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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!204.176.20.11!aesop.synopsys.com!news.synopsys.com!jbuck From: jbuck@synopsys.com (Joe Buck) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc Subject: Re: Linux vs BSD Date: 13 Feb 1997 18:41:08 GMT Organization: Synopsys Inc., Mountain View, CA 94043-4033 Lines: 29 Message-ID: <5dvn85$9pt@hermes.synopsys.com> References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <E5G0z9.9Kz@bigbird.telly.org> <5dqmk2$oj2@cynic.portal.ca> <0n0LDm200YUg0bsyE0@andrew.cmu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: atrus-84.synopsys.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:159089 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2534 Gerry S Hayes <sumner@CMU.EDU> writes: >It's not Linux shortsightedness; any of the classic operating systems >texts (Tanenbaum, for instance) will define the OS as something much >closer to "Kernel" than "kernel + bash + ls + cp + mv + emacs +..." Actually, probably closer to "kernel+libc": the standard services that application programs rely on, together with certain standard daemons. Given this, it seems GNU/Linux will certainly be appropriate once the conversion to libc-6 is complete, since it is the GNU C library (libc 5 is about half GNU libc and half other stuff). >Windows is both an OS and an OS with associated utilities, depending >on the context. By your strict definition, Windows 3.1 is not an OS, DOS is the OS. But I don't think that makes much sense. To the application developer the OS is the standard services s/he can rely on, some of which may execute in user space. >If I am programming a Windows application, that >generally means I use the Windows API; Exactly; it is the API. -- -- Joe Buck http://www.synopsys.com/pubs/research/people/jbuck.html Help stamp out Internet spam: see http://www.vix.com/spam/