As it is mentioned in OMG! Ubuntu, Jon McCann – a GNOME pioneer, indicated that the future of GNOME can be turned in to an OS. He said,
The future of GNOME is as a Linux based OS. It is harmful to pretend that you are writing the OS core to work on any number of different kernels, user space subsystem combinations, and core libraries. That said, there may be value in defining an application development platform or SDK that exposes higher level, more consistent, and coherent API. But that is a separate issue from how we write core GNOME components like the System Settings.
It is free software and people are free to port GNOME to any other architecture or try to exchange kernels or whatever. But that is silly for us to worry about.
Kernels just aren’t that interesting. Linux isn’t an OS. Now it is our job to try to build one – finally. Let’s do it.
I think the time has come for GNOME to embrace Linux a bit more boldly.
Jon McCann said that, not Josselin Mouette
Sorry… My bad. 😛 Thanks for noticing. I’ve already corrected the name.
Sure, why not? 😉
ummmmm….. how in the blue hell, can they even REMOTELY say linux isn’t an os??!! Linux was around LONG before gnome ever even THOUGHT about being a window manager!! And was considered an entire OS when people like Patrick Volkerding of Slackware started building on the kernel!! Have the developers of gnome really become that arrogant as to make such an accusation?? I have been a linux user (and more recently, developer), basically, since linux first got uploaded to public servers, and the first window manager (what I consider even more of a ‘desktop’ than gnome) to hit the scene was kde, so if they want to start slinging mud, they might want to reconsider the timeline in which they released as to when KDE released, and to when linux, itself, was released!! and to further say the kernel isn’t that interesting? hello!! That’s what Linus Torvalds wrote that kicked off the whole development of Linux in the first effing place!!! And since then, has grown to an astounding size to cover an extremely WIDE variety of hardware!! Simply stated, without linux, there would be no gnome, so they might want to check themselves before they wreck themselves.. That being said, a gnome os is rather intriguing.. lol
Linux is a kernel. The common definition around linux related developers is that a kernel alone is no operating system.
You don’t have to agree with that, but thats what he meant.
Sorry… my bad. 😛
Thanks for noticing. I’ve already corrected the name.
Yet “operating system” courses at the university level are solely devoted to kernels.
see above.. lol simply because what breathes life into an os, for the most part, IS the kernel.. 😉
By that logic, one could state windoze is a kernel, a human is a brain (or a heart). Which granted, is good logic, considering the basis of either OS IS the kernel, whether it be /boot/zImage (or any variation thereof, dependent upon system setup) or windowssystem32kernel32.dll (and the basic tool for thinking in the human body is the brain, and what gives is us life is our heart, lol). But that’s why, at least in the developer world, when we mean the linux kernel, we say exACTly that, linux kernel. When we mean the entire os, we say linux. By simply stating that an os is a kernel, is not entirely inaccurate, but it does indeed carry some inaccuracies.. Interesting to think about.. The kernel to windoze is pretty much just the brain of windoze, there’s so much you can do without it, but in linux, the kernel is more like the heart, giving life to the entire os, because there’s very little you can do with just an empty shell.. 😉 Anywho.. we’re getting off-topic.. as I said before, gnome os DOES sound intriguing, to say the least..
GNU is the operating system. Linux is the kernel. Gnome is the desktop environment. People take these and create distributions, such as ABC GNU/Linux Gnome Edition.
Aaaaaand this is why I switched to KDE this week, and will probably end up on XFCE.