different distributions == different "operating systems"?
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From: Magnus Warker on 16 Feb 2010 01:40 Hi, I lately talked to a collegue who said that Debian, Ubuntu and SLES are different "operating systems". I said that there is only one linux (at www.kernel.org) and that these are just distributions with different packages and package management solutions. But he insisted that there are also different operating systems. Well, I know that SuSE makes changes to the kernel for some reasons. Could it be that he meant such things that make a unique operating system? What dou you think? Magnus
From: Chris F.A. Johnson on 16 Feb 2010 02:35 On 2010-02-16, Magnus Warker wrote: > Hi, > > I lately talked to a collegue who said that Debian, Ubuntu and SLES are > different "operating systems". I said that there is only one linux (at > www.kernel.org) and that these are just distributions with different > packages and package management solutions. But he insisted that there are > also different operating systems. Ask him to define "operating system". > Well, I know that SuSE makes changes to the kernel for some reasons. Could > it be that he meant such things that make a unique operating system? What > dou you think? -- Chris F.A. Johnson, <http://cfajohnson.com> Author: Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell (2009, Apress) Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
From: Greg Russell on 16 Feb 2010 02:57 In news:hldejr$410$1(a)news.m-online.net, Magnus Warker <magnux(a)mailinator.com> typed: > I lately talked to a collegue who said that Debian, Ubuntu and SLES > are different "operating systems". I said that there is only one > linux (at www.kernel.org) and that these are just distributions with > different packages and package management solutions. But he insisted > that there are also different operating systems. Yes, there are indeed "different operating systems." Unix has several variants such as Sun's Solaris, Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX, IBM's AIX, DEC's Ultrix, the numerous BSDs, and any resultants that have emerged since economics have consolidated any of those above with any of those not referred to. They're still Unix though. Linux, and its several and many variants, also has its many manifestations, yet despite its similarities is not Unix. > Well, I know that SuSE makes changes to the kernel for some reasons. > Could it be that he meant such things that make a unique operating > system? What dou you think? Get a spill chucker, and ask your "collegue" what "dou" he meant.
From: Aragorn on 16 Feb 2010 03:55 On Tuesday 16 February 2010 07:40 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody identifying as Magnus Warker wrote... > I lately talked to a collegue who said that Debian, Ubuntu and SLES > are different "operating systems". I said that there is only one linux > (at www.kernel.org) and that these are just distributions with > different packages and package management solutions. But he insisted > that there are also different operating systems. Well, Linux in itself is not an entire operating system. It's an operating system *kernel* and thus, the part of the operating system that runs in the highest privilege ring of the processor. A kernel in itself is not of much use, so you need userspace software - which runs in the lowest privilege mode of the processor - to run on top of that. This userspace software consists of the userland of what is normally considered an operating system, added with application software. Although the Linux kernel can in essence be used with various different "userlands", it is mainly used and mainly optimized to work with the GNU userland, which comprises of one or multiple shells, a toolchain and a set of core libraries. Hence the name GNU/Linux, although GNU and Linux are two separate initiatives. The GNU part used on top of the Linux kernel was originally designed to work with a kernel of its own, but this kernel is still not production-ready as we speak, and as GNU is a project by the Free Software Foundation, whose goals are primarily political - i.e. the promotion of Free/Libre Software - I don't think that the native GNU Hurd kernel will actually ever reach the production-ready stage. After all, the GNU userland can be combined with the Linux kernel or with the kernel from FreeBSD or NetBSD, and even with the kernel from OpenSolaris, so the FSF's goals have already been accomplished, i.e. completely free and usable operating systems are available. That said, GNU/Linux is a UNIX architecture, which means that there is virtually no distinction between the operating system on the one hand and the application software on the other hand, because the application software is tightly integrated with the main operating system. And as such, it becomes very difficult to name the system. Most people simply call the entire system "Linux". Some, like myself, refer to it as GNU/Linux - with the slash in place, since Linux is not part of the GNU project. In general - i.e. if one does not speak of GNU/Linux-specific aspects of the entire system - one could even simply refer to it as UNIX, albeit that GNU/Linux has not officially been validated by The Open Group for use of the UNIX trademark name. It is however a de facto UNIX, as confirmed by Ken Thompson, one of the original developers of AT&T Unix at Bell Labs. > Well, I know that SuSE makes changes to the kernel for some reasons. > Could it be that he meant such things that make a unique operating > system? What dou you think? Virtually every distribution adds patches to the original vanilla kernel, and this for various reasons. When the distribution is being "assembled", the developers typically take the latest kernel as available from Linus & friends, but by the time the distribution is sufficiently tested and ready