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Michael Brailsford wrote: | On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 09:34:53PM +0000, Arlie Capps wrote: |>Linus Torvalds did indeed use GNU tools to create Linux, and you use |>GNU tools (just about) every time you use the Linux kernel. The only |>system I know of that uses the Linux kernel _without_ using GNU tools |>and utilities is Debian/NetBSD (there might be embedded OSs out there |>as well that don't use GNU software). | | | So? Just because a tool is used doesn't mean that the name of the tool | has to be recognized. And the fact the GNU/Linux term didn't come from | some uninterested party makes it a bit shady.
If the use of the tool makes up a proportionately large amount of the system I'd say it should be recognized. And I don't think the involvement of interested parties' is the least bit shady in this context.
|>Different. You can't use Linux without using GNU software (except for |>aforementioned rare exceptions). | | | Ok, how about lumber. Or nails. Do you have to include the name of | Georgia-Pacific if you use their wood?
Still different. Do you actually use the wood or nails for the purpose of living in the house? You actively use GNU tools all the time when using linux. (See below)
| Why? Is most of the OS made up of GNU tools? No, most of it made up of | tools that are not related to the FSF or GNU project except for their | use of an open set of tools from the FSF.
How about these?
~ * chgrp - Changes file group ownership. ~ * chown - Changes file ownership. ~ * chmod - Changes file permissions. ~ * cp - Copies files. ~ * dd - Copies and converts a file. ~ * df - Shows disk free space on filesystems. ~ * du - Shows disk usage on filesystems. ~ * ln - Creates file links. ~ * ls - Lists directory contents. ~ * mkdir - Creates directories. ~ * mv - Moves files. ~ * rm - Removes (deletes) files. ~ * rmdir - Removes empty directories. ~ * touch - Changes file timestamps. ~ * date - Prints/sets the system date and time. ~ * echo - Prints a line of text. ~ * env - Displays/modifies the environment. ~ * nice - Modify scheduling priority. ~ * printenv - Prints environment variables. ~ * printf - Formats and prints data. ~ * pwd - Print the current working directory. ~ * sleep - Suspends execution for a specified time. ~ * su - Allows you to adopt the id of another user or superuser. ~ * tee - Sends output to multiple files. ~ * cat - concatenate files and print to the standard output ~ * md5sum - compute and check MD5 message digest ~ * od - dump files in octal and other formats ~ * sort - sort lines of text files ~ * split - split a file into pieces ~ * tail - output the last part of files ~ * uniq - remove duplicate lines from a sorted file ~ * wc - print the number of bytes, words, and lines in files ~ * head - output the first part of files
Those are only a few of the utilities in the GNU coreutils package[1]. I know I use all of these frequently and most of them *very* frequently. Many of those I left out are commonly used indirectly by scripts which are nigh indispensable for a correctly functioning system.
It's true that linux doesn't *depend* on anything GNU. You may be using a non-GNU clone (or a utility which GNU cloned) of a binary. But chances are that you're using the GNU binaries for these utilities.
Jacob Fugal
[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)
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