On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 10:19:51AM -0500, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote: > In <200907221325.01147.aries...@clearmail.com.au>, Charlie wrote: > >I was recently informed that my signature had a problem rendering > > correctly on someone's mailer - deliniter incorrect - and was told that > > my signature "Linux Debian" should read "Debian GNU/Linux" because: > > "considering that the majority of it is provided by GNU." > > I'm not sure the GNU project produces the majority of Debian, by any metric. > They do provide some of the core utilities (bash, sed, grep, cat, gzip, > etc.). However, X and KDE are a big part of Debian and either are a GNU > project, neither is either of the official Debian kernels (Linux and > kFreeBSD).
s/either/neither/ or your sentence makes little sense. The degree to which various projects make up Debian as a proportion of the total packages or total code size is irrelevant. None of those extra bits are part of the "operating system", they are merely software running on top of the operating system. Debian, as I see it, provides in the distribution both the OS (essential/base and basic toolchain) plus a lot of software that runs on top of this. % /usr/share/misc/config.guess x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu [or powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu on my other computer] This indicates that I'm running a "linux-gnu" operating system on an x86_64 computer architecture from an unknown vendor. The "linux" part indicates that I'm running a Linux kernel, while the "gnu" part indicates that I'm running a GNU C library, which is the major part of the platform ABI required for both C standard library calls and system calls which trap into the kernel, as well as other basic features such as the run-time linker. For host triplets *-*-linux-gnu, the "GNU/Linux" moniker is very much correct. It *is* a GNU system running on top of a Linux kernel. For embedded systems running other C libraries such as µlibc (*-*-linux-ulibc), GNU/Linux is incorrect. It's a Linux kernel, but the system ABI is rather different from the GNU interface, and so for all intents and purposes it's an entirely separate operating system, being very much incompatible with GNU/Linux despite both running identical Linux kernels. You won't be able to run software for linux-ulibc on GNU/Linux, since they are separate systems for all intents and purposes. > > Even if most comes from GNU > > Debian is the one that creates it so? > > Debian doesn't *create* much software.[1] They do a lot of packaging and > bug-wrangling, but Debian depends on upstream being available to add > features, write new software, and fix non-packaging non-security bugs. > [1] Technically, Debian doesn't create any software, but many Debian > Developers do create software either in their role as DDs or as part of > other projects. I disagree here. Debian is upstream as well as distributor for quite a lot of software. I write software specifically for Debian as a Debian Developer (schroot, sbuild and other bits). I'd say that those were created by Debian, as is all software created by DDs in their project role. The Debian Project *is* its developers, and so if a Developer creates something, the Project creates something. Debian writes a lot of software you depend upon intimately for your system to work (dpkg, apt, initramfs, and a lot of other low-level glue). DDs are also intimately involved with upstream development for many upstream projects, and this is also work done by the Project, though usually not by name. Regards, Roger -- .''`. Roger Leigh : :' : Debian GNU/Linux http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/ `. `' Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/ `- GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848 Please GPG sign your mail.
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