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2004-05-31 23:45, Hi David Gerard
You seem to have removed all the clarifications of the previously vague text. Encyclopedia's should be impartial and correct. You have put back all the confused use of "Linux", and removed spelling/grammar corrections. Really the Linux distributions entry should be clear about what it is and impartial to any of your leanings. The version you have reverted to is an umbrella description which could be read as matching more than it in fact does. The text should reflect correct and actual use of the term, including any that others may consider incorrect; it just should not blot out either/or as it does mostly at present.
Ok, and for the other minor revisions you removed:
eg -> e.g. ("eg" is just incorrectly spelt, e.g. is the abbreviation of latin "exampli gratia" and should be written "e.g." see OED for reference please.)
predetermined -> pre-determined
preconfigure -> pre-configure (requires hyphen as conjoined words)
PCs -> IBM compatible PCs (PCs is an abbreviation of "Personal Computers", this case only refers to IBM compatible PCs. Not Apple PCs for example. So presently )
"..targeted for China." -> ".. targeted at the Chinese market."
(grammar is simply wrong)
In the Xandros section:
commercial -> proprietary
(Are you unaware that GNU/Linux is typically commercial so the "commercial" point is irrelevant, the relevant point is that it is PROPRIETARY commercial software. There is no point emphasising a pointless piece of information.)
cooperation -> co-operation
(requires hyphen as conjoined words)
If you hold some position of seniority here please consider putting my clarifications back in. At least consider the grammatical and spelling revisions if you are intent on the "Linux" use being unsuitable as present.
Glad to see you did not revert my Proprietary software revision.
My comments in this post are intended to be polite, please do not consider my explanations patronising.
Cheers, now3d
"I would like to offer my opinion. The project to excise all references to GNU/Linux is deeply POV and wrong. It should be reverted completely and totally as quickly as possible. Virtually all references to Linux should be references to GNU/Linux. I am certainly unaware of any community consensus which would support the draconian and absurd campaign that has been conducted against the correct naming convention".--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:29, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Lightedbulb ( talk) 13:07, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
When talking on the #gentoo channel on freenode, I found out that many gentoo ops concider small package collections (or even ebuild collections) and repositories linux distributions in their own right (e.g. they say breakmygentoo is a linux distribution). That doesnt sound right to me. What are your thoughts? --[User:Hackeron|Hackeron] 14:33, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Should this really be a list of all Linux distributions, which it is fast becoming as many are added to the list? Instead, this purpose is better served by categories, possibly with a link to the appropriate category in section "Related articles", only leaving here a list of the most famous Linux distributions or, better yet, no list at all. Distributions that are relevant to the discussion of the article may be linked within its text. - Centrx 21:31, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I think that the List of Linux Distributions is better left as a seperate article, as it's already a bit long. Siraf 23:16, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
At any moment in time, the number of packages in gentoo and debian will vary. The people maintaining Gentoo packages can be fairly lazy with ebuilds (to do with difference in procedure and technical design between gentoo and debian) , so that, with all other things being equal, gentoo would have more packages per Mythical_Man_Month than debian.
At any point in time, either debian or gentoo may have more packages, and debian may well have more developers.
I don't intend starting a holy war here :-) Kim Bruning 10:34, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Let's take a look for todays' gentoo. At the moment I measured the following held true, but YMMV.
The total number of ebuilds is larger than the stated number of debian packages:
$ find /usr/portage | grep .ebuild | wc -l 13630
But for many packages there are multiple ebuilds, usually different versions and a new testing version, to roughly find the number of unique ebuilds we can do:
$ find /usr/portage/*-* -type d | grep -v files | wc -l 7107
but that also still counts top level dirs in /usr/portage, so:
$ ls -d /usr/portage/*-* | wc -l 110
Okay, so 7107-110 is 6997 packages.
So it depends on how you count. A gentoo afficionado would probably just use the number of ebuilds as their number, at 13500, which is definitely more than the quoted 8000 packages for debian. On the other hand, the number of *unique packages* being tracked by gentoo is currently around 7000, so a bit less than debian in that case.
It'd be interesting to track gentoo and debian #packages through time. I wonder if there's any graphs for that? I'll keep my eyes peeled. :-) Kim Bruning 12:42, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Hmm, might as well do an
# emerge sync
Okay, now ebuilds = 13697 and # unique packages is roughly 7016. Kim Bruning 12:54, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
In any case the numbers are getting surprisingly close! I'll remove the statement for now since debians number is larger at the moment. But I'll bet with you that I'll be putting it back soon enough. ;-) Have a nice day! Kim Bruning 17:10, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There's a simple way to alleviate this problem—don't mention the number of packages.— Kbolino 08:13, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
i hate when this happens. the article " Linux Meta-distribution" redirects itself to this one, but this article DOES NOT even mention "Linux Meta-distribution" in it. the same with " Meta-distribution". Vbs 16:48, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
My built-from-scratch system was also a Linux OS. Perhaps replace "is" with "provides" or "is one way to get" or something?
