Hacker News Reader

> Linux is the shorthand for GNU/Linux.

It shouldn't be. For the same reasons you would shorten TCP/IP to TCP, you should shorten GNU/Linux to GNU. This avoids all of the confusion about what is "really Linux", because when people say that they actually mean GNU.

View on HN

There's now at least one Linux distribution that kicks out all the Gnu stuff. See https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/13/chimera_non_gnu_linux...

There are a few: Android and Alpine are two other notable ones. It's important to note that these are not the same operating system as GNU/Linux. Just like there are many transport protocols that can be used on top of IP that are not TCP.

Yes, they are Linux, but not Gnu/Linux. That's the point.

Yes, but it's uncommon to actually want to lump this 4+ operating systems under a single term. People do it by accident, and it causes a lot of confusion about "what's really Linux", as evident by this thread.

There are reasons to want to talk about Linux, but it probably shouldn't be much more common than NT in day to day vocabulary.

it's ubiquitous to shorten TCP/IP to TCP in the context of it not being UDP

Exactly. It should also be ubiquitous to shorten GNU/Linux to GNU in the context of not being Android, Alpine, or other Linux-based operating systems.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com