*BSD News Article 89447


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From: jbuck@synopsys.com (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux vs BSD
Date: 13 Feb 1997 18:41:08 GMT
Organization: Synopsys Inc., Mountain View, CA 94043-4033
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Gerry S Hayes <sumner@CMU.EDU> writes:
>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 +..."

Actually, probably closer to "kernel+libc": the standard services that
application programs rely on, together with certain standard daemons.
Given this, it seems GNU/Linux will certainly be appropriate once
the conversion to libc-6 is complete, since it is the GNU C library
(libc 5 is about half GNU libc and half other stuff).

>Windows is both an OS and an OS with associated utilities, depending
>on the context.

By your strict definition, Windows 3.1 is not an OS, DOS is the OS.
But I don't think that makes much sense.  To the application developer
the OS is the standard services s/he can rely on, some of which may
execute in user space.

>If I am programming a Windows application, that
>generally means I use the Windows API;

Exactly; it is the API.


-- 
-- Joe Buck	http://www.synopsys.com/pubs/research/people/jbuck.html

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