While being correct this addition does not ring well with the sentence following it:
There is free software and there is source-available software (like Solaris). One should not imply that these are the same.
That nonwithstanding, compliments to Dmerrill for incorporating LD material from LOS! --Robbe
The present entry for Slackware is pretty biased... nothing really unexpected, but still :) -- Shallot 20:55, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I had to delete the Inter-Distro section since it is largely 'unrecommended' to use alien at all. Alien has been put simply, as 'evil'.. it is not good at all.
I inserted the Package Formats section because a Distro's emphasis for convenience has to include package management and understanding that not all distro's share packages is a misconception, so is the same that using alien on a package should mean that they are the same compiles, they are not!, it should be discouraged!
Perhaps a Misconception section should suffice? Linux Myths?
--User [[User::Jagginess|Jagginess]]
There is a duplicate article Linux distr. On the surface, it appears that the article should be removed. However, please check to see if there is anything that can be salvaged from the other article and put into this one. Otherwise, please put that page for VFD. Thank you. -- Hurricane111 16:03, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
The article said: "A Linux distribution is a Unix-like operating system comprising the Linux kernel plus most of the GNU operating system (almost always but not necessarily)". I've removed the part that was in parenthesis since GNU is indeed part of every Unix-like, Linux-based OS. GNU is not part of everything that is Linux-based, but it is part of every Unix-like OS that is Linux-based. This seems uncontroversial to me, but maybe this is a touchy issue for some. Comments. Gronky 13:07, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
From the article: "Slackware's philosophy is about having only stable components, and not caring much about graphical interfaces. On the other hand Red Hat is accused to rely more on graphics and user-friendliness to beginners, therefore diminishing its quality. Other distributions also have specific viewpoints which can be found on their websites."
This should be cleaned up; "is accused to" should maybe read "tends to" or such, while "diminishing its quality" should probably be more like "decreases its stability". Mind you, I haven't used Slackware or Red Hat, so I don't actually know that this is the case, which is why I didn't change it myself and am making suggestions in the talk page ;) -- Limulus 03:08, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm surprised no discussion was opened by the proposer. I oppose on several grounds:
I expect we'll keep this discussion open for further input and then remove the tag after a few days. - Samsara ( talk • contribs) 13:19, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't this article be turned into one about all OS distros as opposed to just Linux-based ones (as there is not an article on that). Perhaps move to distribution (operating system) or distro or similar?
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley talk contrib 00:00, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
It does indeed seem these are no longer available for the current stable:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2005/01/msg00111.html
Samsara ( talk • contribs) 23:05, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
The first line currently has a strange wording about "the Linux kernel, supporting GNU system software" - which parses as: the Linux kernel plus GNU system software that supports Linux. I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean but I am sure that it is simpler to say "the GNU system plus the Linux kernel". So I'll revert, but I wanted to explain here since an anon has reverted my previous fix ("fix" being IMHO). Gronky 09:45, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I've never heard of such a thing, so I thought I'd ask. Just doubting that an MS product would facilitate Linux... - Samsara ( talk • contribs) 08:40, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I am told that in the Gentoo community, some people refuse to call something a "distribution" if it doesn't have package management. Therefore, for example, Slackware doesn't count as one by this usage. The person who told me this said this isn't official Gentoo usage, but is common in the Gentoo community. Has anyone seen anything referenceable on this? - David Gerard 20:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I do not find any mention of the licensing of Linux distributions. Are all Linux distributions under GPL? If not, why? I request anyone who is knowledgeable to include this information as Linux licensing is extremely confusing to many people. Thanks.
The article talks about "Unix-like" systems. Unix-like, Linux-based distros all include GNU software. Further, the vast majority of "Linux distros", including ones that are too POSIX incomplete to be called "Unix-like", contain more GNU code than Linux code. I don't see a reason to remove the name of the largest contributor to the software system in question, or to push their name down to less significant parts of the article. Gronky 22:39, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
"The most common method of installing Linux is by booting from a CD that contains the installation program and installable software. Such a CD can be burned from a downloaded ISO image, purchased alone for a low price, or can be obtained as part of a box set that may also include manuals and additional commercial software."
