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GNU/Linux

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GNU/Linux is the term used by the GNU project and its supporters, in particular its founder and main activist Richard Stallman, to refer to the operating system more commonly referred to as Linux.

Linux, the program written by Linus Torvalds and others, is a Unix-like kernel, not a complete operating system. The GNU project had been begun in 1984 to develop a complete operating system based on free software. By 1991, when Linux was written, the GNU project had produced most of the major components of this system, including a shell, a C library, and a C compiler. These components were adapted by Torvalds and other early Linux developers to work with the Linux kernel, creating a completely functional operating system. However, although the Linux kernel is licensed under the GNU General Public License, it is not part of the GNU project.

Because a large part of the operating system had been created for GNU, Stallman has argued that it is more properly called "GNU/Linux". He has also pointed to the development of the Hurd kernel: an effort to complete the GNU system with its own kernel.

The requests to call the system "GNU/Linux" have met with mixed success at best. A few distributions, most prominently Debian, call their systems "GNU/Linux". The corporate world, including most media outlets, do not. Amongst the users and developers in the free software and open source movements, some have followed this request; many others have ignored or opposed it.

Some of the reasons people refer to the system "Linux" are:

  • It is shorter and thus easier to say.
  • Some consider the term "operating system" to refer to only the kernel, while the rest are simply utilities (regardless of the practical necessity of such utilities). In this sense, the operating system is called Linux, and a Linux distribution is based on Linux with the addition of the GNU tools.
  • Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, has referred to the combined system solely as Linux from the time of its initial release in 1991.
  • Stallman only began asking people to call the system "GNU/Linux" in the mid 1990s, after the system had become popular.

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