Gian Uberto Lauri wrote:
Doug writes:
> On 09/16/2014 03:00 AM, Gian Uberto Lauri wrote:
>
> > And the GNU project started in 1984, so in the early '90 we already
> > were working on bash an gcc and start enjoying the GNU version of
> > some command in an improved Unix experience.
> >
> AH! You said it yourself! "...an improved _Unix_ experience."
> (Emphasis added.)
Yes, I said "improved". But I said "Unix experience" because it was
still a full Unix experience.
The improvement was from some GNU commands being more feature rich
than the standard counterpart (but work perfectly well if used in the
standard way): the bash shell has better editing and history (a bit
better than ksh) but run all the Bourne Shell scripts; with the GNU
tar you could have used the shorter "tar -zxvf file.tar.gz" and type
less, but "gizip file.tar.gz | tar -xvf -" worked perfectly.
If you turn GNU/Linux in a Windows-poor-lookalike it is no more a Unix
experience.
Often in the past young people arrived screaming "We have the great
new thing that will change all", and a lot of "great new things" were
lost in time like tears in rain...
Just to be clear, here - since the point of this exchange seems to have
drifted:
1. Linux is a kernel; not an o/s, and not a distro.
2. Debian is full operating system, and a distribution, consisting of:
- a Linux kernel (usually, but not always)
- a packaging system (APT)
- a collection of packages - starting with a lot of GNU libraries and a
GNU userland
3. An awful lot of Debian depends on the GNU toolchain
So... to whomever it was that said GNU is irrelevant, or words to that
effect... Debian, and most (all?) Linux distros are very much dependent
on GNU. Arguably, Debian is more intertwined with GNU than with the
Linux kernel (can you say Debian GNU/kFreeBSD?).
Miles Fidelman
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
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