Can we make mention of Ubuntu's ShipIt free CD service? This seems to indicate that Linux is not really free for people who can't download the ISOs (dial-up), which is not the case. 64.230.85.230 05:47, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Please discuss this in Linux talk page: Talk:Linux#Merge_this_article_with_Linux_distributions -- AdrianTM 20:05, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 |
2004-05-31 23:45, Hi David Gerard
You seem to have removed all the clarifications of the previously vague text. Encyclopedia's should be impartial and correct. You have put back all the confused use of "Linux", and removed spelling/grammar corrections. Really the Linux distributions entry should be clear about what it is and impartial to any of your leanings. The version you have reverted to is an umbrella description which could be read as matching more than it in fact does. The text should reflect correct and actual use of the term, including any that others may consider incorrect; it just should not blot out either/or as it does mostly at present.
Ok, and for the other minor revisions you removed:
eg -> e.g. ("eg" is just incorrectly spelt, e.g. is the abbreviation of latin "exampli gratia" and should be written "e.g." see OED for reference please.)
predetermined -> pre-determined
preconfigure -> pre-configure (requires hyphen as conjoined words)
PCs -> IBM compatible PCs (PCs is an abbreviation of "Personal Computers", this case only refers to IBM compatible PCs. Not Apple PCs for example. So presently )
"..targeted for China." -> ".. targeted at the Chinese market."
(grammar is simply wrong)
In the Xandros section:
commercial -> proprietary
(Are you unaware that GNU/Linux is typically commercial so the "commercial" point is irrelevant, the relevant point is that it is PROPRIETARY commercial software. There is no point emphasising a pointless piece of information.)
cooperation -> co-operation
(requires hyphen as conjoined words)
If you hold some position of seniority here please consider putting my clarifications back in. At least consider the grammatical and spelling revisions if you are intent on the "Linux" use being unsuitable as present.
Glad to see you did not revert my Proprietary software revision.
My comments in this post are intended to be polite, please do not consider my explanations patronising.
Cheers, now3d
"I would like to offer my opinion. The project to excise all references to GNU/Linux is deeply POV and wrong. It should be reverted completely and totally as quickly as possible. Virtually all references to Linux should be references to GNU/Linux. I am certainly unaware of any community consensus which would support the draconian and absurd campaign that has been conducted against the correct naming convention".--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:29, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Lightedbulb ( talk) 13:07, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
When talking on the #gentoo channel on freenode, I found out that many gentoo ops concider small package collections (or even ebuild collections) and repositories linux distributions in their own right (e.g. they say breakmygentoo is a linux distribution). That doesnt sound right to me. What are your thoughts? --[User:Hackeron|Hackeron] 14:33, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Should this really be a list of all Linux distributions, which it is fast becoming as many are added to the list? Instead, this purpose is better served by categories, possibly with a link to the appropriate category in section "Related articles", only leaving here a list of the most famous Linux distributions or, better yet, no list at all. Distributions that are relevant to the discussion of the article may be linked within its text. - Centrx 21:31, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I think that the List of Linux Distributions is better left as a seperate article, as it's already a bit long. Siraf 23:16, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
At any moment in time, the number of packages in gentoo and debian will vary. The people maintaining Gentoo packages can be fairly lazy with ebuilds (to do with difference in procedure and technical design between gentoo and debian) , so that, with all other things being equal, gentoo would have more packages per Mythical_Man_Month than debian.
At any point in time, either debian or gentoo may have more packages, and debian may well have more developers.
I don't intend starting a holy war here :-) Kim Bruning 10:34, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Let's take a look for todays' gentoo. At the moment I measured the following held true, but YMMV.
The total number of ebuilds is larger than the stated number of debian packages:
$ find /usr/portage | grep .ebuild | wc -l 13630
But for many packages there are multiple ebuilds, usually different versions and a new testing version, to roughly find the number of unique ebuilds we can do:
$ find /usr/portage/*-* -type d | grep -v files | wc -l 7107
but that also still counts top level dirs in /usr/portage, so:
$ ls -d /usr/portage/*-* | wc -l 110
Okay, so 7107-110 is 6997 packages.
So it depends on how you count. A gentoo afficionado would probably just use the number of ebuilds as their number, at 13500, which is definitely more than the quoted 8000 packages for debian. On the other hand, the number of *unique packages* being tracked by gentoo is currently around 7000, so a bit less than debian in that case.
It'd be interesting to track gentoo and debian #packages through time. I wonder if there's any graphs for that? I'll keep my eyes peeled. :-) Kim Bruning 12:42, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Hmm, might as well do an
# emerge sync
Okay, now ebuilds = 13697 and # unique packages is roughly 7016. Kim Bruning 12:54, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
In any case the numbers are getting surprisingly close! I'll remove the statement for now since debians number is larger at the moment. But I'll bet with you that I'll be putting it back soon enough. ;-) Have a nice day! Kim Bruning 17:10, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There's a simple way to alleviate this problem—don't mention the number of packages.— Kbolino 08:13, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
i hate when this happens. the article " Linux Meta-distribution" redirects itself to this one, but this article DOES NOT even mention "Linux Meta-distribution" in it. the same with " Meta-distribution". Vbs 16:48, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
My built-from-scratch system was also a Linux OS. Perhaps replace "is" with "provides" or "is one way to get" or something?
