“I use Linux as my operating system,” I state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. He swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision. “Actually”, he says with a grin, "Linux is just the kernel. You use GNU+Linux!’ I don’t miss a beat and reply with a smirk, “I use Alpine, a distro that doesn’t include the GNU coreutils, or any other GNU code. It’s Linux, but it’s not GNU+Linux.”
The smile quickly drops from the man’s face. His body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth and drops to the floor with a sickly thud. As he writhes around he screams “I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT’S STILL GNU!” Coolly, I reply “If windows was compiled with gcc, would that make it GNU?” I interrupt his response with “-and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. Even you were correct, you wont be for long.”
With a sickly wheeze, the last of the man’s life is ejected from his body. He lies on the floor, cold and limp. I’ve womansplained him to death.
But even when/if Alpine (or anyone else) creates a distro entirely free of GNU software, the vast majority of mainstream distributions would still fall under the “GNU/Linux” umbrella when the typical user is discussing Linux.
Apline is Linux/Busyibox or smth like that. However, that does not make 99% of distros not GNU/Linux.
Saying that the whole Debian, RHEL, SUSE and Arch realm (ie. stuff like Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Opensuse, EndeavourOS, Manjaro etc) and countless other distros are not GNU/Linux would be as, if not more, disingenuous as calling Alpine “GNU/Linux”
Also Alpine is not only dwarfed in terms of quantity of GNU/Linux distros, but also in amount of users/instances; both desktop- and server-side
And Chimera Linux (not to be confused with ChimeraOS, the GNUish gaming distro).
Ironically, Stallman himself is probably a prime motivation for Alpine and Chimera Linux, in a sort of “I’m sick of hearing this crap” way. Although it does say something about GNU that Alpine was also shooting for a distribution with as little bloat as possible, and it largely succeeded. For a long time, it was one of the most lightweight distributions around, leading to its popularity as a container base.
That’s not true anymore, there’s distros like Alpine which are not built using gnu tools.
“I use Linux as my operating system,” I state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. He swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision. “Actually”, he says with a grin, "Linux is just the kernel. You use GNU+Linux!’ I don’t miss a beat and reply with a smirk, “I use Alpine, a distro that doesn’t include the GNU coreutils, or any other GNU code. It’s Linux, but it’s not GNU+Linux.” The smile quickly drops from the man’s face. His body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth and drops to the floor with a sickly thud. As he writhes around he screams “I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT’S STILL GNU!” Coolly, I reply “If windows was compiled with gcc, would that make it GNU?” I interrupt his response with “-and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. Even you were correct, you wont be for long.” With a sickly wheeze, the last of the man’s life is ejected from his body. He lies on the floor, cold and limp. I’ve womansplained him to death.
Was Alpine built specifically to be able to tune out Richard Stallman?
If memory serves, Alpine is not entirely free of GNU software. Checking their own website, they use GCC and GNU Make:
https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages
But even when/if Alpine (or anyone else) creates a distro entirely free of GNU software, the vast majority of mainstream distributions would still fall under the “GNU/Linux” umbrella when the typical user is discussing Linux.
Apline is Linux/Busyibox or smth like that. However, that does not make 99% of distros not GNU/Linux.
Saying that the whole Debian, RHEL, SUSE and Arch realm (ie. stuff like Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Opensuse, EndeavourOS, Manjaro etc) and countless other distros are not GNU/Linux would be as, if not more, disingenuous as calling Alpine “GNU/Linux”
Also Alpine is not only dwarfed in terms of quantity of GNU/Linux distros, but also in amount of users/instances; both desktop- and server-side
Instance checks out.
dot world users don’t get to talk about instances lol
lol. lmao, even
deleted by creator
wow, the KDE Advanced Text Editor in person!
i use vscode sry
And Chimera Linux (not to be confused with ChimeraOS, the GNUish gaming distro).
Ironically, Stallman himself is probably a prime motivation for Alpine and Chimera Linux, in a sort of “I’m sick of hearing this crap” way. Although it does say something about GNU that Alpine was also shooting for a distribution with as little bloat as possible, and it largely succeeded. For a long time, it was one of the most lightweight distributions around, leading to its popularity as a container base.