressed above. IMHO, it's indeed one of it pros of Linux. This brings the flexibility of Linux that so called *complete OS* like FreeBSD would never have. I think it's one of the reason why Linux is too success and why Google chose Linux but not NetBSD for the base of Android.


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## ekvz (Aug 23, 2020)

To be perfectly honest i don't see much of a point in this thread.

Anyways concerning Google/Android: Google has gone out of their way to avoid GPL licensed code in Android. Their libc and userland (as far as there is something resembling a traditional userland) are actually BSD derived. If BSD would have supported the hardware they were targeting when Android was invented they would likely also have avoided the Linux kernel.


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## 20-100-2fe (Aug 23, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> When we said Linux, we implied GNU/Linux, which is: Linux kernel + GNU userland. GNU/Linux is a *complete OS*.



Not only the userland, but also the applications. In the Linux world, you'll never hear "applications are not Linux".
All the opposite, in fact, they have always be aware of the crucial importance of applications to the success of Linux and taken great care of them.

Also, like many trademarks, Linux has become a common noun to refer to distributions built upon the Linux kernel.
This is true to the point that when you're talking about the kernel, you have to say "the Linux kernel", otherwise it is understood as the whole OS.

However, I don't see the point in such a thread either, because the global IT industry has chosen Linux.
Whatever anyone here might say will not change that fact.

And this may be an important reason why many people in the FreeBSD community feel so bitter and angry at Linux.
Bitterness and anger help neither FreeBSD to grow, nor these people to feel happy, but it is so and we can't change that either.


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## kpedersen (Aug 23, 2020)

20-100-2fe said:


> And this may be an important reason why many people in the FreeBSD community feel so bitter and angry at Linux.



I don't think anyone here is angry with Linux. My personal view on this stems from being fairly certain we do not want the IT industry to target FreeBSD because it will get churned up and spat out. Lets be honest, what popular OS is actually good? Windows? Android? The "IT industry" as it exists now is unable to design a safe, quality OS. As just one example, good decisions heavily conflict with monetisation.

However, I think where FreeBSD users do get frustrated is when a Linux newbie joins and doesn't quite understand that we really do not want FreeBSD to become anything like Linux. We don't want the X11 GUI installer, we don't want the consumer support, we don't want the gimmicks. Because all those things make Linux sloppy and is the main reason we came to (or stuck with) FreeBSD in the first place. The difficulty is, as a Linux newbie, they barely understand Linux themselves so cannot quite be reasoned with as to potential issues. For example many of them only see Gnome 3 and have never actually dug into their own OS.

Just like macOS users. Do they think we run FreeBSD because we have no other choice? Do they think we choose to use a command line because their little GUI trinkets are just too advanced for our minds?


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## ekvz (Aug 23, 2020)

20-100-2fe said:


> However, I don't see the point in such a thread either, because the global IT industry has chosen Linux.
> Whatever anyone here might say will not change that fact.



Not only that but "success" is a double edged sword anyways. Of course broad success equals massive development resources but aside from it gets somewhat questionable. There might be some kind of sweet spot in having a huge market share as a server OS while also being usable as a desktop OS used by more technical folks but that is as good as it get i think. If one wants to archive more or even mass adoption end users need to be targeted and that's where things start to get problematic as there will be opposing requirements as to what drew the original user base to the system. In a way Linux or at least the successful distributions are a product of that in my opinion.


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## anonymous9 (Aug 23, 2020)

Take the FreeBSD kernel and add the Plan 9 userspace and call it Free9.  There was a project called Glendix which did that with the Linux kernel and Plan 9 userspace.

The Linux kernel with util-linux, a standard package, which is distributed by the Linux Kernel Organization with Linux, makes it a complete operating system.

Minix3 uses a NetBSD userland.


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## mark_j (Aug 23, 2020)

This reeks of a concerted effort.
Kill this thread. Nuke it! Send it to hell!


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## Beastie7 (Aug 24, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> This brings the flexibility of Linux that so called *complete OS* like FreeBSD would never have. I think it's one of the reason why Linux is too success and why Google chose Linux but not NetBSD for the base of Android.



FreeBSD doesn’t need to. Because it tends to provide modular, extensible APIs (Note, standards too) that can be finely tuned to a particular workload or use case scenario. This is the answer to Linux’s so called ”flexibility” (or Fragmentation, choice for the sake of choice) approach to design above the stack IMO.

It’s very entertaining seeing straws grasped at something the general Linux populace doesn’t understand. And yes, please kill this thread.


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## unitrunker (Aug 24, 2020)

The "Linux" brand is severely diluted.

How many times have you read or heard someone say "Linux shell" or "Linux script" when they really mean bash.
How many people say "Linux" when they really mean "GNU/Linux".  The standard "GNU/Linux" trope appears like graffiti all over reddit.

_https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/3d7iqd/spawn_of_richard_stallman/_


Because it is useful to know the context when someone says "Linux" - it is the speaker's responsibility to make that clear. Saying the distro name (like Ubuntu, Kali, ChromeOS, or Android) is often far more useful that saying "Linux".


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## a6h (Aug 24, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> I think it's one of the reason why Linux is too success and why Google chose Linux but not NetBSD for the base of Android.


In the latest U.S. Senate hearing google accused of working with the Chinese military and seemingly treasonous behaviour. Also in the past Google censored Chinese search results regarding the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. At this point in time nobody need Google blessing. I think FreeBSD, NetBSD, ... is better off not having a relationship with google.
By the way somebody should close this stupid thread.


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## ralphbsz (Aug 24, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> The GNU userland is portable, but it's mostly developed for Linux.


