howt to call it : “linux” or “GNU/linux” ?

hi .

for the first time when i faced to linux, i found that linux is just another operating system(at that time i didn’t really know what the os is 🙂 ) and some thing which is not windows.after some working with linux so found that the distributions like redhat, suse … are combination of other softwares like GUI, kernel, editors … .

every one who starts working with linux so face to gnu project; as we know task of kernel is not more than hardware management, combination of gnu softwares and linux kernel makes operating system as look today.

here is some good photo from ibm.com which describes gnu/linux well :

as we see in photo kernel space is called linux and user space programs which most of them from gnu project called GNU ==> linux + Gnu = Gnu/Linux

it’s reasonable to call linux as gnu/linux . but gnu/linux name didn’t made by happen or chancy.

on 1996/3/6 richard stallman in mkml’s mailing list suggested “Linux-based GNU system” instead of linux.

here are some of the most important discussions in that topic :

Linux Kernel Community’s Statement on Closed Source Drivers

as you know closed source drivers can be developed for linux. yes , although linux is open source but for example a company can develop it’s hardware’s driver closed source for linux .

but that is so bad . why ? two reasons (in my opinions ):

1. first one is so obvious, free software is good and proprietary one is evil 🙂
2. second reason _which is more important for me_ is all about technical stuff; if some company develop it’s own drivers open source model and if it’s drivers merge to kernel then,they can be sure that kernel developers will upgrade it’s drivers with no cost (for other kernel versions).       (linux drivers need to be upgraded so rapidly; i’m going to explain why driver’s upgrade in linux is needed so rapidly(rather than other os’s like win) in some other topics.)

anyway… ; today (On June 23, 2008 ) linux foundation  issued a statement on closed source drivers and modules and the The official statement can be found here.

you can find answers to some questions like :

1. Why are closed-source modules “harmful?” What are they harming?
2. What happens to these vendors if they ignore your statement? Are you going to sue them?
3. Why should vendors open source these modules? What advantages do they get from that?

and other one’s here .

linux kernel development process by Greg Kroah-Hartman

last week Greg Kroah-Hartman had some talk in google company about linux kernel development process .

here is video of his talk;he’s not talking about technical stuffs so i highly recommend you watch at it (if you’r interested in kernel); and if you don’t have high bandwidth so take a look at his slides .

anyway, took some notes which might be interesting for you, too.

fastest software project known to any body …

yes , he’s actually right.linux has the best support of processors in the history of computing (don’t know exactly how many architectures it supports, but as far as i know it’s around more than 25 architectures), even supports devices more than any os ever has .

ohh common buddy, if you r thinking about winmodems so you are completely wrong. it has long story why linux don’t support such simple devices well and talking about it’s reasons takes a long time(maybe i’m going to talk about this another time)

so let me give some examples how fast development of linux is :

4,300 lines added and 1,800 lines removed and 1,500 lines modified per day in 2007-2008 ; which means there are 3.69 changes per hour :0 . all these changes led to new release of kernel every 11 weeks (about two and half month).

and today linux has about 9.2 million lines of codes which ten percent increasing per year.

BTW : i should mention that this is all codes of all drivers, architectures and what ever you think . but your kernel’s distribution with specific architecture doesn’t have that much code.

and then he talked about new version numbering of releases (it’s 4 years old. new ?! 😀 ) …

he talked about how people and their codes are managed:

as you see in the picture developers submit their codes to driver/file maintainers so they submit new changes to subsystem maintainers (subsystem maintainers are like usb, pci, vfs, security and core …) ; finally codes are submitted to andrew morton and linus torvalds. (the final stable code is in linus’s tree) .

maybe you’r curious about “-next” ???