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Ross Werner wrote: | But in the _technical_ sense of an operating system, things like | compilers, text editors, GUIs, etc., are _not_ part of an operating system | in the technical sense of the word. You don't learn about any of those | things in your Operating Systems class--and they don't call it the Kernel | class either.
I agree with you that compilers, text editors, and GUIs are not part of the OS. But I claim fundamental utilities like the shell are indeed part of the OS. As to your argument about the 'Operating Systems' class -- in my Operating Systems class (CS345 at BYU) I was required to write a shell utility. And they didn't call it the 'Distribution' class either.
My argument isn't that GNU is essential to the use of linux, I agree with you there. But in a subsequent post you ask if I would classify a system with all the GNU utilities replaced by BSD variants as a different OS. I would say yes. I, personally, would call both linux because I'm lazy and they're definitely similar enough. At a normal user level the differences are indeed transparent. But at a core level, they are different and any one dealing with the OS at that level must be aware of those differences.
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