Celeron

[Bart Silverstrim]

On Jun 13, 2005, at 1:12 PM, Nikolas Britton wrote:

> On 6/13/05, Andreas Davour <ante at update.uu.se> wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Jun 2005, Nikolas Britton wrote:
>>
>>> On 6/7/05, Nosehouse <nosehouse at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> Hello FreeBSD :D
>>>> A question and I'm out: I have an old pc, running on a 300 MHz 
>>>> Intel Celeron CPU, on an Intel MOBO. Now, what platform should I 
>>>> choose from your site: Alpha, i386? And also for and AMD Athlon XP 
>>>> 2600+ with an Asus A7V600-X, what distribution?
>>>> Thanks!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> FreeBSD is an operating system, Linux is a distribution.
>>
>> Nope. Linux is an operating system kernel, as is FreeBSD. The latter
>> also happens to be the name of the operating environment.
>>
>> SuSE Linux, RedHat Linux or Debian GNU/Linux is distributions.
>
> When I say "operating system" I mean a "complete system". What good is
> a kernel if you have no way to make it do something?

Well, technically speaking, it doesn't matter what *you* mean.  By the 
definition, the statement made was true...Linux is the kernel, and Red 
Hat, SuSE, Debian, etc. are distributions.  We have to have standard 
definitions for specifying what we are talking about or it takes three 
times longer to communicate what we intend because we're trying to find 
the common understanding among Larry, Moe, and Curly as to what in h*ll 
they're talking about.  Working in a tech field there's plenty of times 
where this gets put to the test...hard copy is NOT a floppy disk, a CD 
disc, or tape, despite the fact that it is a tangible physical object.

> You could call GNU/Linux an operating system but I wouldn't, not after
> being introduced to an engineered system like FreeBSD. FreeBSD is to
> Linux as Gold is to Lead, there very similar but one is worthless.

I think the GNU/Linux term is actually supposed to be applied to the 
Linux kernel with the GNU tools, although it may be applied to just the 
kernel.  Would have to ask Stallman about that.  As for the comment 
about being worthless, to each their own.  I'm sure there are a lot of 
companies and Linux users who would disagree, and I'd be so inclined to 
disagree as well seeing that I've managed to get plenty of useful tasks 
done using various flavors of Linux.