I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!
My only gripe with GNU is the acronym itself.
Sure, the joke is clever, a recursive acronym “GNU is Not Unix”, cute. But they could have used absolutely any letter as the first letter and that joke would still work. So why didn’t they choose something pronounceable? I mean, the option was right there. ENU, ANU, INU, ONU, SNU, those would all work. Hell, even NNU would work, you could pronounce it “the new project”.
Not sure if that’s the reason but I heard that gnu was chosen because gnus, the animal, are essentially one herd spread across Africa. A gnu that loses its particular herd, e.g. while crossing a river, can join any other. Supposedly that’s not the same for other herd animals.
I thought gnu was another name for a wildebeest. How do you even put a wildebeest on your computer?
I learned about it because Richard stallman gave a speech at my campus (pre-controversy) and half his speech was the gnu copy pasta unironically. Which I get, if i made core software that most of the world’s server runs on, I wouldn’t shut up about it either.
I know GNU because it’s a recursive acronym.
The real Linux fork bomb
No one can really know what GNU stands for unless they can perform an infinite recursion in constant time.
NaN’s not UNIX
This is why it really should have been called “NNU”, that would work perfectly.
I like using the GNU’s Not Unix Image Manipulation Program ToolKit when I make GUIs.
Ah, so a GUI is in fact a GNU User Interface ?
I think we should call them Gnuser Interfaces and shorten it to GI. Gnome systems only.
yeah, but what does GNU stand for?
GNU’s Not Unix.
See my comment here to see what the GNU part stands for: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18917548
From your user name to the link joke.
This is a real master piece
deleted by creator
*GNU is my pepper
Have you ever used the GNU’s Not Unix Image Manipulation Program ToolKit America Online Instant Messenger?
Yup. Which is why I also cheer up seeing “I use Arch btw” (me too use Arch). Can’t imagine myself giving educational speech on what open source software is and why it matters, but I surely can spam memes here and there
It’s the very reason I am using Arch, just so I can be true to spamming “I use Arch btw”. Genius advertising.
I use Arch btw -sniffs fart-
I’ve yet to meet someone not using it because of that meme
whats the copypasta?
It’s the top comment
Wait. People don’t know about Hurd?
The superior kernel! (at least on paper)
Somehow I feel like a kernel is less effective on paper than on silicon & copper, but that’s just me.
I use Linux and I’m not even sure what Gnu is, except that the name is a recursive algorithm meaning “GNU’s Not Unix”, so presumably it’s a Unix-like OS.
H’okay, so.
There was this guy called Richard Stallman. Way on back in the day he was working with Bell Labs’ UNIX at the university he worked for, and he got kinda butthurt about the extremely restrictive licensing terms and exorbitant cost that Bell Labs offered the OS for. So Stallman decided he was going to make his own OS with blackjack and hookers and offer it for free to anyone who could make use of it. The Usenet post he made announcing his intention mentions he knows someone who might get them a computer. He named his new operating system GNU, for GNU’s Not Unix. It’s a recursive acronym, which was popular at the time, it’s apparently another name for a wildebeest or water buffalo or something, and it’s an unpronounceable mouthful of socket wrenches, so it’s the trend setter for free software packages even all these decades later.
They built a whole bunch of really important software; a shell, core utilities, a C compiler, and applications like emacs. But they never got a working kernel going, the actual engine of the OS. They worked on their own thing they called HURD (which of course is a recursive acronym they put more thought into than the software itself), they gave up and tried to acquire an existing one to use, then went back to working on HURD. They never really got a system off the ground for lack of a kernel.
Then a Finnish student named Linus Torvalds piped up and said “Hey I built an OS kernel for the 386 IBM PC, it’s not as big or as professional as GNU, but maybe you guys’ll find it interesting.” He was persuaded to release Linux under the GNU Public License 2.0, and it wasn’t long after that that the first operating systems built on the Linux kernel and GNU coreutils entered distribution.
Linux is the name of some software, GNU is the sound you make when punched in the throat, so people quickly started just calling this emerging ecosystem simply “Linux.” Much to the chagrin of Richard Stallman who feels he isn’t getting credit for his work. This is his punishment for being the absolute worst at naming things.
Much to the chagrin of Richard Stallman who feels he isn’t getting credit for his work. This is his punishment for being the absolute worst at naming things.
Hear hear! And let’s hope he learned his lesson!
Great history! I can understand Stallman feeling like he deserved more credit, but he did come to be identified with the whole opensource movement as a consolation prize.
In the early 80s I was actually starting to get into Unix bigtime, but then at my my job we got a computer called a VAX that ran an OS called VMS. Everything was plain English and totally intuitive. Like if you wanted to print 3 copies of a file in landscape mode on a printer called Hulk it would be PRINT /COPIES=3 ORIENTATION=LANDSCAPE DEVICE=Hulk <filename>. Fully spelled out it was a bit verbose, but you could shorten anything as long as it was unambiguous. At the time I thought VMS was so much easier to learn, it would blow Unix right out of the water. Today VMS is in the dustbin of computing history. Not the first time I’ve been wrong lol.
I think it’s linux as kernel + GNU utilities. I imagine the utilities to be all of the “linux” commands in the command line. May be wrong
That explainarion seems recursive in its self lol
I know what GNU is because I witnessed the people this meme was modeled after.
Is the big joke that it actually is Unix?
No. Because it isn’t, though GNU terminal commands are generally Unix compatible.
It’s like if you had a dog (Sir Licksalot) and taught him to “sit”, “roll over” and “stay”. And then you got a second dog (Barkley Von Woofington the 3rd) and you taught him the same commands.
Licksalot and Barkley respond to the same commands but they’re definitely different dogs. They may even perform the commands differently sometimes, so it’s important to know which dog you’re dealing with. (so you can give them the appropriate amount of belly rubs)