for release to the public, Linus has already released at least one newer version of the kernel. As such, many of the patches applied by distribution vendors contain bugfixes which were submitted to the newer kernels, but backported to the kernel against which the distribution was built. And in addition to that, depending on the distribution and its intended target user group, the distribution vendors may decide to add a few additional "extra functionality" patches, which may not necessarily be in the newer vanilla kernel from Linus, and which may not ever even make it into the upstream kernel tree. Yet, with these patches in place, it still is the same operating system kernel, and it still has the same GNU userland - I don't even know of any general purpose distributions of the Linux kernel which are not packaged with the GNU userland, although this may perhaps be found in the embedded devices market. The bottom line is that although OpenSuSE, RedHat/Fedora/CentOS, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, Mepis, Gentoo, Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu/Kubuntu and siblings all may have a different "look & feel" to them, or a different package management system, or different kernel patches, or different versions of particular software packages, they are all based upon the Linux kernel and the GNU userland - glibc, gcc, bash and friends - and so they all are just different iterations of the same operating system. In the event of Nexenta, which is the combination of the GNU userland with the OpenSolaris kernel, one could eventually say that it's a different operating system, because Nexenta also still contains the Sun toolchain and can be easily switched between a "GNU personality" and a "Sun personality", and the kernel and filesystems are sufficiently different from Linux. Yet Nexenta isn't quite OpenSolaris either - it's a hybrid, just like GNU/kFreeBSD is not FreeBSD. And you can't call it GNU either because GNU was designed first and foremost to be used with its own (micro)kernel, the Hurd. So these implementations of GNU are only the GNU userland on top of a variety of kernels. As long as you've got the Linux kernel and as long as you've got the GNU userland portion on top of that, the system will be GNU/Linux, which for the sake of being more pallatable is then generally referred to as plain "Linux". No kernel patches or differences in the assortment of application software supplied "out of the box" are going to change that. And the application software is even totally irrelevant in this equation, because everyone can download and install additional software from the distribution's repositories, or eventually build software from source code. Most of that source code will work on all GNU/Linux distributions, and even on other UNIX-style systems, because that's the whole benefit of the UNIX architecture: the code is highly portable, and the main differences between UNIX operating systems at the application level are to be found in the configuration - e.g. in which directory certain libraries are to be found, et al. GNU/Linux is just one of the many implementations of the UNIX/POSIX architecture. Similarly, you could go and compare, say, Microsoft's MS-DOS with IBM's PC-DOS, and then compare that to Digital Research's DR DOS, and then with the GPL'ed FreeDOS, which was written from scratch without using a single line of code from any of the aforementioned, just like Linux doesn't use a single line of code from the original AT&T or BSD implementations of UNIX. There will be minor differences in configuration and/or functionality between all of those, but they are all DOS systems. ;-) -- *Aragorn* (registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
From: Aragorn on 16 Feb 2010 04:11
On Tuesday 16 February 2010 08:57 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody identifying as Greg Russell wrote... > Linux, and its several and many variants, also has its many > manifestations, yet despite its similarities is not Unix. GNU/Linux has not been validated for use of the UNIX trademark, but it does strive for SUS and POSIX compliance - one distribution that I know of has actually applied for and obtained POSIX validation, though. According to Ken Thompson, who together with Dennis Ritchie developed the very first Unix at AT&T Bell Labs in 1969, GNU/Linux is "a de facto UNIX" - his literal words. Apart from deviation from some details in the SUS and POSIX standards, it really is, for all intents and purposes, a UNIX (but not a "Unix")[1]. ;-) The name GNU itself was a recursive acronym - "Gnu is Not Unix" - but according to Richard Stallman, this had nothing to do with the system's architecture, but with a reference to the proprietary nature of Unix back when the GNU project was announced. In his typical pedanticism - which is a word I do not necessarily consider to be a "negative" property - Richard Stallman also speaks of "Unix-like operating system" instead of the more commonly used term "Unix clone", because the word "clone" in his vocabulary means that there would be code from the original AT&T/BSD Unix branches in GNU, which is clearly not the case. [1] The spelling "Unix" is commonly used in reference to proprietary versions of this operating system, which historically bore this spelling in their trademarked names. The spelling "UNIX" is, although registered as a trademark by The Open Group, a rather generic name for operating systems validated for compliance with the Single UNIX Specification by The Open Group. In its latest iterations, Apple's OS X operating system - which is highly characterized by its Apple-specific and proprietary graphical user interface and thus seems sufficiently different from other UNIX-style operating systems - is certified by The Open Group for use of the UNIX trademark name. -- *Aragorn* (registered GNU/Linux user #223157) |