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Comment by antirez

1 day ago

The difference between Win32 and Linux is that the latter didn't realize an operating system is more than a kernel and a number of libraries and systems glued together, but is, indeed, a stable ABI (even for kernel modules -- so old drivers will be usable forever), a default, unique and stable API for user interface, audio, ..., and so forth. Linux failed completely not technologically, but to understand what an OS is from the POV of a product.

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antirez

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jcelerier  1 day ago

Linux didn't aim to be an OS in the consumer sense (it is entirely an OS in an academic sense - in scientific literature OS == kernel, nothing else).The "consumer" OS is GNU/Linux or Android/Linux.

  • delta_p_delta_x  1 day ago

    > it is entirely an OS in an academic sense - in scientific literature OS == kernel, nothing else

    No, the academic literature makes the difference between the kernel and the OS as a whole. The OS is meant to provide hardware abstractions to both developers and the user. The Linux world shrugged and said 'okay, this is just the kernel for us, everyone else be damned'. In this view Linux is the complete outlier, because every other commercial OS comes with a full suite of user-mode libraries and applications.