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With another of his graphs derived from StatCounter data, blogger and Linux advocate Robert Pogson reports
It was only a few years ago that the sycophants of M$ were trumpeting that */Linux was struggling to reach ~1% share of the desktop anywhere. Many of those were in USA.
Well, the chickens have come home to roost in The Year Of The Linux Desktop. */Linux has ~5% share. Are we there yet? Nope. FLOSS is still going places and growing stronger every year. Classical GNU/Linux grew rapidly until mid-year when Android/Unknown and Chrome OS took up slack. It's all good.
I would have said "He who laughs last laughs best" but, hey, it's his blog.
...and remembering how Chromebooks dominated the sales figures last Christmas, I can't wait to see how the SteamBox sales go this Christmas.
Previous: Given the Choice for Christmas 2014, Consumers Chose Linux
Big Jump in Bahrain: Linux Now At 16 Percent
(Score: 0, Troll) by Gravis on Monday October 19 2015, @06:15PM
what is with the obsession of calling Linux "GNU/Linux"? are people so arrogant to think that a single implementation of POSIX is somehow important? just call it Linux because that's what it is.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 19 2015, @06:39PM
RMS, as usual, is correct but annoying about this. The reason he pushed for "GNU/Linux" is that all of the core stuff that isn't the kernel is the result of the GNU project.
This is somewhat less true after systemd (for good or for ill), but without the GNU components your nice shiny Linux kernel can do little more than sit there blinking. Theoretically, I could see somebody trying to get the BSD userspace onto a Linux kernel, but to write GNU out of the story makes little sense.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 19 2015, @06:44PM
DOS was an "operating system" - the "disk operating system" to be precise.
Windows is an "operating system".
Unix is an "operating system".
Linux is an "operating system".
Gnu is a collection of userland applications.
If RMS ever produces a working kernel, then he can distribute his own operating system. Until then, he merely distributes some applications.
The eccentric old bastard can't define what an operating system is, nor can he arbitrarily rename an operating system just because people in userland prefer his applications.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @07:19PM
Linux is an "operating system".
Linux is a kernel.
(Score: 1, Troll) by fnj on Monday October 19 2015, @09:43PM
Bullshit. You have no idea what "operating system" means [wikipedia.org]: "An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs."
GNU is a collection of computer programs.
"Informative", my ass, retard mod.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 19 2015, @10:46PM
glibc definitely provides common services for computer programs.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 20 2015, @09:08AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by NickFortune on Tuesday October 20 2015, @10:30AM
I think you'll find the term is overloaded and used to refer to both the Kernel and the O/S distributions commonly built around that kernel.
(Score: 5, Informative) by vux984 on Monday October 19 2015, @07:37PM
DOS was an "operating system" - the "disk operating system" to be precise.
Sure. DOS is an operating system. And if DOS were "GNU/Linux" then the DOS part would be the hidden: io.sys and msdos.sys, and perhaps emm386.sys and himem.sys and that's about it. The GNU part would be most of what's in command.com (cd, mkdir, rd, set, path, the batch file processor) and all of the utilities (xcopy, deltree, edlin/edit...ie pretty much everything in the C:\DOS folder). You consider those a pretty integral part of the DOS operating system do you not? I know I do.
Windows is even more ridiculous, if you wrapped a different user-land around the Windows Kernel, it wouldn't be "Windows".
"Linux" the kernel project doesn't include any of that. GNU/Linux, like or not, really is the operating system. Its not like GNU is just emacs and . GNU is bash, grep, ls, cd, ps, man, chown, chmod, mkdir, tail. Not to mention the C standard libary, and GCC etc. You can't use Linux without GNU ... unless you replaced all the GNU stuff. Its not 'optional'. Maybe you've conflated GNU with GNOME or something? Because GNU/Linux without GNOME is still an operating system. But Linux without GNU... is not.
I tend to call it linux myself because I'm lazy (aka normal), but I at least recognize that RMS is right. And I certainly don't get worked about about seeing it written in full GNU/Linux in an article on the internet.
"Unix is an "operating system".
Unix is more accurately a family of operating systems that share certain characteristics. I guess the same is true of Windows to a lesser degree, and even DOS is a family (DOS 3.0 vs DOS 6.22 etc) but Unix is even less specific.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by fnj on Monday October 19 2015, @09:48PM
You don't know shit. Command.com is part of DOS, just like sh is part of BSD. The utilities you mention are just what you called them - utilities. They are programs that run under an OPERATING SYSTEM.
Iidiot mods.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @10:33PM
Are you that young that you have never heard of 4DOS or NDOS (drop-in replacements for MICROS~1's command interpreter)?
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday October 19 2015, @11:32PM
Yes, I know what those are, and even recall that you invoke them with SHELL=xxxxx in config.sys.
