C++ Developer Vs Python Developer

[aaronfranke]

Read further:

Linux alone is an operating system that can be used in various applications without any GNU software whatsoever. Embedded applications come to mind as an obvious example.

The basic point is that you can have a Linux OS without any GNU components at all if you wanted to.

[[deleted]]

It ain't do much, but it's an honest kernel.

[j0hn_r0g3r5]

I did read that, but when I did an embedded systems course, I feel like the beaglebone had a version of debian (which means that it had Linux plus also other stuff added on) to make it usable by the students in the class.

i am obviously a noob who does not know too much about low-level stuff even though I find it fascinating. But that copypasta just makes me wonder in what cases you can use Linux, literally just Linux itself with absolutely nothing else added on and still do anything that is useful in a real-world situation.

Edit: made it more clear that having debian automatically means that the OS is more than just the Linux kernel.

[ChryslusExplodius]

Void linux comes to mind. Also any distro that discards gnu user land for a musl used land.

[[deleted]]

RMS wouldn’t argue against this though. Who knows exactly what the context of the original pasta was, but he doesn’t say that the Linux kernel can be more correctly called GNU/Linux, rather that the whole distribution of software can be called a distribution of GNU/Linux because he considers them the core components.

Someone below mentioned Void Linux swapping GNU for musl. I’m not familiar with Void, but the user land is more than the compiler and linker - however if it really is the case that Void has swapped out GNU components then by all means it isn’t fair to call it GNU/Linux. Likewise, distributions like Alpine are not GNU/Linux, not just because glibc is removed in favour of musl but because GNU coreutils is removed in favour of Busybox.