Some come to me and say, “but dude, we should give recognition to the kernel and say GNU/Linux”, and I tell them I don’t care about the kernel, am not saying GNU/Linux every time, it’s way too long and doesn’t roll off the tongue. Plus “Linux” sounds nerdy af, like, “blip bop kernel source code 00101000 10100100”, while GNU’s all about freedom, what really matters, being all like “am not your proprietary crap” repeated ad infinitum through the recursive acronym that is GNU, that’s proper big brain stuff right there rather than technical gibberish about a kernel.
This one paragraph abode is very tongue in cheek of course, but I still mean it though.
I’ve spent a few years arguing for GNU/Linux or even just GNU on reddit, mostly in r/linuxmasterrace, and I was pleased to get quite a few upvotes every now and then, in a place where you can find people that will say things like “I make a point of never saying GNU/Linux, it’s called Linuuux!!!111!”
Here’s some comments I still can hardly believe got upvoted :
68 points! - https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/d01jb1/richard_stallman_is_giving_a_talk_at_microsoft/ez5tv3t/
35 points! - https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/5vivqm/stallman_id_just_like_to_interject_for_a_moment/de2k344/
13 points! - https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/iyds65/no_richard_its_linux_not_gnulinux/g6enrjc/
14 points! (this copypasta works well it seems) - https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/jh0tb9/the_real_os_king/g9vra1r/
14 points! - https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/bu2yh8/i_use_gnu_btw/ep7hy91/
And many more but with less upvotes or less interesting.
Not to discredit the contributions of the FSF, Linux does not need GNU, but GNU sure as hell needs Linux. Hurd is a mess, and simply cutting out Linux from the name when it is the most important, complicated piece of the OS is a bit dumb. If we didn’t have GNU, Linux would be doing just fine something like Musl, the BSD compiler, and Busybox. Without Linux, GNU would be nothing but an experimental LibC, Compiler, and Shell.
Without the GNU project there wouldn’t even be a GNU GPL with its copyleft that protects the Linux kernel for being raped by corps. Without Linux GNU would simply use another Libre kernel, like it even actually does in systems such as Debian GNU/kfreeBSD. Linux is only useful to us because it adopted GNU’s copylefted license which allowed us to use it as GNU’s kernel. GNU’s the true historic root of our system and it’s great because it always stood for a libre system for the sake of it, Linux is nothing but a kernel which, without the freedom and copyleft of the GNU GPL, would be irrelevant to us, or at best a removedd out project like BSD.