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Forty years of GNU and the free software movement
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this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Sorry. I replied to the wrong comment. I was not calling you out.
I mean, both RHEL and Debian use Glibc which means the vast majority of the Linux applications running outside the cloud are calling into GNU code. So, I cannot take that away from them.
In the container space ( the cloud ), I am not sure that is true. Anything calling into Alpine, for example, would be MUSL.
Why do you say that GNU has had a bigger impact on the desktop? They have nothing to do with the GUI layer ( like X11, Wayland, Mesa, or Proton / WINE ). Do you mean GNOME? It is not part of the GNU project. I would argue it never was as it was started and staffed by totally different people. The G in GNOME originally stood for GNU so the GNOME founders ( like Miguel de Icaza ) were clearly inspired by GNU. Given that, I guess I agree with you.
It is ironic, de Icaza founded the GNOME project with the idea of bringing not only a modern desktop but a broad array of modern free software applications. Unlike GNU, his vision of the Linux desktop was populated by music players, spreadsheets, email / calendar programs, PDF viewers, and video editors. He even formed a company to make them. But he found writing modern desktop apps in the languages GNU GCC supported really difficult. So he set out to write a clone of .NET so that he could write GUI desktop apps easier ( the Mono Project ). It looked like it was worked for a while as, for a few years, the most modern Linux desktop apps were Mono apps ( .NET ). But Richard Stallman ( FSF / GNU ) hated it and railed against it and warned everybody not to use it. There was even an attempt to make a GNU Project competitor to Mono ( dotGNU ) but that went nowhere. It is interesting to me that de Icaza gave up on the Linux desktop. He not only stopped making desktop apps but in fact moved to the Mac as he main platform. Mono became more about the web and then eventually mobile with de Icaza’s second company ( Xamarin ).
Microsoft bought Xamarin ( and basically Mono too ). Today, Linux is practically the premiere platform for .NET. Certainly Linux dominates in the cloud. If you install .NET on your Linux box, you may be running more Microsoft code than GNU.:'
I'm familiar with the history of GNOME, and somewhat with Xamarin and Mono. While I have made that argument in the past, it was pointed out to me that the GNOME name was used to ride off the coattails of the popularity the GNU project had in the '90s, and they ended the association when it stopped being convenient for them.
(A GNOME developer pointed this out to me using this language; I could link you to the interaction, but it was on reddit)
This also includes the proprietary NVIDIA driver, which only works with glibc.
I think this is a strange characterization of the GNU Project's goals. This is the Initial Announcement for the GNU Project:
Do you know something I don't? I don't think the GNU Project was against multimedia software; they were just focusing on the more fundamental stuff first.
The GNU Project's biggest contributions were when the kernel was in its infancy. The most major contribution is undoubtedly the GPL. Without it, Linux would not be where it is today. I think enough has been said on that subject, but it's what made RHEL billions. It's the philosophy of free software that has made so much of the programs today possible. It's incredibly important.
Obviously, we also have the GNU Project financially backing Debian GNU/Linux in its infancy. And while you say GNU wasn't involved in the GUI layer, that's not true. They worked on the free Harmony toolkit as a matter of high priority, and would have kept working on it if GNOME had not been so successful. Thanks to the success of another GNU project, GIMP, the GTK toolkit was able to be repurposed for general usage.
I don't think it's fair to discard contributions that never panned out like HURD and Harmony, because it shows GNU was actively involved in making the desktop better for everyone, which has really been its mission from the start. Maybe they're not "the backbone" of the desktop, but I think it's fair to say their biggest/most notable contributions have been to the desktop, not the server.
I don't contribute to the GNU Project because frankly, they don't do anything I consider worthwhile at the moment. I don't contribute to the Linux Foundation, either. I contribute to user-facing software I'm interested in, like Lutris, GIMP, and Kdenlive.