Re: [Pan-users] Re: clearing headers?

[David Kelly]

On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 11:48:15PM +1000, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Oct 2008 07:31:04 pm Yavor Doganov wrote:
> > ?? Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:00:39 +1000, Steven D'Aprano ????????????:
> > > Linux is an operating system, not a mail client.
> >
> > No, Linux is a kernel -- nothing more, nothing less.  See
> > http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html.
> 
> The GNU people have their opinion. It's not one shared by many others. 
> Possibly not shared by *any* others.
> 
> That's why people talk about "the Linux kernel" as opposed to "the Linux 
> operating system", e.g. the first paragraph from Wikipedia's article on 
> Linux states:
> 
> "Linux ... is a Unix-like computer operating system family which uses 
> the Linux kernel." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux

Just because Wikipedia says, doesn't make it so.

If Linux is an operating system rather than a kernel, please point me to
the One True Source?

Because Linux is not the whole package operating system others have to
bundle other stuff to make it usable for the masses. This is what Red
Hat, Debian, and others do. Linux can not load itself at boot without
help, and no everyone agrees how to do that.

> Similarly there's a Mach kernel (note the H), upon which the Mac (note
> the lack of H) OS X operating system runs; a Windows NT kernel upon 
> which the Windows NT, XP and other operating systems run; and so forth.

MacOS X kernel is a Heinz 57 kernel. It uses anything and everything
from everywhere losing any semblance of being a purebred kernel. As such
it is formally recognized as a BSD kernel. A highly respected BSD
academic concisely summarized (my paraphrase), "The difference between
BSD and Linux is that in BSD all the kernels are different and
everything else is the same. In Linux all the kernels are the same and
everything else is different."

-- 
David Kelly N4HHE, address@hidden
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Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.