Some come to me and say, “but dude, we should give recognition to the kernel and say GNU/Linux”, and I tell them I don’t care about the kernel, am not saying GNU/Linux every time, it’s way too long and doesn’t roll off the tongue. Plus “Linux” sounds nerdy af, like, “blip bop kernel source code 00101000 10100100”, while GNU’s all about freedom, what really matters, being all like “am not your proprietary crap” repeated ad infinitum through the recursive acronym that is GNU, that’s proper big brain stuff right there rather than technical gibberish about a kernel.
This one paragraph abode is very tongue in cheek of course, but I still mean it though.
I’ve spent a few years arguing for GNU/Linux or even just GNU on reddit, mostly in r/linuxmasterrace, and I was pleased to get quite a few upvotes every now and then, in a place where you can find people that will say things like “I make a point of never saying GNU/Linux, it’s called Linuuux!!!111!”
Here’s some comments I still can hardly believe got upvoted :
68 points! - https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/d01jb1/richard_stallman_is_giving_a_talk_at_microsoft/ez5tv3t/
35 points! - https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/5vivqm/stallman_id_just_like_to_interject_for_a_moment/de2k344/
13 points! - https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/iyds65/no_richard_its_linux_not_gnulinux/g6enrjc/
14 points! (this copypasta works well it seems) - https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/jh0tb9/the_real_os_king/g9vra1r/
14 points! - https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/bu2yh8/i_use_gnu_btw/ep7hy91/
And many more but with less upvotes or less interesting.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word “Linux” in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
Without the GNU project there wouldn’t even be a GNU GPL with its copyleft that protects the Linux kernel for being raped by corps. Without Linux GNU would simply use another Libre kernel, like it even actually does in systems such as Debian GNU/kfreeBSD. Linux is only useful to us because it adopted GNU’s copylefted license which allowed us to use it as GNU’s kernel. GNU’s the true historic root of our system and it’s great because it always stood for a libre system for the sake of it, Linux is nothing but a kernel which, without the freedom and copyleft of the GNU GPL, would be irrelevant to us, or at best a removedd out project like BSD.