But I fail to see your point? I can replace any arbitrary file in a linux install too with one of my own creation.
Does that mean the original file wasn't part of the operating system?
If that's your argument, well... no... that would be too stupid to be your argument... so what is your argument exactly?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 19 2015, @10:50PM
If command.com and sh are part of the OS, then bash is, too, because it fulfils the role of sh on Linux. And bash is GNU.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday October 19 2015, @11:26PM
Command.com is part of DOS
just like sh is part of BSD
Yes. And carrying on then... bash is part of Linux?
But we get bash from GNU. So where are you going with this?
The utilities you mention are just what you called them - utilities. They are programs that run under an OPERATING SYSTEM.
The C standard library (itself used by the (sic) "OPERATING SYSTEM") is maintained by GNU. That's not a utility, nor a program.
And those basic utilities... from attrib to xcopy -- yes they are part of the operating system. They aren't part of the 'kernel'. But they ARE absolutely part of the operating *SYSTEM*.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @10:30PM
That name which must not be spoken??
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @07:38PM
So what is android then?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 20 2015, @01:09PM
A mess.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday October 20 2015, @04:31AM
Gnu is a collection of userland applications.
That's not strictly true [wikipedia.org].
Say what you want, but all the GNU stuff taken together *does* make an operating system.
And while I'm not a huge fan of RMS, I am a huge fan of looking at things in an unbiased way.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 5, Insightful) by darkfeline on Monday October 19 2015, @07:29PM
RMS is not correct about this. The GNU/Linux name comes primarily from historical factors. The "original" "GNU/Linux" (Linus's OS) was an amalgamation of Linus's Linux kernel and GNU software. Linux was supposed to be a hack during Hurd's development, but Hurd was never completed.
RMS's motivations for calling it GNU/Linux, to the best of my knowledge, is:
1. To further the cause of free software by getting GNU/FSF's name out there via the popularity of Linux.
2. To gain recognition for the admittedly significant contribution that GNU made during Linux's early years.
GNU's greatest contribution is the GCC free software compiler. Everything else is just icing; if GNU didn't write it, someone else would have wrote it. The reason most distros use GNU is because it exists, not because it is especially good or that the entire system somehow revolves around GNU. Most "GNU"/Linux systems would work fine using Busybox or any other utility package that is not GNU, but distros use GNU because it's there and widely used, nothing more.
Here's a silly analogy: Bob invents Velcro. Velcro gets used in shoes and becomes popular. Bob demands that all Velcro-using shoes be called Bob/shoes. The shoemakers could switch to using shoelaces, but all their factories are set to use Velcro and there's nothing wrong with Velcro so they keep using Velcro. Everyone respects Bob for his invention but no one really takes his "Bob/shoes" crusade seriously.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 19 2015, @08:59PM
Sure, maybe somebody else would have written it, but nobody else did. And there's a lot of GNU stuff in a typical Linux system you are definitely not paying any attention to, like:
- The Grub bootloader. Try doing anything at all on a Linux system without either this or LILO.
- The C standard library - relied on by the entirety of userspace.
- In addition to gcc, the entirety of the development tools, including make, automake, autoconf, ld and friends. Try building an application without it.
- Diff and patch, which made the entirety of open-source development possible prior to github and are both still extensively used.
- The bash shell (You can use others, but bash is standard for a reason)
- A solid majority of all the command-line commands you use.
The reason you aren't paying attention to it most likely is that it isn't breaking anything you're doing. Which would in fact make it exceptionally good.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday October 20 2015, @09:44AM
My post wasn't very clear. My point was that RMS's ARGUMENT in favor of GNU/Linux is not logically consistent. His argument is that GNU is an important part of GNU/Linux, therefore it should be called GNU/Linux. Linus wrote an angry rebuttal at one point, but I cannot find it at the moment.
There are two flaws to RMS's argument:
1. Is GNU really an important part of GNU/Linux?
2. Even if GNU is an important part of GNU/Linux, does that justify adding it to the name?
The problem with 1. is firstly the issue of how one goes about objectively measuring "importance", and secondly that by many "objective" measures Linux is significantly more important than the GNU components. For example, by lines of code, modern Linux wins handily. By deployment, Linux also wins handily (on machines running some build of Linux, but for specialized purposes, such as embedded (Busybox is often used when core utilities are needed). By contribution effort, Linux *probably* wins. By corporate sponsorship (of free software), Linux wins. By difficulty of coding, Linux wins [1].
[1]: The reason why RMS/GNU started working on their utilities first before the kernel is because writing a kernel is much, much harder than (re)implementing core utilities. They finished their utilities before starting on the kernel (unconscious procrastination of a difficult task). They never actually "finished" their kernel. However, I'm sure you can argue otherwise.
