Linked by Jordan Spencer Cunningham on Wed 19th Aug 2009 20:54 UTC
The Linux Foundation has made some analyzation the past two years into just how much code is being added to the project and who is doing that contribution. This year's report is out, and the results are actually quite smile-worthy if you're a Linux advocate: the increase in code contributions is phenomenal, the rate at which these contributions are being submitted is faster, and there are more individual developers than previously.
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Member since:
2005-06-29
I am not questioning your insight specifically and I don't think we are very far apart. I am questioning that Chrome will be "just another Linux Distro." The kernel alone doesn't make an OS anymore than an engine alone makes a car. "
Oh, I see; you don't understand that the kernel is >98% of the OS; the rest is the userspace API, device driver API, and a bootstrapping mechanism. Everything else, be it libraries, frameworks, etc., are simply applications or parts of applications on top of the OS. Many layfolk are confused because MS-Windows, the class of operating systems they are most directly familiar with, have confused the issue by bundling them tightly together and creating a poor abstraction layer between them. The result is a blurring of the differences between an Operating System, and a Computing Platform (the latter including the base set of libraries, frameworks, and core applications). A particular version of Ubuntu, for example is a Computing Platform, consisting of some version of Linux as the OS, a set of device drivers, and a set of libraries, frameworks, and applications. In the case of Linux, where such platforms are created by a large number of different providers, it is also known as a (Linux) Distribution.
Look through any Operating Systems textbook or take a college-level course in Operating Systems (where either is part of a curriculum for a Computer Science degree) and you will get a much better feel for where the boundaries of Operating System truly lie.