While being correct this addition does not ring well with the sentence following it:
There is free software and there is source-available software (like Solaris). One should not imply that these are the same.
That nonwithstanding, compliments to Dmerrill for incorporating LD material from LOS! --Robbe
The present entry for Slackware is pretty biased... nothing really unexpected, but still :) -- Shallot 20:55, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I had to delete the Inter-Distro section since it is largely 'unrecommended' to use alien at all. Alien has been put simply, as 'evil'.. it is not good at all.
I inserted the Package Formats section because a Distro's emphasis for convenience has to include package management and understanding that not all distro's share packages is a misconception, so is the same that using alien on a package should mean that they are the same compiles, they are not!, it should be discouraged!
Perhaps a Misconception section should suffice? Linux Myths?
--User [[User::Jagginess|Jagginess]]
There is a duplicate article Linux distr. On the surface, it appears that the article should be removed. However, please check to see if there is anything that can be salvaged from the other article and put into this one. Otherwise, please put that page for VFD. Thank you. -- Hurricane111 16:03, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
The article said: "A Linux distribution is a Unix-like operating system comprising the Linux kernel plus most of the GNU operating system (almost always but not necessarily)". I've removed the part that was in parenthesis since GNU is indeed part of every Unix-like, Linux-based OS. GNU is not part of everything that is Linux-based, but it is part of every Unix-like OS that is Linux-based. This seems uncontroversial to me, but maybe this is a touchy issue for some. Comments. Gronky 13:07, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
From the article: "Slackware's philosophy is about having only stable components, and not caring much about graphical interfaces. On the other hand Red Hat is accused to rely more on graphics and user-friendliness to beginners, therefore diminishing its quality. Other distributions also have specific viewpoints which can be found on their websites."
This should be cleaned up; "is accused to" should maybe read "tends to" or such, while "diminishing its quality" should probably be more like "decreases its stability". Mind you, I haven't used Slackware or Red Hat, so I don't actually know that this is the case, which is why I didn't change it myself and am making suggestions in the talk page ;) -- Limulus 03:08, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm surprised no discussion was opened by the proposer. I oppose on several grounds:
I expect we'll keep this discussion open for further input and then remove the tag after a few days. - Samsara ( talk • contribs) 13:19, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't this article be turned into one about all OS distros as opposed to just Linux-based ones (as there is not an article on that). Perhaps move to distribution (operating system) or distro or similar?
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley talk contrib 00:00, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
It does indeed seem these are no longer available for the current stable:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2005/01/msg00111.html
Samsara ( talk • contribs) 23:05, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
The first line currently has a strange wording about "the Linux kernel, supporting GNU system software" - which parses as: the Linux kernel plus GNU system software that supports Linux. I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean but I am sure that it is simpler to say "the GNU system plus the Linux kernel". So I'll revert, but I wanted to explain here since an anon has reverted my previous fix ("fix" being IMHO). Gronky 09:45, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I've never heard of such a thing, so I thought I'd ask. Just doubting that an MS product would facilitate Linux... - Samsara ( talk • contribs) 08:40, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I am told that in the Gentoo community, some people refuse to call something a "distribution" if it doesn't have package management. Therefore, for example, Slackware doesn't count as one by this usage. The person who told me this said this isn't official Gentoo usage, but is common in the Gentoo community. Has anyone seen anything referenceable on this? - David Gerard 20:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I do not find any mention of the licensing of Linux distributions. Are all Linux distributions under GPL? If not, why? I request anyone who is knowledgeable to include this information as Linux licensing is extremely confusing to many people. Thanks.
The article talks about "Unix-like" systems. Unix-like, Linux-based distros all include GNU software. Further, the vast majority of "Linux distros", including ones that are too POSIX incomplete to be called "Unix-like", contain more GNU code than Linux code. I don't see a reason to remove the name of the largest contributor to the software system in question, or to push their name down to less significant parts of the article. Gronky 22:39, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
"The most common method of installing Linux is by booting from a CD that contains the installation program and installable software. Such a CD can be burned from a downloaded ISO image, purchased alone for a low price, or can be obtained as part of a box set that may also include manuals and additional commercial software."
Can we make mention of Ubuntu's ShipIt free CD service? This seems to indicate that Linux is not really free for people who can't download the ISOs (dial-up), which is not the case. 64.230.85.230 05:47, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Please discuss this in Linux talk page: Talk:Linux#Merge_this_article_with_Linux_distributions -- AdrianTM 20:05, 1 February 2007 (UTC)