Linux

"I use Linux as my operating system," I state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. He swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision. "Actually", he says with a grin, "Linux is just the kernel. You use GNU+Linux!' I don't miss a beat and reply with a smirk, "I use Alpine, a distro that doesn't include the GNU coreutils, or any other GNU code. It's Linux, but it's not GNU+Linux.

The smile quickly drops from the man's face. His body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth and drops to the floor with a sickly thud. As he writhes around he screams "I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT'S STILL GNU!" Coolly, I reply "If windows was compiled With gcc, would that make it GNU?" I interrupt his response with "-and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. Even you were correct, you wont be for long."

With a sickly wheeze, the last of the man's life is ejected from his body. He lies on the floor, cold and limp. I've womansplained him to death.

Also, Unix ≠ Linux.

given Android, it might even be that most linuxes aren't GNU/linux

When Android came out, it really hit this and the limits of the GPLvII home for me

Android is exactly why I think it's important not to ditch GNU in GNU/Linux. I don't care about codelines, I care about the philosophy.

• Chimera (alpha stage): Chimera uses a novel combination of core tools from FreeBSD, the LLVM toolchain, and the Musl C library

Who was the incredible smart person to name a new distro with a similar name to another, older, Linus distro? ChimeraOS

Yes, officer. This blasphemer right here.

The fsf website actually separates distros. There is GNU/Linux and nonGNU/linux

Its nonGNU/linux

nobody is saying that linux distros that don't have the gnu core utils needs to be called GNU/Linux

Blasphemy!

/s

The GNU project gave birth to and spread the idea of free software worldwide. Would they not have started with the GNU operating system (they wrote a LOT of code) and doing activism then free software would surely not exist in the magnitude it does today.

The Linux kernel would not be this mainstream at all. Spiritually, this makes every popular free OS a GNU system. Even BSD was only freed because Stallman explicitly requested it. Credit where credit is due.

Alpine's great, it's my go-to lightweight/server distro, just really wish they had an option for glibc, musl is just way too limiting for a daily driver...

For people who still don't grasp the difference:

GNU/Linux - for example debian

Linux - for example kernel (android)

But if the GNU Project created an OS based on SerenityOS, would it be GNU/Serenity? 🤔

I take GNU Linux to be GNU-flavoured Linux. Musl and Busybox still behave like GNU, since they were written as alternatives to GNU (at least busybox). Alpine belongs in the same category as regular Linux distros - unlike Android.

More important than this distinction though, is the philosophy behind them. Despite the difference in license, Musl and Busybox still value freedom, like GNU. Android is a monstrosity - a wolf in sheep's clothing. A malware masquerading as open source.

Aaaand Redox. Which is not Linux, but may some time in some Future replace it.