@lanodan An operating system is system of software that allows you to operate a computer.

>Linux is quite more than just a kernel though, it also comes with linux-specific utilities
Yes, the Linux project also provides a set of utilities, but those a special-purpose rather than general-purpose and I don't believe some of those can even be compiled without GNU libraries, making Linux not much more than a kernel.

The greatest demonstration of why Linux is not an OS is in the Linux source itself; https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/init/main.c#n1494

Additionally, no matter what you download from git.kernel.org, you won't end up with an operating computer at the end.

>given that you can have linux binaries without any involvement of GNU >you can entirely have multiple libc in the same system, see how most people use dietlibc for example
I don't get how something using a SYSCALL interface or using different libc's would make something an OS or not.

>>GNU is an operating system
Indeed, as you can navigate to https://www.gnu.org/software/ and get all the software you could need to operate a computer, including multiple kernels, the best shell, multiple editors, graphical toolkits (GUI's and a TUI), a compiler collection, communication software, multiple dictionaries (including a dictionary server), graphics editors, a voice synthesizer, multiple browsers, compiling tools, a BIOS, networking utilities (including a BGP implementation (decommissioned, but still works)) mathematics utilities, a coreutils, a TLS implementation, encryption and decryption utilities, a few games, a bootloader and even two complete system distributions (Guix and the Emacs OS) and much, much more.

There's all this operating system software that comprises a complete, fully free OS that people refuse to even see.

>Which one
You're spoilt for choice - there's many different versions of the GNU OS to choose from;
GNU/Linux-libre
GNU/Linux
GNU Emacs
GNU Grub (it has a shell and other utilities, although most prefer to use it to boot a different GNU OS)
GNU/Hurd

>Hurd? That's barely a base system.
It boots straight into GNU Emacs - what else would you need?

>That's very much cat herding given the lack of cohesiveness of it all
This is a very strange claim to make given how GNU package maintainers work together to make a cohesive system of software that all works together.

>how Guix ends up using a bunch of GNU alternatives (tcc and musl, among others) to be able to bootstrap itself.
I would argue that tcc and musl aren't alternatives, rather just lesser imitators of gcc and glibc.

Guix doesn't strictly need them to boostrap - those were just chosen only because it made it easier to write an automated full-source bootstrap, with gcc and glibc being compiled later in the bootstrap process.

You can bootstrap Guix with gcc and glibc etc binary if you really want.


It's amazing how few people can see freedom despite how it's built up on a huge floating island of GNU/freedom before their very eyes.