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Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've tried using my incredible (british) brain using Google to see if these open source titans ever engaged in a battle of "friendly conversation" with one another.

I was always interested what Stallman thought of the angry but smart finnish man who gave us the robust penguin kernel that breathes life into older machines and powers supercomputers for the weather.

The same with Torvalds thoughts on Stallmans GNU involvement and him as a person.

This is because you sometimes had different organisations in the FOSS and OSS community that take on different meanings so I wanted a better idea if these chaps ever spoke in an interview together.

TLDR : Does finnish man like bearded GNU jesus man and the same vice versa

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[-] [email protected] 63 points 2 weeks ago

Stallman's attempt to rename Linux to incorporate the GNU name not happening was frustrating on his end it seems. Everytime someone calls their system a Linux based OS and not GNU/Linux based OS downplays the work he put in. However, Linus's kernel was more elaborate than GNU Hurd, so it was incorporated. It's said Stallman is a visionary, while Linus is a programist. While there's never been any display of tension in a back and forth between them online, it's always seemed to me they appreciate and also despise various aspects of each another.

[-] [email protected] 80 points 2 weeks ago

However, Linus's kernel was more elaborate than GNU Hurd, so it was incorporated.

Quite the opposite.

GNU Hurd was a microkernel, using lots of cutting edge research, and necessitating a lot of additional complexity in userspace. This complexity also made it very difficult to get good performance.

Linux, on the other hand, was just a bog standard Unix monolithic kernel. Once they got a libc working on it, most existing Unix userspace, including the GNU userspace, was easy to port.

Linux won because it was simple, not elaborate.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

Ok, interesting, thanks for the correction. Do you think rephrasing my statement and stating Linus's kernel is more adaptive would be more accurate?

[-] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago

Maybe.

Linux won because it worked. Hurd was stuck in research and development hell. They never were able to catch up.

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this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2024

121 points (92.9% liked)

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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