Richard Stallman, industry activist and founder of the Free Software Foundation has - once again - relinquished his role as maintainer of the phenomenally successful GNU Extensible, Customizable, Display Editor (Emacs). The news was slipped out on the Emacs developers' forum and Stallman explained his reasons in a later interview.
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Member since:2005-07-06
http://www.gnome.org/about/
GNOME is Free Software and part of the GNU project.
Member since:2006-12-05
Member since:2005-07-13
Which nicely bookends the other article going on right now about the inclusion of mono in Gnome as a dependency for tomboy, and the inherent risk of Microsoft taint because of that. Which, by no small coincidence, RMS discouraged.
I bask in the irony.
Member since:2005-08-18
RE[4]: Comment by tyrione
Member since:2005-08-07
In an ideal situation, it would simply be "Ubuntu" or "Fedora" etc etc... and people would be made aware of the underlying technology as they use it...
The community wishes to give the appearance of unification however, so they chose "Linux" as it was simpler, and kept the religious stuff that GNU represents out of the picture.
If the FOSS world tries to explain GNU philosophy to everyone, there would simply never have been the resources made available by the large companies involved today.
I simply took offense to the fact that the guy seemed offended that RMS was pushing the acknowledgment of GNU while he gave an interview. That is his prerogative.
Member since:2005-07-15
>F.ex. GNOME doesn't belong to GNU as far as I know
GNOME is a GNU Project (see: http://www.gnome.org/about/)
By the way Gtk+ is a GNU project too.
See http://directory.fsf.org/GNU/ for all programs which are part of the GNU project.
>As such, should it be called GNOME/Linux, or KDE/Linux, or something similar?
GNOME/Linux is not necessary because GNOME is already mentioned with GNU so you can stay by GNU/Linux. If you want to give KDE credits you could call it KDE/GNU or KDE/GNU/Linux or whatever you want.
(see: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#many)
At the end you can't use your computer with Linux and you can't use your computer with GNU (to some extend you can) but if you combine Linux and GNU you get an operating system which allows you to use your computer so GNU/Linux is a adequate name. It's a little bit like TCP/IP. You need both for a common network stack so it is neither TCP nor IP but TCP/IP.
If you wan't a shorter name you should pick the part which is larger and more important and this is GNU. Why is GNU more important? Give someone a GNU System and replace the Kernel Linux with another Kernel and most user won't discover any difference. On the other Hand take Linux out of GNU and put it e.g. into MacOS (to replace the BSD kernel) people will discover a huge difference. So while the kernel is an important part it doesn't make the difference. The difference come from the part of the OS which is necessary to run a computer and interacts with the user and not the part which interacts with the hardware.
Edited 2008-02-27 11:48 UTC
Member since:2006-02-15
At the end you can't use your computer with Linux and you can't use your computer with GNU (to some extend you can) but if you combine Linux and GNU you get an operating system which allows you to use your computer so GNU/Linux is a adequate name.
Linux can also be combined with non-GNU software and still make a useable computer. As such, Linux != GNU/Linux. Sure enough, I don't know of any Linux distro which would provide a useable userland without GNU software, but still it is possible and as such Linux just isn't synonymous with GNU/Linux.
If you wan't a shorter name you should pick the part which is larger and more important and this is GNU. Why is GNU more important? Give someone a GNU System and replace the Kernel Linux with another Kernel and most user won't discover any difference. On the other Hand take Linux out of GNU and put it e.g. into MacOS (to replace the BSD kernel) people will discover a huge difference.
You are contradicting yourself. First you say changing kernel won't change anything for the end-user and then you say it will make a huge impact? Nah, I'd just say both GNU and Linux are more-or-less equally important. Neither of them would be what they are now without eachother. All the Linux-related development just wouldn't have been possible without GCC et al, but they wouldn't be so good as they are now without all the movement and interested developers that Linux has attracted.
So, in the end, I'll just stick to calling GNU GNU and Linux-distributions as Linux.
Member since:2005-08-12
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Google added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow."During its Keynote today, Google announced new features coming to its flagship search function - you know, that thing we all started using Google for. VP Amit Singhal spent some time discussing what Google's search functionality will eventually morph into. Google's strategy is summarized by three words: answer, converse, and anticipate. Singhal explained that many of the pieces of these upcoming changes can already be seen in products that Google has recently introduced - namely, Google Knowledge Graph and Google Now, with perhaps a splash of Google Glass, too." I hold on to my hat every time Google changes Search. It's such a vital product in my daily life.
Member since:
2006-02-15
It's really a shame that GNU doesn't get more of the credit for the complete systems like Fedora and Ubuntu. Linux itself is a very large kernel - it comprises about 45MB of code according to kernel.org - but things like GCC, Glibc, Gnome etc etc comprise FAR more of those systems.
One can see it that way too but well...What would you do with a distro with only GNU software on it? F.ex. GNOME doesn't belong to GNU as far as I know, and I kinda think all the other software too which don't belong to GNU actually comprise a bigger part of the distro than the included GNU software. As such, should it be called GNOME/Linux, or KDE/Linux, or something similar? Sure, the whole userland wouldn't be possible without GNU software, but neither would any of the modern desktop environments without non-GNU software.
In the modern times a Linux distro without useable userland is more or less as useless to any average user as a Linux distro without useable and modern DE. In that sense they are both equally important. And don't forget all the other software..
As such I just find nitpicking about calling it Linux instead of GNU/Linux rather irritating.