Stayin' Alive With Linux
The Real Linux that Stallman Does NOT Want You to Know About

GNU/Linux - Just a Political Statement about Absolutely Nothing Important

A few groups want to change the name of Linux® to GNU/Linux.[1] Do not waste your time with those advocating for GNU/Linux. These people are hopelessly confused victims of Richard Stallman's political activities.

A few groups want to change the name of Linux to GNU/Linux.
Linus Torvalds

Nor, is Linux UNIX. Those who insist upon bringing up the Linux connection to UNIX are likewise trying very hard to waste your time. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, in the video shown below states that he was inspired by SunOS, which was a very early version of UNIX.

In other words, the correct term is Linux. Anybody who tries to tell you otherwise, is wrong and hopelessly confused. Do not let a few Linux people trick you into wasting tons of time on what should be by now, a non-issue.

Richard Stallman and his GNU Project[1] are often erroneously referred to as a co-founder of Linux. That assertion is simply not true. What Stallman did at one time was create a lot of programming tools. Those GNU tools[3] might have been important at the very beginning. However, as a practical programming matter, just about everything that once was important about Stallman's set of utilities is no longer true in the new millennium.[4] Richard Stallman has turned himself into an American bully[4] who has a gift for manipulating weak-minded individuals with an avalanche of verbiage that effectively generates a lot of income for Richard.

Linux As A Radical Social Movement

The freedom issues being brought up by Richard Stallman are mainly of interest to programmers. While many Linux programmers are concerned with software issues, most non-programmers could careless. Stallman likes to compare Linux to food recipes. According to him, people should be able to change Linux coding as they see fit and share it with other people without breaking the law. Obviously, the majority of desktop users are non-programmers, and accordingly have zero interest in Stallman's software freedom concepts. You have to know how to compile source code, at the very least, before you will benefit directly from any of his lofty software freedom ideas.

What is Linux?

Torvalds, the software engineer, in the above video explains it quite well. Linux is a family of related operating systems. In the world of Linux, these related operating systems are called distros. They are all related to each other by the one thing that they share in common with each other: the Linux Kernel. There are literally over a thousand different Linux distros out there, most of which are not widely used. GNU/Linux compliant distros are but a handful of many different available Linux distros. Nor, are the GNU distros[3],[5] very widely used.

Linus Torvalds says that the public should think of Richard Stallman as the great philosopher and of himself as the engineer of the Linux operating system.

The most radical Linux organizations are concerned about Linux-libre, which is the variant of gnu/Linux that allegedly has all proprietary components removed. In other words, the goal of these radical freedom obsessed organizations is the removal from the Linux kernel of any software that does not make its source code freely available. These people are against the use of binary only code in the Linux Kernel. Computer hardware without functional drivers is simply not usable by modern computers. Hardware manufacturers at best might release compatible hardware drivers for Linux in binary form, but rarely make their driver source code available. Scrupulously removing all proprietary binary code from Linux distros as a practical matter is a very effective way of keeping lots of computer hardware useless. Brand new equipment is what presents Linux users with most of their driver problems. Linux DE distros are particularly well known to have problems dealing with GPU computer hardware made by NVIDIA.

In other words, Richard Stallman is a man who is interested in creating, maintaining, and stressing the Linux philosophical movement as an extreme Linux zealot. Linus Torvalds, on the other hand, is the person who created and maintains the Linux Kernel that as a practical programming matter enables personal computers to run programs. Linus is, thus, mainly interested in the technology of Linux[6] In Linux, hardware drivers are added to the Linux Kernel. Linus Torvalds criticism of Stallman says just about everything that the public needs to know about Richard. Stallman is very inflexible and absolutely refuses to compromise on anything; Who is a fountainhead of working code inaction. Many other Linux organizations and developers are responsible for creating, developing, and maintaining different Linux distros. Stallman represents just one group out of many hundreds.

In many ways, calling Linux, gnu/Linux is analogous to referring to England as Rome/England. While it is true that England was once ruled by the Roman Empire, who today really cares? Who would be crazy enough to call Great Britain, Rome/England? Thus, why is this Linux naming controversy any different? It is not.[4]

Furthermore, Richard Stallman developed the GNU General Public software License (GPL)[3]. Many Linux people have confused the GNU software license with very low level Linux software mainly because their file names still contain the GNU political statement acronym.[4]

The GNU acronym, itself, does not make a lick of sense. GNU according to Stallman, is suppose to mean "GNU's not Unix!"[3] While that type of a recursive acronym might make sense to Richard, as an acronym it is more than a little bit off to most desktop users.

Here is a little fairy tale that helps to explain the gnu/Linux naming controversy.[2] Once upon a time both Stallman and Torvalds competed against each other. While Stallman might have been the first person to start the race to create Linux, Torvalds was the first person to come up with a working Linux Kernel. Ergo, Torvalds won the free operating system challenge, while Stallman lost. Stallman who released the Linux project as open source software has absolutely refused to give up control over it. The Linux OS has moved in a direction that was not expected by Richard. The man is simply resorting to a barrage of verbiage in order to maintain control over Linux.

Hundreds if not thousands of different people have worked on developing Linux. Many different Linux organizations have worked on developing Linux. Why is Richard Stallman and his GNU organizations more deserving of praise than all the others? The answer is that they are not. Stallman simply has put a lot of effort into bullying and brainwashing weak-minded individuals into believing his verbal barrage of nonsense.[4]

Do not be a victim of bullying by the gnu/Linux political movement, nor by the often-empty verbiage of Richard Stallman. Linus Torvalds is to this day the person principally responsible for updating the Linux Kernel, and hence for all practical purposes, the Linux operating system; along with many other Linux developers. Currently, Richard Stallman is great at giving speeches on the freedom software philosophy of Linux, but has in many ways fallen short on delivering working code.

Those who foolishly insist upon calling the Linux OS "gnu/Linux" are just making a political statement.


This article was originally published on 04/10/2016.


Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.


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Comments on GNU/Linux:

References:

  1. Wikipedia, GNU Project, Jul 23, 2003.
  2. Wikipedia, GNU/Linux Naming Controversy, Mar 3, 2004.
  3. Wikipedia, GNU, Oct 15, 2001.
  4. Alan U. Kennington, Linux Is Not Gnu/Linux, Feb 27, 2004.
  5. GNU Operating System, Free GNU/Linux distributions
  6. BrainyQuote, "I'm interested in Linux because of the technology ...", Linus Torvalds Quotes

 

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