Re: [Pan-users] Re: clearing headers?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 7 Oct 2008 06:39:38 pm Yavor Doganov wrote:
> В Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:48:15 +1000, Steven D'Aprano написа:
> >> No, Linux is a kernel -- nothing more, nothing less.
> >
> > The GNU people have their opinion. It's not one shared by many
> > others. Possibly not shared by *any* others.
>
> Sure, everyone is entitled to their own opinion -- I suggest you to
> read the GNU/Linux FAQ for common irrational arguments of the people
> who insist calling the system "Linux".

I have read it. I think its sad that you assume that just because I 
don't agree with the GNU opinion that implies I don't know what the GNU 
arguments are.

But then, you advertise to the world that GNU is a religion to you:

"The GNU Emacs Church (Bulgarian eparchy)"

That doesn't fill me with confidence that you're open-minded about your 
beliefs.


> Oddly (or not), if you take out the linux-2.6 package from a "Linux"
> system, and replace it with FreeBSD's kernel, it runs!  It is the
> same "Linux" system, but there's no Linux there.  How come?

How can it be the same system if it is running a different kernel? Are 
you saying that there is no difference between the Linux kernel and the 
FreeBSD kernel? That will come as a surprise to the kernel developers 
of both kernels, not to mention the driver developers who work with one 
or the other.

But of course they are not the same kernel. The FreeBSD kernel is not 
the Linux kernel, even if they are mostly interchangeable, and the 
FreeBSD operating system is not the same as the Linux operating system, 
even if they use many of the same tools.



> (Oh, wait, maybe because the system was not "Linux" in the first
> place...)
> 
> > Similarly there's a Mach kernel (note the H), upon which the Mac
> > (note the lack of H) OS X operating system runs; a Windows NT
> > kernel upon which the Windows NT, XP and other operating systems
> > run; and so forth.
>
> Exactly.  That's why you don't call these systems "NTKERNEL32.EXE"
> and "Mach with proprietary modifications", you call them Windows and
> Mac OS X.

They are called Windows and OS X because that's what their creators have 
named them, and because that's what everyone calls them. There is 
no "OS X" component that the operating system gets its name from, the 
name refers to the whole package. Likewise for Windows: the Windows 
directory gets its name from the operating system, the OS doesn't get 
its name from the Windows directory.

Likewise for Linux: it gets its name from the creator and the common 
practice of people who call it Linux, not because of the presence of 
linux-2.6 package. The package could be renamed to kern-2.7, Linus 
Torvalds could change his name by deed-poll to Leet Haxor, and most 
distributions would continue to call the operating system Linux -- 
not "kern", or "Haxux", or "GNU/the-kernel-formerly-known-as-Linux".


-- 
Steven