| > GNU on Windows has existed for a long time in several forms, for one thing This is a legitimate question, since I am not a Windows user: has it really? Or are you referring to GNU software[0], which is not what we are referring to when we say GNU is a fully free Unix replacement; GNU software is only a part of that.[1] [0]: https://gnu.org/software/ [1]: https://gnu.org/gnu/gnu.html > For another, by bringing a compatibility layer for the Linux kernel they have opened the door to much more than just GNU, and it remains incredibly reductivist to claim that that's all the Linux kernel does. You can use the Linux kernel (or this linux-compatible layer) to use a GNU system or a completely non-GNU system if you so choose. Sure they have. But that's not what the conversation is focused on: it's focused on being able to use GNU Bash and all the other Unix (mostly GNU) utilities that hackers are used to using. > And the reason it's not almost finished is because the GNU project considers the kernel unimportant Linux completed a major missing piece of GNU, which we refer to as GNU/Linux.[2] [2]: https://gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html Specifically: "Once Torvalds freed Linux in 1992, it fit into the last major gap in the GNU system. People could then combine Linux with the GNU system to make a complete free system — a version of the GNU system which also contained Linux. The GNU/Linux system, in other words."[2] |
As far as I can tell this subsystem does nothing that cygwin hasn't done in terms of 'bringing gnu to windows' since 1995, except that it does it technically better and allows for you to use software that does not depend on already ported components without recompilation. This means, for example, that you can use a libc other than glibc without porting that libc to windows first (ie. you could use musl, which is absolutely not part of the gnu system and even implements its own dynamic linker). You couldn't do that with cygwin. At least not trivially.
> Sure they have. But that's not what the conversation is focused on: it's focused on being able to use GNU Bash and all the other Unix (mostly GNU) utilities that hackers are used to using.
Even if I concede that GNU constitutes a 'system' in the way that RMS insists (which I don't, at all. His claims are political, not technical, imo), I would not agree that using this layer constitutes using that system for precisely this reason. Using bash or even gcc is not sufficient to consider a system 'gnu', even by RMS' own statements, else OSX and the other BSD systems would be gnu systems as well. For the most part, use of "bash on windows" is literally just that. You run bash and it exists in a space that is like but not exactly the same as linux, but that part is largely artifice. You don't even get a complete /proc filesystem.
[Note: Considering I am literally referring to those RMS screeds in my posts, I'd appreciate it if you at least pretended to believe I've read them.]