Quote:
Originally posted by ratbastid
That said, he's got a point. Most of the tools I use when I'm running Linux are GNU tools. I've compiled a kernel or two in my time, but that's really the only interaction I have with it. So in my day to day use, it's more accurate to say I'm running a GNU system than a Linux system. GNU tools on the Hurd kernel would feel much the same....
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RMS does far too much in the way of quibbling.
GNU tools are integral in creating the system, and for the most part, administering the system.
But, unless you live solely at the command line there's a whole lot in most linux distros other GNU utilities and they are the things that most users interact with.
pine from UW. X from Xfree. Mozilla from mozilla. KDE, ghostscript (which will no longer be a GNU util), perl, apache, and the list could go on and on. Even when I do find myself at the command line, it's not gnu stuff I spend most of my time with.
Screen to keep my shells alive when I exit X. sometimes ksh93 (open source version from AT&T) or bash as my shell, pine as my mail reader, perl as my toolkit.
I do use grep, sed and find quite a bit, and of course vim for system level stuff, but editting code I find xemacs (nonGNU) in viper mode to be ideal.
There are far too many people who could attempt to hang their star on linux. But places that favor and install the GNU version of the system software and use it for it's consistency, don't call what they end up with GNU/Solaris, or GNU/AIX or GNU Services for Unix.