Talk:GNU variants

Merge

From Wikipedia:Merge: Wikipedia is not a dictionary; there doesn't need to be a separate entry for every concept in the universe ... If an article is very short and cannot or should not be expanded terribly much, it often makes sense to merge it with an article on a broader topic.

I don't think this article is going to become large any time soon. It will probably never grow large, but if that does happen, I'm certain enough that it will not be in the near future. There is a page about a similar topic: GNU/FreeBSD, and that page isn't much bigger than this one. I would like to suggest merging these two articles, but to what name? The unified article should remain open ended so that if a GNU system with the OpenBSD kernel comes into existance, it will also fit on the unified page. "GNU Operating Systems with BSD kernels"? "GNU Operating System variants" or "GNU Operating Systems with alternative kernels" and then in the opening line say "for linux-based variants, see GNU/Linux? Suggestions very welcome. Gronky 15:01, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Normal GNU (with the Hurd) and GNU/Linux are very common and deserver their own page. Let's just make this an article about any minor GNU/$kernel. These would be GNU/kFreeBSD and GNU/kNetBSD and maybe GNU/OpenSolaris aswell, though that one might be large enough to justify its own article. (Nexenta is quite active, from what I understand, but I'm not sure about that.) Geronimooo 15:40, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

So I made this merge -- mms 13:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Debian GNU/NetBSD

Needs a remark on how usable it is to be added --anon.

Nexenta OS

Binary drivers

»This makes it far simpler for hardware manufacturers to develop device drivers for it while protecting their IP rights.«

This statment is a bit unbalanced. It presents binary drivers as an unalloyed benefit, and offers a surious justification: hardware manufacturers don't want binary drivers because there're easier to write, it's purely to avoid releasing code. Could there be a link to, say binary-only driver, to present some of the disadvantages of binary drivers. 203.214.125.30 09:50, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I changed it to »This makes it legal for hardware manufacturers to release device drivers without the source.« -- mms 13:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

revert

Hey, Xaero Vincent, as I can see you solely contributed to Nexenta OS till now. You didn't recover the article there yet and I don't want an edit war here but I think your revert and the new text about GNU/OpenSolaris is wrong. AFAIK Nexenta OS is a new name for GNU/Solaris which is sometimes also named GNU/OpenSolaris. On http://www.gnusolaris.org you have all 3 names. Now we have two questions:

1. Is Nexenta OS GNU/Solaris and GNU/OpenSolaris and therefore a GNU variant?
2. Is the section about Nexenta OS worth to be an article?

The first question I would answer clearly yes. For the second question I don't have a strong opinion but I would say not yet. -- mms 17:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think Nexenta OS deserves its own page; in fact, until recently it did have its own page. I think there's enough info to warrant its own article.

I actually don't know if this article is really warranted. These operating systems are only really related in a very loose sense, that being that they are all built around GNU software in some way, but that's a loose association, and the grouping here doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. – Mipadi 18:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

As you can read in the archives there has been discussions to merge all those *GNU/*BSD articles. But under which name? I think »GNU variants« fits it well. At this time the article is not much more than the product of a merge. Read GNU to get an idea why GNU is such an unique operating system. Without it there would be no "Linux" and there would be no free BSDs -- except there would have come another person like RMS around. And I think it's no accident that all other variants than GNU/Linux described in this article are a Debian project or Debian-based projects. Debian generally values freedom still much more than all "Linux distributions" which one can see in naming theirs GNU/Linux. And even so I oppose calling GNU/Linux Linux I accept that the developers of GNU/Solaris or GNU/OpenSolaris have chosen to call their operating system Nexenta OS. At least it isn't named after its kernel. As long as they don't claim it is "Linux-based" (but GNU-based) it's okay for me. It is legal to do so. And the history is totally different. There were GNU users before Linux came out. Then Linus Torvalds developed the first versions of Linux and changed it license so it could be combined with GNU. The early GNU/Linux users knew they are running a GNU variant. That is why they demand the name GNU/Linux for the thing which currently is in the article Linux. Also GNU/Linux is by far more important than Nexenta OS and so I'm more relaxed here. See also GNU Users Who Have Never Heard of GNU -- mms 19:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure what or who you are responding to. You indented underneath my comment, but you don't seem to really be addressing my statement. You gave an interesting, if unnecessary, history of GNU (and, I might add, seemed to assume I know nothing of the GNU project or the development of the Linux kernel, and how they relate), but I'm not sure what you are addressing, or who it is directed at. – Mipadi 20:17, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I was responding to your comment but drifted away a bit. I also addressed your last edit to the article. -- mms 21:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

My last edit was this, which is just a bit of cleanup, aside from changing the wording of the line about GNU/Linux a bit. But it's not cut-and-dried that it's wrong to refer to such a system as Linux—that's why there's a controversy, after all. – Mipadi 22:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)