Why Linux is portrayed as a Penguin?
The penguin’s name is “Tux” and he’s the official Linux mascot.
I think Linus Torvalds picked it a long time ago, he said he wanted something that was non-threatening, so hence the penguin lol.
The debate about Linux vs GNU/Linux imo, is one of the stupidest and pedantic debates I’ve ever heard. Maybe it mattered 30+ years ago when things were much less developed and only hardcore nerds and programmers used it, but now days it’s only important to grognards and neckbeards.
Hot take, but it’s like those pretentious music enthusiasts that will argue about what precise genre an artist fits into. “I would say they are post-progressive indie skitzo-pop. No way! They are clearly more neo-grunge sca-punk with post-rock elements” who cares?? Have your ultra-precise categories in your personal music collection all you want, but acting like it’s based on some hardcore objective truths of the universe is stupid.
Nobody is confused when I say I run Linux as my OS. Actually, people do get confused but it’s not because of GNU/Linux, it’s because they haven’t ever heard of Linux and thought that Windows and MacOS were the only 2 OSes for computers.
If somebody genuinely pulled an “um, actually” on me for saying Linux vs GNU/Linux, I would scream laugh loudly and then change the subject.
Yeah, but should you pronounce it Gee-en-yoo or Guh-no͞o? Huh? That REALLY tells me where your allegiances lay.
I pronounce it GNU
I honestly didn’t know people pronounced it any other way than gee-en-you. It’s in all caps, so I figured you said each letter.
Now that I think more about it though, I don’t know why I assumed that. I don’t say AWOL as ay-doubleyou-oh-el. I don’t say SNAFU as es-en-ay-ef-you.
I’m just going to call it the OS for yaks from now on and never think about it again.
This is how I am with “GUI”…I just call it Gee-you-eye. I finally went to a class on the subject for real and some people were calling it a “Gooey”…and I…no. Just fucking no. It’s not a “Gooey”.
I’ve spent nearly 20 years in academia and professional software development and have never heard anyone pronounce it Gee-you-eye, funnily enough.
Gonna try it this week and see how many people look at me like I’m crazy.
Edit: spelling
Yeah at this point I don’t care if I’m right or wrong. I’m going to pronounce it Gee-you-eye.
I think the distinction is kinda pointless anyways. As long as the information is conveyed I don’t really care about acronym/initialism pronounciation.
I had textbooks in college (25 years ago) that always had little blurbs about the acronyms and their pronunciation. GUI, we were instructed, was pronounced gooey. WYSIWYG is wiz-ee-wig, etc. It was on tests IIRC.
For whatever reason, I always drop the G and just call it the UI. This thread is making me think that I don’t actually say anything the right way.
Like much of my early language skills, I learned it from Sesame Street:
“Remember: No g-news is good g-news with Gary Gnu!” 😛
Holy smokes. 1000x this. You want Linux to be popular, stop gatekeeping it and being a hipster. OSX is a great example of how to make a Unix like OS popular with NORMAL people.
Grandma doesn’t care what kernel she’s running and … Hint hint, neither do I. I just want my computer to work and be easy to maintain.
I run Ubuntu, not because it’s the best, but became it just works. I might swap to Mint or PopOS, but that takes time out of my life which I’d rather spend coding or working out.
You want Linux to win on the desktop, you have to get manufacturers to make it the default, and good luck getting Dell or HP to change.
Heck most folks don’t even own a computer now a days.
Be happy Android won on mobile and Linux won on servers. ❤️
HP released the Dev One laptop running Linux once.
Niiiice
Um actually it’s called ska, not sca
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I wonder how far back Richard Stallman set the free software movement by being absolutely cock slamming terrible at naming things. “I’m going to name my operating system after the sound my throat makes while swallowing a whole goldfish.”
If that bothers you, you should read the GNU FAQ page… About half of it consists of variations on “but why GNU/Linux”, including my personal favorite where they discuss why it’s not GNU Linux: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#whyslash and how you need to pronounce the slash: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#pronounce
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Here we go. …
Linux is the kernel.
Gnu refers to the userland tools.
