Re: TCPA/Palladium (moved from OT debian-hurd thread)

[Farid Hajji]

> By the way, most of the users who call themselves "Linux users" are 
> actually GNU users (most "desktop" users have not even seen the kernel, 
> and don't know what it's for), and with appropriate tools they would 
> never tell a difference between GNU(/Hurd), GNU/Linux, GNU/FreeBSD, 
> GNU/Darwin or GNU/NetBSD (isn't someone starting this project in 
> Debian?). Whew, I never knew myself there were so many choices if I 
> didn't list them, some more stable than the others, but all useful to at 
> least some extent.

GNU/FreeBSD? Wow, I'm amazed. AFAIK, glibc has not yet
been ported to FreeBSD... [thanks to *BSD's Linux ABI
compatibility module, there was no need to do it yet]
At least, I haven't seen a /usr/ports/emulators/glibc
port yet :-)

The main issue here is wether the system (kernel, loaders,
libraries, ...) provides a SUSv3 or POSIX interface to
applications. If it does, great; if not, it's not *NIX-like.

I'm using *BSD, GNU/{Linux,Hurd}, SunOS, HP-UX and a whole
bunch of old legacy *NIX-like OS boxen all day/night long.
I call myself a "Unix user", using the term "Unix" in
its most generic meaning. Should this upset M$ or whomever
now owns the Unix brand name, so what?!

I would certainly not switch to the term "Linux-User",
"GNU-User" or whatever, because that would _still_ not
cover all the systems I like to play^H^H^H^Hwork with.

Perhaps we should invent a free term that is better than,
say, "*NIX"? :-) [Hint: many others tried before, and failed]

-FH.

-- 
Farid Hajji -- Unix Systems and Network Management.
http://www.farid-hajji.net/address.html
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." --Edgar Allan Poe.