Taken from the CompTIA IT Fundamentals Exam Guide book (2nd edition, published 2021). I’m not sure if they fixed this in newer versions, if at all.

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
    61·
    1 year ago

    GNU isn’t a kernel, it has nothing to do with Linux. The GNU tools are just the common command line tools many Linuxes default to. It’s like saying “Microsoft Outlook is a Windows variant”.

    There are a bunch of Linuxes that don’t come with GNU. Alpine is a major one, and I’m pretty sure Android also runs without GNU tools out of the box (with command line programs all implemented in a custom busybox alternative).

    There’s a GNU variant of FreeBSD to drive the point home. Standard FreeBSD has reimolemented all the standard Unix tools themselves, but the GNU+FreeBSD variant takes Debian’s GNU libraries and runs them on top of the FreeBSD kernel.

    • istdaslol@feddit.de
      4·
      1 year ago

      What is GNU?

      GNU is an operating system that is free software—that is, it respects users’ freedom. The GNU operating system consists of GNU packages (programs specifically released by the GNU Project) as well as free software released by third parties. The development of GNU made it possible to use a computer without software that would trample your freedom.

      Directly from the official GNU website : https://www.gnu.org/home.en.html

      And btw an OS is more than a kernel, the kernel is „just“ the foundation on witch the OS works. Hardware communication is on kernel level, for example.