On 13 February 2010 09:06, TS Lura <tsl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This might be the wrong crowd, but (...) Linux at least once should be 
> mentioned as
GNU/Linux.(system-tools/Kernel, to pay tribute).

This is indeed the wrong crowd for that. http://openbsd.org/lyrics.html#43

> I feel it's game over, at this point. But maybe you guys have some
> suggestion about good arguments that might persuade my professor?

To paraphrase and parrot what others have said here, you may want to
pick your fights wisely.

  If you do want something you could hit the prof over the head with,
have a look at what Wikipedia says about genetic and functional unixes
(unixen, unices): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix-like#Categories
Loonix^WLinux is a functional unix, not a genetic unix.
All of the BSDs are functional *and genetic* unixes.

  Also, even if just to deflect FUD ( http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/
), an introductory Linux course (which is what you said this was)
should at least mention where Linux came from and as such at least
make a passing reference to the unix family tree. There's no need to
ram every detail down people's throats, but maybe people ought to at
least be aware of the family tree in the broad strokes and how Minix,
Linux, Unix, BSD, Mac OS X, etc. are and are not related. Here's one
simplified version that includes the essentials:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_history-simple.png

  Similarly, in an advanced networking course, people maybe should at
least be aware that IPtables didn't come out of nowhere and isn't the
only game in town.
Essentially FreeBSD's ipfw (which is still alive) begat Linux's
ipfwadm and ipchains, which was succeeded by iptables/netfilter. On
the BSD side meanwhile, there also was ipfilter, which the OpenBSD
project replaced with pf. Okay, maybe people don't need to know that
history and all of the obsolescent products, but people should at
least know *of*:
* ipfw ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipfirewall )
* iptables ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iptables )
* pf ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PF_%28firewall%29 )

But see for yourself what to make out of the above, because you can't
get much money back if my free advice turns out to be wrong.

regards,
--ropers

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