Systemd/Linux is more accurate imo lol.

A perfect example of the meme.

No, Richard, it’s ‘Linux’, not ‘GNU/Linux’. The most important contributions that the FSF made to Linux were the creation of the GPL and the GCC compiler. Those are fine and inspired products. GCC is a monumental achievement and has earned you, RMS, and the Free Software Foundation countless kudos and much appreciation.

Following are some reasons for you to mull over, including some already answered in your FAQ.

One guy, Linus Torvalds, used GCC to make his operating system (yes, Linux is an OS – more on this later). He named it ‘Linux’ with a little help from his friends. Why doesn’t he call it GNU/Linux? Because he wrote it, with more help from his friends, not you. You named your stuff, I named my stuff – including the software I wrote using GCC – and Linus named his stuff. The proper name is Linux because Linus Torvalds says so. Linus has spoken. Accept his authority. To do otherwise is to become a nag. You don’t want to be known as a nag, do you?

(An operating system) != (a distribution). Linux is an operating system. By my definition, an operating system is that software which provides and limits access to hardware resources on a computer. That definition applies whereever you see Linux in use. However, Linux is usually distributed with a collection of utilities and applications to make it easily configurable as a desktop system, a server, a development box, or a graphics workstation, or whatever the user needs. In such a configuration, we have a Linux (based) distribution. Therein lies your strongest argument for the unwieldy title ‘GNU/Linux’ (when said bundled software is largely from the FSF). Go bug the distribution makers on that one. Take your beef to Red Hat, Mandrake, and Slackware. At least there you have an argument. Linux alone is an operating system that can be used in various applications without any GNU software whatsoever. Embedded applications come to mind as an obvious example.

Next, even if we limit the GNU/Linux title to the GNU-based Linux distributions, we run into another obvious problem. XFree86 may well be more important to a particular Linux installation than the sum of all the GNU contributions. More properly, shouldn’t the distribution be called XFree86/Linux? Or, at a minimum, XFree86/GNU/Linux? Of course, it would be rather arbitrary to draw the line there when many other fine contributions go unlisted. Yes, I know you’ve heard this one before. Get used to it. You’ll keep hearing it until you can cleanly counter it.

You seem to like the lines-of-code metric. There are many lines of GNU code in a typical Linux distribution. You seem to suggest that (more LOC) == (more important). However, I submit to you that raw LOC numbers do not directly correlate with importance. I would suggest that clock cycles spent on code is a better metric. For example, if my system spends 90% of its time executing XFree86 code, XFree86 is probably the single most important collection of code on my system. Even if I loaded ten times as many lines of useless bloatware on my system and I never excuted that bloatware, it certainly isn’t more important code than XFree86. Obviously, this metric isn’t perfect either, but LOC really, really sucks. Please refrain from using it ever again in supporting any argument.

Last, I’d like to point out that we Linux and GNU users shouldn’t be fighting among ourselves over naming other people’s software. But what the heck, I’m in a bad mood now. I think I’m feeling sufficiently obnoxious to make the point that GCC is so very famous and, yes, so very useful only because Linux was developed. In a show of proper respect and gratitude, shouldn’t you and everyone refer to GCC as ‘the Linux compiler’? Or at least, ‘Linux GCC’? Seriously, where would your masterpiece be without Linux? Languishing with the HURD?

If there is a moral buried in this rant, maybe it is this:

Be grateful for your abilities and your incredible success and your considerable fame. Continue to use that success and fame for good, not evil. Also, be especially grateful for Linux’ huge contribution to that success. You, RMS, the Free Software Foundation, and GNU software have reached their current high profiles largely on the back of Linux. You have changed the world. Now, go forth and don’t be a nag.

But that’s seawater

honse

Step away from the water, Comrade Shark Fucker

or if you’re one of the founders of the open source movement, like ESR

You dont know the ones who don’t talk about it constantly.

Applies to both Linux users and vegans.

I think there is just a portion of humans that love feeling morally superior, I imagine if annoying vegans or open source zealots tried crossfit they’d never shut up about that either.

That does explain why there are always outspoken vegans inside my echo chambers.

