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Re: GNU/Linux Naming


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: GNU/Linux Naming
Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:15:44 +0100
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.50 (gnu/linux)

Brian <nospam@nospam.invalid> writes:

> On  7 Dec 2007 at 12:01, David Kastrup wrote:
>> Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> writes:
>>
>>> David Kastrup wrote:
>>>
>>> [... crying revisionism ...]
>>>
>>> Dear GNUtian dak, please visit
>>
>> Why change the topic?  We were talking about a dedicated Linux site
>> which called Linux "a clone of the operating system Unix" and said
>> that this operating system clone was created by Linux Torvalds from
>> scratch even though the term "Unix" certainly comprises more than just
>> a kernel.
>
> But you'd have to agree that user-space utilities like cat and wc are
> essentially trivial, in a way that a kernel isn't trivial.

The last time I looked, user space utilities like gcc, ld, gdb, awk,
sed, bash and a few hundred others were not quite trivial.  Apart from
which:

Usage: cat [OPTION] [FILE]...
Concatenate FILE(s), or standard input, to standard output.

  -A, --show-all           equivalent to -vET
  -b, --number-nonblank    number nonblank output lines
  -e                       equivalent to -vE
  -E, --show-ends          display $ at end of each line
  -n, --number             number all output lines
  -s, --squeeze-blank      never more than one single blank line
  -t                       equivalent to -vT
  -T, --show-tabs          display TAB characters as ^I
  -u                       (ignored)
  -v, --show-nonprinting   use ^ and M- notation, except for LFD and TAB
      --help     display this help and exit
      --version  output version information and exit

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.


Which is also not all of trivial when compared to some kernel
functionality.  I mean, take the "fork" system call.  Before all that
copy-on-write nonsense was invented, it just consisted of swapping out a
process without actually terminating the in-memory copy.  A UNIX kernel
fit into something like 16kB or so on a PDP-11.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


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