Thread: What have former N900 owners moved to?
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Copernicus is offline Copernicus
2016-04-22 , 15:44
Posts: 1,986 | Thanked: 7,698 times | Joined on Dec 2010 @ Dayton, Ohio
#180
Originally Posted by marxian View Post
The '/' implies a combination, so GNU/Linux is 'GNU+Linux' or 'GNU with Linux'. Richard Stallman insists on it because he sees an ethical difference between software using copyleft licensing and that using permissive or propriatory licensing.

Permissive != free
Problem is, Linux is not GNU. A Linux distribution may contain elements from the GNU project, but then it'd be better to use the name GNU/Ubuntu or GNU/Fedora.

Android is most definitely Linux, and most definitely not GNU. Debian is almost wholly GNU (except, of course, for the Linux kernel, which is most definitely not GNU). A Fedora distribution will be somewhere in the middle, and any given Arch implementation could be near 100% GNU or near 0% GNU.

Ultimately, just saying a distribution is GNU/Linux is misleading, because you really don't know how much GNU is in there. (Whereas Linux either is or is not in there for certain.)
 

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