GNU and Linux: Different or the same? Post: 37444

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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers GNU and Linux: Different or the same? Post 37444 by norsk hedensk on Wednesday 18th of June 2003 10:18:50 PM

06-18-2003

Registered User

GNU is a recursive acronym for Gnu's NOT Unix. this was common hacker naming proceedure in the AI labs back in the 70s. if you really want to get technical on the explanation, you could subscribe to Stallman's naming conventions for this whole GNU (/) Linux thing..... (gasps for air...) GNU is actually the operating system that uses the Linux kernel. the kernel is the last ( well close ) layer between the software and the hardware in a computer system. an operating system is basically a set of programs ( tools, if you will ) that make up the whole system. you have ls, cd, mkdir, cp, and many many others for filesystem manipulation, you have gcc for c code compilation, you have various tools for configuring devices, ie ifconfig , modprobe, insmod, etc etc etc. these are all what make up the operating system. we have a unix-like system today, ( which is effectivley unix, for all practical USAGE purposes, its UNIX ) IP issues and copyright aside, GNU/Linux IS unix. anyway what the GNU people would like you to call the operating system you are using, is GNU/Linux. GNU is the system, Linux is the kernel. originally the GNU system was going to use the HURD kernel, but it wasnt ready when Linux was ready for testing on the net, and so GNU uses linux as its kernel. and of course, the aim of all this was/is to create a 'free' unix like os, a non commercial OS that can be used, distributed however one likes, ( within the limitations of the GPL ), theres lots more explanation that could be given but i will stop there. for more info, see the gnu.org website, as well as one of my favorite sites for reading about cool stuff, the jargon file, hold on lemme find that link....here it is : http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/

have alot of fun

norsk hedensk

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LEARN ABOUT OPENSOLARIS

grub

grub(5) 						Standards, Environments, and Macros						   grub(5)

NAME

       grub - GRand Unified Bootloader software on Solaris

DESCRIPTION

       The  current  release  of the Solaris operating system is shipped with the GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) software.  GRUB is developed and
       supported by the Free Software Foundation.

       The overview for the GRUB Manual, accessible at www.gnu.org, describes GRUB:

       Briefly, a boot loader is the first software program that runs when a computer starts. It is responsible for loading and transferring  con-
       trol  to an operating system kernel software (such as Linux or GNU Mach). The kernel, in turn, initializes the rest of the operating system
       (for example, a GNU [Ed. note: or Solaris] system).

       GNU GRUB is a very powerful boot loader that can load a wide variety of free, as well as proprietary, operating systems, by means of chain-
       loading.  GRUB  is designed to address the complexity of booting a personal computer; both the program and this manual are tightly bound to
       that computer platform, although porting to other platforms may be addressed in the future. [Ed. note: Sun has ported GRUB to  the  Solaris
       operating system.]

       One  of the important features in GRUB is flexibility; GRUB understands filesystems and kernel executable formats, so you can load an arbi-
       trary operating system the way you like, without recording the physical position of your kernel on the disk. Thus you can load  the  kernel
       just by specifying its file name and the drive and partition where the kernel resides.

       Among  Solaris  machines, GRUB is supported on x86 platforms. The GRUB software that is shipped with Solaris adds two utilities not present
       in the open-source distribution:

       bootadm(1M)	  Enables you to manage the boot archive and make changes to the GRUB menu.

       installgrub(1M)	  Loads the boot program from disk.

       Both of these utilities are described in Solaris man pages.

       Beyond these two Solaris-specific utilities, the GRUB software is described in the GRUB manual, a PDF version of which  is  available  from
       the Sun web site.  Available in the same location is the grub(8) open-source man page.  This man page describes the GRUB shell.

SEE ALSO

       boot(1M), bootadm(1M), installgrub(1M)

       Solaris Express Installation Guide: Basic Installations

       System Administration Guide: Basic Administration

       http://www.gnu.org/software/grub

SunOS 5.11							    21 Apr 2005 							   grub(5)