GNU

GNU is composed wholly of free software, most of which is licensed under the GNU Project's own General Public License (GPL).

Stallman decided to call this operating system GNU (a recursive acronym meaning "GNU's not Unix!"), basing its design on that of Unix, a proprietary operating system.

The combination of GNU and Linux has become ubiquitous to the point that the duo is often referred to as just "Linux" in short, or, less frequently, GNU/Linux.

Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

The GNU project includes an operating system kernel, GNU Hurd, which was the original focus of the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

The FSF holds the copyrights on many pieces of the GNU system, such as GNU Compiler Collection.

(see the GNU/Linux naming controversy) The FSF maintains that an operating system built using the Linux kernel and GNU tools and utilities, should be considered a variant of GNU, and promotes the term GNU/Linux for such systems (leading to the GNU/Linux naming controversy).

The GNU/Linux naming controversy is a dispute between members of the free software community and open-source software community over whether to refer to computer operating systems that use a combination of GNU software and the Linux kernel as "GNU/Linux" or "Linux".

GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!", chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code.

These were followed by Richard Stallman's GNU (GNU's Not Unix).

However, given the Hurd kernel's status as not yet production-ready, non-GNU kernels, most popularly the Linux kernel, can also be used with GNU software. The FSF maintains that an operating system built using the Linux kernel and GNU tools and utilities, should be considered a variant of GNU, and promotes the term GNU/Linux for such systems (leading to the GNU/Linux naming controversy).

Linux rapidly attracted developers and users who adopted it as the kernel for other free software projects, notably the GNU Operating System, which was created as a free, non-proprietary operating system, and based on UNIX as a by-product of the fallout of the Unix wars.

The system's basic components include the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), the GNU C library (glibc), and GNU Core Utilities (coreutils), but also the GNU Debugger (GDB), GNU Binary Utilities (binutils), the GNU Bash shell.

GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain and the standard compiler for most projects related to GNU and Linux, including the Linux kernel.

Richard Stallman, the founder of the project, views GNU as a "technical means to a social end".

Stallman announced the plan for the GNU operating system in September 1983 on several ARPANET mailing lists and USENET.

The system's basic components include the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), the GNU C library (glibc), and GNU Core Utilities (coreutils), but also the GNU Debugger (GDB), GNU Binary Utilities (binutils), the GNU Bash shell.

The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a package of GNU software containing reimplementations for many of the basic tools, such as cat, ls, and rm, which are used on Unix-like operating systems.

GNU is composed wholly of free software, most of which is licensed under the GNU Project's own General Public License (GPL).

Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985.

This philosophy was later published as the GNU Manifesto in March 1985.

The GNU Manifesto was written by Richard Stallman and published in March 1985 in Dr. Dobb's Journal of Software Tools as an explanation of goals of the GNU Project, and as a call for support and participation in developing GNU, a free software computer operating system.

The most prominent and successful of these was Cygnus Solutions, now part of Red Hat.

For years, employees of Cygnus Solutions were the maintainers of several key GNU software products, including the GNU Debugger and GNU Binutils (which included the GNU Assembler and Linker).

The system's basic components include the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), the GNU C library (glibc), and GNU Core Utilities (coreutils), but also the GNU Debugger (GDB), GNU Binary Utilities (binutils), the GNU Bash shell.

GDB was first written by Richard Stallman in 1986 as part of his GNU system, after his GNU Emacs was "reasonably stable".

The most prominent and successful of these was Cygnus Solutions, now part of Red Hat.

Cygnus provided commercial support for free software and housed maintainers of GNU software products such as the GNU Debugger and GNU Binutils.

The FSF maintains that an operating system built using the Linux kernel and GNU tools and utilities, should be considered a variant of GNU, and promotes the term GNU/Linux for such systems (leading to the GNU/Linux naming controversy).

GNU variants (also called GNU distributions or distros for short) are operating systems based upon the GNU operating system (the Hurd kernel, the GNU C library, system libraries and application software like GNU coreutils, bash, GNOME, the Guix package manager etc.).

GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!", chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code.

In 1983, Richard Stallman announced the GNU (short for "GNU's Not Unix") project, an ambitious effort to create a free software Unix-like system; "free" in the sense that everyone who received a copy would be free to use, study, modify, and redistribute it.

Stallman wrote this license after his experience with James Gosling and a program called UniPress, over a controversy around software code use in the GNU Emacs program.

Throughout its history, GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU project, and a flagship of the free software movement.

GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!", chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code.

Richard Stallman's experience with the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS), an early operating system written in assembly language that became obsolete due to discontinuation of PDP-10, the computer architecture for which ITS was written, led to a decision that a portable system was necessary.

GNU‘s info help system was originally an EMACS subsystem, and then was later written as a complete standalone system for Unix-like machines.

The system's basic components include the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), the GNU C library (glibc), and GNU Core Utilities (coreutils), but also the GNU Debugger (GDB), GNU Binary Utilities (binutils), the GNU Bash shell.

It was started in the early 1990s by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for their GNU operating system.

Due to Hurd not being ready for production use, in practice these operating systems are Linux distributions.

A typical Linux distribution comprises a Linux kernel, GNU tools and libraries, additional software, documentation, a window system (the most common being the X Window System), a window manager, and a desktop environment.

Much of the needed software had to be written from scratch, but existing compatible third-party free software components were also used such as the TeX typesetting system, the X Window System, and the Mach microkernel that forms the basis of the GNU Mach core of GNU Hurd (the official kernel of GNU).

TeX's line breaking algorithm has been adopted by several other programs, such as Adobe InDesign (a desktop publishing application) and the GNU fmt Unix command line utility.

The GNU Project has endorsed Linux distributions, such as gNewSense, Trisquel and Parabola GNU/Linux-libre.

It includes the GNU operating system components common to many Linux distributions and the Linux-libre kernel instead of the generic Linux kernel.

Richard Stallman chose the name by using various plays on words, including the song The Gnu.

The GNU project includes an operating system kernel, GNU Hurd, which was the original focus of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Much of the needed software had to be written from scratch, but existing compatible third-party free software components were also used such as the TeX typesetting system, the X Window System, and the Mach microkernel that forms the basis of the GNU Mach core of GNU Hurd (the official kernel of GNU).

GNU Hurd is the multiserver microkernel written as part of GNU.