It was originally developed for the Hurd. Hurd is considerably older than Linux, started about 5 years earlier. It was the idea that RMS could build a complete system. For some odd but logical reasons (look at his background), he started with the editor, then got people to write the compiler and the shell. While all these are userspace tools, and easily replaceable (even back then, there were lots of freely available editors, compilers and shells), they didn't fit RMS's ideas. The Hurd kernel was started sometime in the late 80s, and had influence from BSD (must have been 4.4 at the time) and from Carnegie-Mellon's Mach. At the time, everyone was of the opinion that "only microkernels will ever amount to anything" (at the same time, everyone was of the opinion that only RISC machines are useful, which tells you something about opinions), so Hurd was designed around a microkernel. Honestly, I've lost track which microkernel du jour Hurd is using now (Mach? L4? their own?).

The rest of the "GNU userland" (mostly utilities such as ls and cat, which were not part of the development toolchain, and the binutils and gmake) were quickly hacked together. Honestly, most the brain power went into the "interesting" stuff (compilers, editors, kernel architecture), while the tedious and boring stuff was done ... how shall I say it politely ... without much attention. Then when the Linux kernel came into life, those were simply used for Linux because they were available.

Since then, development at the GNU project has been quite schizophrenic: Hurd is the real target and goal, but people mostly use Linux to develop and test (because Hurd just doesn't work well enough to do serious work with). Interestingly, I've been told that you can build a passable system by using the *BSD kernels with all of the GNU userland, and that the GNU developers have been deliberately keeping that option open since the days of 4.4.

The notion that "Linux is not an OS" because it is just a kernel is silly. Nobody knows exactly what an operating system really is. Every textbook has a definition, and the better textbooks have multiple definitions. Is VMware an OS (it has no userland, but it does resource abstracting, and in the ESX version, it has a kernel)? How about VxWorks (it is linked into the user's application, and early one had no distinction between user and system, plus you only ran one application)? How about cp/m (it has no distinction between user and system, and reboots the OS every time a program ends)? How about IBM VM (it's only userland are other operating systems, such as CMS or MVS)? And if GNU/Linux is an operating system, and GNU/Hurd a different operating system, and Alpine Linux (which has no GNU components!) also one, plus GNU/BSD is one too, are they all different operating systems? And let's not even get started on the question of iOS and Android, which are neither self-hosting, nor can you build applications on them, are they real operating systems? This is all splitting hairs.

If you want to ask the question: Is FreeBSD (as shipped in the default configuration) better or worse than RedHat Enterprise Linux (just to pick a random installable package), that is a fascinating and very complex question, to which the answer is neither "42" nor "elephant".


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 24, 2020)

ekvz said:


> To be perfectly honest i don't see much of a point in this thread.


This is my attempt to give an end to all of threads like this:









						Why are some people ridiculing the fact that Linux is not a "complete OS"?
					

The question is in the title. I know that Linux is just a kernel, not an OS and Linux distributions like Debian, Ubuntu are the real OSes that run on top of it but I never understood why some are basically making fun of that.   I'm not an expert by any means, just an user but I have read some...




					forums.freebsd.org


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 24, 2020)

anonymous9 said:


> Take the FreeBSD kernel and add the Plan 9 userspace and call it Free9.


And does it easy to do as with Linux?

Did anything like that "Free9" ever existed or did someone even attempted to do that at all?

All of your statements are just talks, without even a link about something actually exists or used to exists but only your imaginary "Free9"!

If it's that easy, all the major Linux distros with a kFreeBSD brand didn't deprecated it. All of these kFreeBSD style distros are dead now.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 24, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> It was originally developed for the Hurd. Hurd is considerably older than Linux, started about 5 years earlier. It was the idea that RMS could build a complete system. For some odd but logical reasons (look at his background), he started with the editor, then got people to write the compiler and the shell. While all these are userspace tools, and easily replaceable (even back then, there were lots of freely available editors, compilers and shells), they didn't fit RMS's ideas. The Hurd kernel was started sometime in the late 80s, and had influence from BSD (must have been 4.4 at the time) and from Carnegie-Mellon's Mach. At the time, everyone was of the opinion that "only microkernels will ever amount to anything" (at the same time, everyone was of the opinion that only RISC machines are useful, which tells you something about opinions), so Hurd was designed around a microkernel. Honestly, I've lost track which microkernel du jour Hurd is using now (Mach? L4? their own?).
> 
> The rest of the "GNU userland" (mostly utilities such as ls and cat, which were not part of the development toolchain, and the binutils and gmake) were quickly hacked together. Honestly, most the brain power went into the "interesting" stuff (compilers, editors, kernel architecture), while the tedious and boring stuff was done ... how shall I say it politely ... without much attention. Then when the Linux kernel came into life, those were simply used for Linux because they were available.
> 
> Since then, development at the GNU project has been quite schizophrenic: Hurd is the real target and goal, but people mostly use Linux to develop and test (because Hurd just doesn't work well enough to do serious work with). Interestingly, I've been told that you can build a passable system by using the *BSD kernels with all of the GNU userland, and that the GNU developers have been deliberately keeping that option open since the days of 4.4.


This is the story of the past. Now, everything revolves around Linux and only Linux. The GNU userland is not an exception! After many years focused on Linux and being heavily developed by big companies utilizing Linux, I don't think the GNU userland is still in the patchy state as when it just started! And honestly, I found the GNU tools to provide more features than their BSD counterparts! They are removed from the FreeBSD base only because they are GPL-ed even if the BSD licensed alternatives not really meet the quality and functionality of them!


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## SirDice (Aug 24, 2020)

Stop with the flame baits please. 

Thread closed.


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