I don’t think I’ve ever met a vegan who talked about it in contexts outside of organizing food for multiple people or in response to others asking about it.

I think it’s mostly that non-vegetarians (of whom I am one) know deep down that at least the vegetarians[1] are right and that they don’t like being reminded of their moral failings. Thus every time they plan getting food for a group and the vegans mention their culinary restrictions, they feel attacked and try to compensate for it by blaming the vegans.

[1] I’ve encountered to many people reporting that they experienced serious health issues with going full vegan, so I’m very much not convinced that veganism is something that works for everyone long term. The same issues do however clearly not apply to vegetarianism.

I think in both cases you have a small and vocal minority within the group. Then you have the silent majority who never preach but just enjoy the lifestyle and the benefits it brings them.

Well yes, because 2 of them have a phone and a desktop computer

I agree to some extent, as there are plenty of distros that don’t do anything significantly different from each other and don’t need to exist. I also see what you mean about desktop environments. While I think there’s space for all the small exotic window managers that exist, I would say we probably don’t need as many big fully integrated desktop environments as there are now. (Maybe we should have only one aimed at modern hardware and one designed to be lightweight.)

That being said, there is plenty of duplication of effort within commerical software too. I would argue that if commercial desktop GUIs currently offer a better user experience than Linux desktop environments it’s more in spite of their development model than because of it, and their advantage has mostly to do with companies being able to pay developers to work full time (instead of relying on donations and volunteers).

There are a couple reasons I think this:

• In a “healthy” market economy there needs to be many firms that offer the same product / service. If there is only a small number (or, worse, only one) that performs the same function the firm(s) can begin to develop monopolistic powers. For closed source software development this necessitates a great deal of duplicated effort.
• The above point is not a hypothetical situation. Before the rise of libre software there were a ton of commercial unices and mainframe operating systems that were all mostly independently developed from each other. Now, at least when it comes to running servers and supercomputers, almost everyone is running the same kernel (or very nearly the same) and some combination of the same handful of userspace services and utilities.
• Even as there is duplication of effort between commercial firms, there is duplication of effort and wasted effort within them. For an extreme example look at how many chat applications Google has produced, but the same sort of duplication of effort happens any time a UI or whole application is remade for no other reason than if the people employed somewhere don’t look like they’re working on something new then they’ll be fired.
• Speaking of changing applications, how many times has a commercial closed source application gone to shit, been abandoned by the company that maintains it, or had its owning company shut down, necessitating a new version of the software be built from scratch by a different firm? This wastes not only the time of the developers but also the users who have to migrate.

Generally I think open source software has a really nice combination of cooperation and competition. The competition encourages experimentation and innovation while the cooperation eliminates duplicated effort (by letting competitors copy each other if they so choose).

Possibly relevant xkcd? https://xkcd.com/927

so, i try to build a CMake project, i know i’m going to be tearing my hair out for a day. i’ll need the reference open just to know whether pkg_check_modules(A B) is searching for library A and assigning that to variable B or vice versa. and i know that once i do get it compiling, it’ll be another day before i can get it cross compiling from my desktop to my arm chromebook or mobile phone.

so i find a similar project written in meson, where a = find_dependency(b) is immediately obvious to me, and i can make sense of the thing or even tweak it a bit without a manual, just by following the patterns. i build it first try; 80% chance it cross compiles already – 20% chance it doesn’t and i can fix that and send the fix upstream (and now 81% of meson projects cross compile).

the CMake camp: “but we all already know CMake, this new meson thing doesn’t make anything easier for us. cross compiling? that’s called QEMU.” and they’re totally right about both of those things. but that’s useless for me.

sure, it’d be nice if the GTK/KDE split (for example) didn’t lead to so much duplication of the non-GUI parts. but if you just say “no splitting” that’s the same as saying “you half go find some other hobby”. it’s really not an easy thing to sort through all the little differences and steer things such that everyone can feel at home in the same project. that’s work, and unless you’re BDFL it means a whole lot of drawn-out discussions trying to convince everyone to change their ways for someone else’s sake.