*BSD News Article 88968


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From: Gerry S Hayes <sumner@CMU.EDU>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux vs BSD
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 02:40:34 -0500
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
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Message-ID: <0n0LDm200YUg0bsyE0@andrew.cmu.edu>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:157874 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2464

cjs@cynic.portal.ca (Curt Sampson) writes:
> 
> No, they do not. With typical Linux shortsightedness, you've got
> a specific solution for Linux, but not general solution.
> 

It's not Linux shortsightedness; any of the classic operating systems
texts (Tanenbaum, for instance) will define the OS as something much
closer to "Kernel" than "kernel + bash + ls + cp + mv + emacs +..."
If it's shortsighted (and I don't think it is), then the
shortsightedness has been around for eons and predates Linux by a long
shot.  It's only recently that I've seen people like RMS trying to
incorporate random applications into the definition of an OS.  

> You've taken two general terms, `kernel' and `OS,' and erased any
> distinction between them. 

'Kernel' is (in general and by my definition) smaller than 'OS'.  The
OS is the abstraction from hardware; the kernel is a specific
administrative, priviledged program which manages interactions between
other userspace programs and may have additional features.  On a Linux
system, there is generally at least one userspace device driver which
I would classify as part of the OS; XFree, MetroX, AccelX, MGR, and
SVGAlib come to mind.  Microkernel systems blur this distiction even
more.  

> As long as the rest of the world calls Microsoft Windows an `operating
> system,' rather than an `operating system with a set of associated
> utilities' or whatever your shorter term is for that, you've lost
> this battle.

Windows is both an OS and an OS with associated utilities, depending
on the context.  If I am programming a Windows application, that
generally means I use the Windows API; it doesn't mean I require that
solitaire, program manager, or the Win95 UI be present.  Plenty of
people that I know replaced all of the bundled Windows utils (like
progman) with others; they still said (rightfully, IMO) that they were
running Windows.  Just because they changed the UI radically doesn't
mean the OS is different.  Init, bash, and most of the GNU utils are
only one possible UI for a Linux system.  

Cordially,

  Sumner

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