You're overthinking. Non-technical people don't care aboutthe difference.
this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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I am technical person and I don't care either.
Good point. I've just gotten used to the fact that gnu-everything is required to compile gnu-anything, both gnuseful and gnuseless, but you eventually realize that you have the wrong version of gnu-something. So I stopped caring after dicking around with dependency resolutionfor far too long to make it work. Gnu is like furniture (Gnurniture) to me - it's just there, and the less I have to think about it living in my gnuserspace, the better.
Gnupvoted
I've always thought calling it gnu mattered only to those interested in toe jam football.
i think the number of people who care could fit in a moderately sized conference room
If just saying Linux confuses you, just say Linux distro and / or Linux kernel explicitly.
To me, Linux means Linux distro unless further clarification or comedy is given. If you mean the kernel, you should always say so—the Linux kernel.
Non-technical users have no idea what the kernel is and you are not going to talk to them about it. So, when you say Linux they think Linux distro. It is not confusing unless we make it that way.
Let's not make things complicated when they don't have to be.
The Linux.
I use the Linux.
I had to use the Google to figure it out.
or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, --++Linux++--
That's a huge improvement over !!Linux!!
Soon the bitsmiths may improve to the point we can have ¤«¤Linux¤»¤.
For what? It's just Linux Kernel. If you speak about a specific operating system or distribution, then you can call it by name. Otherwise I've recently taken to calling it "Linux based operating system", when I try to avoid to call it by name (EndeavourOS).
That works.
To my ear though, “Linux based” leans too much towards the kernel. It makes me want to ask “what do you mean”.
I prefer “Linux distribution” or just Linux distro. If I was asked what that meant, I would simply have to say that Linux is available from different groups each of which curates slightly different collections of software which they “distribute”. Nobody needs to knew what a kernel is to understand that explanation.
I mean, I just say Linux. But when I do feel the need to distinguish, Linux distro and Linux kernel works for me.
Maybe it's just me but it feels like calling it anything other than Linux is just an UHM, ACKTUALLY. And that's saying something because I'm one of the most pedantic people I know.
Its linux. I am running linux because I am running the linux kernel.
I also call it "unix" instead of *nix for berevity's sake.
No, we shouldn't, and yes, you're overthinking, but I am finding myself inching closer to the GNU argument for the desktop/server OS, as I now not only use phone/Linux, but also a bunch of Kubernetes/Linux, with distroless images. It's all using the Linux kernel, and possibly glibc, but it's not Linux as we know it. The desktop/server OS meanwhile might not have GNU coreutils in some years.
But realistically we've been using Linux as the name for the family of desktop and server OS-es for decades now, and if you need to refer to the Linux kernel you call it "the Linux kernel" or just "the kernel".
Earlier GNU wanted HURD as an alternative to the Linux kernel—same GNU OS, different kernel. What instead is happening is that we're keeping the Linux kernel but replacing the GNU part of the OS.
Generally you just need to give as much information as the recipient needs to understand your message. Excess signals that don't add information are what information theory calls noise.