Floyd L. Davidson writes:
> Not until you put them together, and then it is indeed an
> Operating System.
So it makes little sense to promote Linux alone vs. complete operating
systems.
> RedHat,
> Novel, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Slackware, Debian, CentOS,
> Gentoo, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, DreamLinux, Elive, Mepus,
> Puppy, Slax, and a couple dozen others are in fact full
> fledge GNU/Linux Operationg System distributions.
You illustrate my point. You've named fifteen and alluded to dozens of other
versions of "Linux" that are all different. There's absolutely no hope that
Linux or operating systems built with it will ever replace the desktop as long
as there are a hundred different versions floating around.
And, of course, all the versions are effectively proprietary, because they are
all unique.
> Using your ridiculous arguments it could be said that
> neither the "UNIX" nor the "Windows" objects you listed
> are actually OS's. They are both a family of OS's, but
> neither term describes a specific OS any more (or less)
> than GNU/Linux does.
Every version of UNIX or Windows runs complete in itself. Linux does not.
There are indeed many versions of UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems, which
is one of its major disadvantages. Windows is fairly limited in the number of
versions it has, and all of the current versions share the same code base,
with mainly features enabled or disabled within the code, or a handful of
modules present or not present. Mac is even more consistent. |