It's all marketing, babe! Just look at how bloated "apps" are, and how shitty the performance is. It's pretty bad when an "app" takes up more space and resources than a full-blown desktop application.
We refer to them as part of an OS. An OS is kernel + userspace. The original author's comment can be explained by his disclaimer at the end that he's not a programmer and may have gotten much of the terminology wrong.
While generally a valid complaint about the way people talk about operating systems, the article does mention that they're replacing the Linux kernel here.
Are KDE and GNOME OSes now? they would like you to think so, look at the integration with SystemD, your desktop his now hard-depending on an init system that wants control over you bios partition.
An operating system, in common parlance, is the ecosystem (API) on which a set of apps can operate. iOS and MacOS are different OSes, and to some extent even different distros of Linux are different OSes based on this. Per this definition, recent desktop Windows (8 & 10) is now actually two linked OSes, since the average user does not know or understand what APIs like Win32 or UWP are, but do understand that some hardware can run Windows Store apps but not "desktop" apps, this making UWP-only builds (li
Because we always have. The term "operating system" has always referred to the foundation software on any machine, from the kernel to the standard operating environment.
What is an OS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we refer to a userspace infrastructure/UI API as an OS? Are KDE and GNOME OSes now?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What is an OS? (Score:4, Informative)
We refer to them as part of an OS. An OS is kernel + userspace. The original author's comment can be explained by his disclaimer at the end that he's not a programmer and may have gotten much of the terminology wrong.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Because without userspace infrastructure, this would be called a kernel?
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Maybe a virtual machine running on a kernel running on a hypervisor? It's kernels all the way down...
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Maybe a virtual machine running on a kernel running on a hypervisor? It's kernels all the way down...
The real programmers manually load their boot loader that they personally wrote in assembly on every reboot, and like it!
Re: What is an OS? (Score:0)
Insert disk and press enter....
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Who needs an OS when you can just code in your bootloader?
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Nope. It's all ball bearings nowadays.
Re:What is an OS? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: What is an OS? (Score:1)
Thats right, linux kernel is the whole operating system, and it is being replaced here now. And that is THE news in whole article.
First time for long time a article really means "new OS" when they write so.
And yet some idiots want to come and say that things aint so that OS is something else than Linux Kernel.
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So the Android system is not an operating system? It was Linux all along?
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GNOME is, KDE is not.
Next question...
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Are KDE and GNOME OSes now? they would like you to think so, look at the integration with SystemD, your desktop his now hard-depending on an init system that wants control over you bios partition.
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Why do we refer to a userspace infrastructure/UI API as an OS?
Post-truth.
Re: What is an OS? (Score:0)
An operating system, in common parlance, is the ecosystem (API) on which a set of apps can operate. iOS and MacOS are different OSes, and to some extent even different distros of Linux are different OSes based on this. Per this definition, recent desktop Windows (8 & 10) is now actually two linked OSes, since the average user does not know or understand what APIs like Win32 or UWP are, but do understand that some hardware can run Windows Store apps but not "desktop" apps, this making UWP-only builds (li
Re: (Score:2)
If you can't run it on top of Emacs then it must be its own OS.
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Because we always have. The term "operating system" has always referred to the foundation software on any machine, from the kernel to the standard operating environment.
No, but they can form part of an OS.