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Re: Me



On Wed, Dec 13, 2000 at 04:54:07PM +0200, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote:
> Adi Stav <stav@actcom.co.il> writes:
> 
> > Why aren't they? Unix, BSD and SysV are/were actual branded OSs that
> > were sold under that brand, no less than Red Hat or HP/UX are now.
> 
> I suppose UNIX was a brand when it was controlled by a single company
> and was immediately associated with that company. What is your
> immediate association when you say UNIX today? SCO? Sun/Solaris?
> HP/UX? IBM/AIX? DG/UX [G-d forbid!]? Now UNIX is more like jeans,
> which is not a brand, while Levi's or Wrangler are. Or a hamburger as
> opposed to McDonald's or Burger King. At least that's how I think
> about branding.

Any of the above. Sun, IRIX etc still have still have respectably
large chunks of AT&T code in them. They are Unix descendants, unlike
Wrangler that has nothing to do AFAIK with Levi's. GNU/Linux
(separately or together) are not really "a Unix" in the Sun or IRIX
sense of the word, also by the way people refer to them.

But I don't know how we got to this subject :)

> > the term "operating system" meaning a complete and branded software
> > system has become far too common by now, so I don't really mind it.
> 
> I suppose we should allow the terminology to evolve.
> 
> > I don't usually make a fuss over it.
> 
> No fuss, just let's define the terms.

Ok. "software system" or "distribution" vs "kernel" good enough for me :)

> > But whichever definition you choose, saying that Red Hat is a variant
> > of Linux is not more true than saying that a Compaq PC is a variant of
> > Intel's Pentium. 
> 
> I am not sure I am getting it. PC is not a brand. Intel is, and Compaq
> is. 

A Compaq PC can be a brand but it is not a brand of Pentium. Just like
Red Hat is a brand, but not exactly of Linux (certainly not a VARIANT
of Linux), but of a complete software system of which the Linux kernel
is a major component. The Pentium is the same in all Pentium-based
PCs, and Linux is the same in all Linux-based distributions (the
occasional minor patch notwithstanding). 

> And assuming that there are AMD-based Compaqs, and potentially
> Transmeta-based Compaqs (not too soon, I guess), there are different
> combinations of brands, all of which as associated with the notion of
> "PC".

Ah, yeah. This is true. Forgot about AMD and friends. Anyway, you see
my point. The BSDs often contain much of the same applications as the
Linux-based distributions, and they can even run Linux binaries
unchanged. But they have entirely different kernels.

> > You don't see the PC forking anytime soon, do you 
> 
> I think we've seen the PC forked many times already. Even if we do not
> consider Apple products PC's, when you buy a "PC" you'll boast (or be
> ashamed of, as the case may be) of buying a Compaq PC with an Intel
> CPU and this motherboard and that videocard et caetera. All these are
> forks in the same sense as 

But people are not concerned about a Compaq'a Pentium CPU being
incompatible with Dell's. There might be several alternatives to each
component, but mostly the different alternatives are not associated
specifically with a PC brand. 

Compaq or Dell have no incentive to develop their own forks/clones of
Pentiums or hardisks. Why should they? Intel and Seagate already do a
good job at that, and all they have to do is pick. Similarly, Red Hat
has no incentive to have its own version of Gnome or Linux. 

This is all very different from Unix where each fork had its own
special versions of each of the components. That's what I am arguing
-- that the GNU/Linux software systems model parallels the PC model in
that aspect, not the Unix forks model. The media's confusion and
hysteria about a "Linux incompatible forks" is caused by
misunderstanding of the model, partly due to bad phrasing and
definitions like you pointed out earlier about "OS" :)


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