Many say gnu no longer really applies as the userland tools are provided by more than GNU’s specific set.
I understand why Stallman wanted us to say GNU/Linux, because his organization needs money and wants its name out there, but that’s simply not how things get named in the real world.
First, GNU was always a mouthful. It’s always been intentionally pronounced differently from the animal. People prefer names that are not confusing and that don’t sound strange.
Second, we don’t do the same thing for other operating systems. If you’re an illustrator, you don’t say that you work on Adobe/Windows or whatever.
Third, GNU/Linux adds nothing interesting over simply “Linux”. And in fact, there have been distributions where they avoid GNU tooling due. Everybody still recognizes these as Linux.
For your second point, do you say that you use Adobe or Windows?
Or how about if I said I made this cool image using Linux? More likely I’d say I used GIMP or ImageMagick or some specific command line tool.
Linux is just the kernel. It’s an amazing kernel, but it’s only half the story. The tools on top of it are just as important as the kernel. That’s the point of saying GNU/Linux is to call out the other half of the whole experience.
The reason GNU/Linux isn’t popular to say is that it doesn’t provide any real information. “I run Linux” and “I run GNU/Linux” doesn’t really tell you anything. “I run Debian”, “I run Fedora”, “I run Arch BTW”, those all tell you something different.
I can’t speak to the OS landscape when Linux was released. Maybe saying that you ran GNU/Minix or Bell/Unix or whatever combinations might have existed would have made sense. However at this point it doesn’t.
For your second point, do you say that you use Adobe or Windows?
I mean, you already know the answer to that. The point is that you don’t have to give the entire context of your computing environment every time you mention some product you use.
Linux is just the kernel.
It’s not only the kernel. It is also the name that people have settled on for differentiating the computer running the Linux kernel from a computer running Windows.
I always pronounced it guh-new as in “Gary Gnu”.
How is it supposed to be pronounced?
I was contrasting it with the animal “gnu”, otherwise known as the wildebeest, which is pronounced more similar to the word “new”. I suspect more people know the animal gnu than know the organization GNU.
I think you’re right. I think some people say G-N-U.
Agreed. Names don’t work that way. Should we just append any remotely relevant info to the name? “I use Arch/Systemd/Gnu/Linux-AMD 5 7700X, webcam connected, 2000 dpi mouse BTW”
Yea totally with you there.
Let me interject for a moment …
Love it lol
Why Linux is portrayed as a Penguin?
In the uses section, it mentions Tux being shown at the top of the boot sequence for Gentoo.
It’s kinda funny because I’ve been using Gentoo for almost 4 years and never knew that there was one Tux per CPU core until I read this article. That’s fun!
Just thought it put out the same number on every system I guess, haha!
I really don’t care what ppl call it, I call it “Linux”, because saying “GNU/Linux” is really annoying. Also, I like Alpine so yeah I can say that I use “Linux”.
What’s better is GNU. IDGAF if the kernel is Linux or HURD as long as my hardware works, but I do care about preferring copyleft-licensed stuff to permissively-licensed stuff.
Both. Richard and Linux paved the way for what all FOSS and the world currently is
I love them all, man.
Just go with whatever software distribution you use.
Linux/GNU. GNU would never have been widely adopted anywhere without the Linux kernel. Plus, Linux can be made to run with alternatives to GNU. Putting GNU first is putting the cart before the horse.
Actually it might be the opposite, without the GNU initiative, Linus may not have found any interest in developing the Linux kernel. Without the GPL license, the efforts of the GNU community would not have been spent on Linux.
For most people Linux is useless without GNU. A kernel alone doesn’t make an OS.
Neither it’s GNU^Linux (read: GNU to the power of Linux)
You can’t have one without the other. So they are equal.
It depends on what matter to you. I use a GNU/Linux distribution and I call it that such because I think the project deserves to be better known. I say FLOSS rather than FOSS because I value freedom.
The
goes very in-depth on every question you might have on why to call it GNU/Linux. Whether that makes you more or less likely to actually call it that is up to you!
Gun/Linux 🔫