The problem with 2. is that there are lots of "equally important" (whatever that means) components to a modern GNU/Linux system; shouldn't then we also include them in the name? My computer will not even boot properly without systemd (harr harr no trolling please), Perl, or Python (for various scripts), not to mention all the other stuff necessary for a personal computer OS, such as GUI toolkit, display server, windows manager, and so on. If we accept 2., then we must reject the name GNU/Linux in favor of, e.g., KDE/X/nvidia/Python/Perl/systemd/GNU/Linux lest we be hypocrites.
RMS's argument fails on both points and is thus not a very good argument.
Note that I prefer using GNU/Linux, but that is a personal decision, and there is no strong technical argument for it.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:43PM
Sometimes I'd argue that X11 is even more important to the work flow of a desktop Linux system than GNU is. In theory, you can replace Bash and Coreutils with BusyBox and glibc with Bionic or uClibc without breaking a lot of software designed for UNIX. I'm not sure whether space-oriented distros such as Puppy do this, but it sounds plausible. But once you replace X11 with something that doesn't implement the X11 protocol, it's no longer "desktop Linux" in the UNIX-clone tradition but something different like Android. So calling it "X11/Linux" is a way to stave off "If you want a Linux laptop, just buy an Android tablet and pair a keyboard" pedants.
(Score: 2) by K_benzoate on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:18PM
"Linux" is shorter, sounds nicer, has better branding, and is accurate *enough* for normal and even most technical conversations. So it wins. I'm not going to trade all of those benefits for a bit more precision where it's not needed.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @06:54PM
I'm terribly sorry for interjecting another moment, but what I just told you is GNU/Linux is, in fact, just Linux, or as I've just now taken to calling it, Just.Linux. Linux apparently does happen to be a whole operating system unto itself and comprises a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Most computer users who run the entire Linux system every day already realize it. Through a peculiar turn of events, I was misled into calling the system "GNU/Linux", and until now, I was unaware that it is basically the Linux system, developed by the Linux project.
There really isn't a GNU/Linux, and I really wasn't using it; it is an extraneous misrepresentation of the system that's being used. Linux is the operating system: the entire system made useful by its included corelibs, shell utilities, and other vital system components. The kernel is already an integral part of the Linux operating system, never confined useless by itself; it functions coherently within the context of the complete Linux operating system. Linux is never used in combination with GNU accessories: the whole system is basically Linux without any GNU added, or Just.Linux. All the so-called "GNU/Linux" distributions are really distributions of Linux.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Monday October 19 2015, @07:46PM
what I just told you is GNU/Linux is, in fact, just Linux, or as I've just now taken to calling it, Just.Linux.
Does Android count as Just.Linux to you? If so, for what library should one target an application intended to run on all Just.Linux systems?
the entire system made useful by its included corelibs, shell utilities, and other vital system components.
Such as GNU C Library (glibc), GNU Core Utilities (coreutils), and GNU Bash. But some people prefer non-GNU components, such as Bionic, Newlib, or uClibc for the C library and BusyBox for the shell and core utilities, especially those concerned with RAM and flash footprint on devices less powerful than a typical PC.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2015, @11:59PM
I think your sarcasm detector is broken. ;)
(Score: 5, Informative) by Pino P on Monday October 19 2015, @07:48PM
Linux is a kernel, and there are several different operating environments that run on top of Linux. These include GNU, Android, and various embedded environments used in network gateway appliances and the like. Among these, only GNU/Linux aims to replicate the functionality of UNIX, and the term is useful for distinguishing them [stackexchange.com].
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday October 20 2015, @01:13PM
This is a very short yet descriptive post. I can't believe the amount of brain dead posts above and below that are arguing the clearly defined boundaries between GNU and the Linux kernel.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Monday October 19 2015, @09:30PM
Honestly as long as it compiles my code I don't give a fuck what you call it.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday October 19 2015, @10:28PM
Sounds like you'd like Gentoo then : )
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 20 2015, @07:13AM
RMS has a point. It may have been hard to see back when Linux was useless without GNU. If you were running Linux, you were also running GNU.
But now, the largest Linux distribution is not using GNU, and thus logically you cannot expect people to guess that you are talking about GNU/Linux when you say Linux. And by design, this distribution is very different from GNU/Linux. Due to these differences, being specific has become important.
No, I'm not talking about systemd (they still have some way to go before they have replaced everything). I'm talking about Android/Linux.
(Score: 2) by NickFortune on Tuesday October 20 2015, @10:37AM
So let's call it "Linux/GNU".
If all RMS is interested in is maintaining the distinction, then I'm sure he won't insist on first billing. I mean it not being an ego thing in any way for him.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:57PM
Even though Android has become more popular than desktop GNU/Linux, there are a few differences:
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Tuesday October 20 2015, @10:50AM
Perhaps to separate it from things such as Android/Linux?