> But the reason it is an integrated system—and not just a collection of useful programs—is because the GNU Project set out to make it one. We made a list of the programs needed to make a complete free system, and we systematically found, wrote, or found people to write everything on the list.
First of all, I mostly use Alpine for Linux servers, so I guess that should be referred to as Busybox/Linux according to this?
Second, the work done to make an integrated OS on desktop is not done by GNU anymore[0], it is done by the GNOME/KDE dev's.
[0] Also, what does "integrated" even mean in the context of a UNIX-like OS. Doesn't that sorta defeat the point?
> I guess that should be referred to as Busybox/Linux according to this?
I don’t know how you could come to that conclusion. The linked page basically says the opposite of that. The Linux project is a project to write a kernel (created to replace the existing MINIX kernel). The Python project is a project to write a programming language (for many operating systems). The GNU project, on the other hand, is to create (and integrate pre-existing parts into) an entire operating system, from the bare metal to the desktop. It’s more like the Debian project in that respect, except that the GNU project themselves write, or asks others to write, a lot of the non-existing components. Debian on the other hand tries to not do much software creation themselves, and has chosen to use the existing parts of the GNU system components combined with the Linux kernel to make a complete and working operating system.
Fair point. I feel like you could make a case for $DE/Linux on desktop, $COREUTILS/Linux on server and Android/Linux on mobile then whenever greater precision is needed.
That said, how often do you need to distinguish between the Coreutils in use? If you say Linux server, unless you specify something out of the ordinary, everyone will assume you have GNU or Busybox coreutils - which doesn't matter that much, you can do pretty much anything with either afaik - and whatever server software is in use. Or on desktop, you can just mention the distro in question and everyone will know or be able to find out all of the above. Why specify every single time?
Honestly you probably should prefer to specify by distro, and use the userspace+kernel convention only when you specifically care or it matters for some reason. If I say Fedora, I probably don't need to say "Fedora GNU/Linux", since GNU and Linux (as well as RPM and systemd) are implicit in "Fedora". On the other hand, "Debian" usually means "Debian GNU/Linux" but Debian has a living HURD version (Debian GNU/HURD) and a basically-dead FreeBSD version (Debian GNU/kFreeBSD), and experimental work has been done to allow replacing its coreutils with... I think the Rust rewrite? So there it can be useful to specify.
And, of course, the other reason is because we are Hackers and hackers love their pedantry;)
That entire page can basically be summarized as "The GNU components in Linux distributions are becoming less significant each year, but please call it the 'GNU system' anyway because we like that name better."
