Talk:Linux

Bad Data

↑ Operating System Market Share, September 2008, courtesy of Net Applications, a marketing company which obtains its data from the Alexa Toolbar or related products. Because people who install these products on their computers are not always aware that the product reports web browsing habits back to the marketers at Alexa some security software considers the Alexa Toolbar spyware and removes it. Both the automated removal-as-spyware and the self-selecting nature of those who install software that reports on personal web browsing habits raises questions as to whether the resulting data represents a unbiased statistical sample of Internet users.

Based on the nature of how they collect data it is very hard to collect a fair accounting of linux users since most linux users (on average more technical) would never allow the Alexa toolbar to be installed on their computer, a web based logging counter would be much more accurate such as http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp or http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php which tracks 19,991 websites (as of january 2009.) Exactly which to use or another not presented is a matter of discussion. The Alexa market share data has been removed. Note that as a source of data for statistics about Microsoft systems Alexa is a great resource.

Messy

The Linux distributions and software section is too cluttered. It should probably be made into a list or be made smaller. Gyre →talk to me 08:04, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Open / Free software

Linux is only open source? I think that Linux is too free!

That discussion is very long, and tedious for some. In short, Linux is licensed under the General Public License, Version 2. This makes it Free Software. Open-Source software basically means the same thing, but is used more often when talking in a business sense. --Eptalon 15:06, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Isn't Free Software a more specific subset of open source? Isn't all free software "open", but not all open source software is free (libre)? I think Free Software would be more correct over Open Source. Gnuself (talk) 22:33, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Comparison

For a comprehensive article I would expect to see comparisons to Windows and Mac (security, ease of use, software support) and its market share, among other things. Cassandra 20:42, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Pitfalls

I think we need to be wary here. Linux is a kernel. From the point of view of someone using Linux, it does nothing useful. The zillions and zillions of apps are something the different distribution package with linux. This nice user interface (GNOME vs. KDE vs. ...) debate is just a debate of whether you prefer this style of window layout or that style. Again, it is just an application runnning on top of the kernel. Since this is simple English, we should perhaps limit ourselves to point out that different people have made different bundles of applications they ship with the kernel; they call this distribution. There are different distributions ofr different needs; saying that distribution X is better than distribution Y is usually pointless. And from the user point of view: Mozilla Firefox looks and feels the say, whether on Solaris, Linux, xBSD or Windows. --Eptalon (talk) 15:09, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should move this page to "Linux Systems"? This page seems to describe a Linux system and not the kernel. This article is technically incorrect. Ismouton (talk) 13:30, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

(Brace, this may be longer) There is a very basic problem here. Linux is a kernel. The kernel manages the interaction between hardware and software. The kernel's tasks are to decide which process runs at what time, and how many resources it gets; it is also about regulating the communication between processes. The problem with this approach is that it is quite "un-sexy". For Linux, there is a new kernel release about every 1-2 months; in between there are "updates" to the existing kernel. The user, on the other hand interacts with a computer system. They uses a certain "shell" (A shell is a program that provides a commandline, and executes the commands given; this also allows for certain scripts to run); perhaps the user uses a given graphical environment. The problem there: Mozilla Firefox as a web-browser looks very similar on Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, MacOS X, AIX and Solaris. All these systems are operating systems which provide different kernels (AIX and Solaris are UNIX systems, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and MacOS X are Unix-like, and Linux is Unix-like but different, as it does not have a common code-base with the other Unix-like systems). To put it differently: Give the users a GUI like KDE with the applications common in such an environment, and the users won't be able to tell the difference between the different kernels. Different people package different Software applications with their Linux; the way the so called "Distribution" is managed may also be different. If we talk about Linux we should probably talk more about the kernel, and less about the other applications that run. Very basic question: When using Virtualisation, and running a Linux Kernel on a Solaris kernel, which one is the Operating System? --Eptalon (talk) 13:48, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I am well aware of all this. I started using Linux about 10 years ago back with Corel. But my concern is Linux is a kernel; either the article should change to reflect that or we should change the article accordingly. I feel a title such as: Linux Distributions or Linux Systems would be more appropriate with a redirect page linking to Linux(kernel) and Linux(Systems). I realize this is simple english wikipedia, but I strongly feel we should aim to be technically correct. And thank you for the welcome template. Ismouton (talk) 13:57, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the distinction between Linux the kernel and linux the distribution is one that, while important from a technical point of view, doesn't matter from a user's point of view, especially for the simple English wikipedia article. WhiteDragon (talk) 16:29, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Screenshots are badly chosen

the article shows screenshots of an empty Ubuntu desktop screen and of an empty Fedora desktop screen. No populated window of KDE nor Gnome, not to speak of anything 3D like Compiz. What are these empty screenshots supposed to show? --95.117.198.222 (talk) 22:33, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

One of the Screenshots makes reference to the roadrunner supercomputer, stating that it is currently the fastest in the world. This is wrong. Roadrunner runs at 1042000 GFlops, while Nebulae hits 1271000, and Jaguar currently runs at 1759000 GFlops. 67.226.188.40 (talk) 21:10, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Lee-narks?

Who actually pronounces Linux as "Lee-narks"?

GNU/Linux?

Some parts of the article call it "Linux" but some other parts call it "GNU/Linux" (for example the "Different GNU/Linux versions") section. Shouldn't it be one or the other throughout?

The argument between the two is actually an ideological one. Some would say the significant contributions by the GNU Project would warrant the GNU monicker. Others might argue that referring to the operating system by the kernel only is more commonly understood. So that may be why it shows up inconsistently. Gnuself (talk) 22:38, 13 April 2016 (UTC)