GNU variants
Encyclopedia
GNU variants is a term used by the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...

 and others to refer to operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s which use application software
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

 and system libraries (in other words, the core userland) from GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...

.

Hurd variants

Arch Hurd
Arch Hurd
Arch Hurd is an operating system based on Arch Linux, but uses GNU Hurd kernel instead of Linux.The Arch Hurd project was founded on an Arch Linux forum thread and, after a few weeks with many contributions, progressed to the point where it could boot in a virtual machine...

is a derivative work of Arch Linux
Arch Linux
Arch Linux is an independently developed, Linux-based operating system for i686 and x86-64 computers. It is composed predominantly of free and open source software, and supports community involvement....

, porting it to the GNU Hurd
GNU Hurd
GNU Hurd is a free software Unix-like replacement for the Unix kernel, released under the GNU General Public License. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation...

 system with packages optimised for the Intel P6
Intel P6
The P6 microarchitecture is the sixth generation Intel x86 microarchitecture, implemented by the Pentium Pro microprocessor that was introduced in November 1995. It is sometimes referred to as i686. It was succeeded by the NetBurst microarchitecture in 2000, but eventually revived in the Pentium M...

 architecture. Their goal is to provide an Arch-like user environment (BSD-style init
Init
init is a program for Unix-based computer operating systems that spawns all other processes. It runs as a daemon and typically has PID 1. The boot loader starts the kernel and the kernel starts init...

 scripts, Pacman package manager, rolling releases, and a simple set up) on the Hurd which is stable enough for at least occasional use. Currently it provides a LiveCD for evaluation purposes and installations guides for LiveCD and conventional installation.

Debian GNU/Hurd
Debian GNU/Hurd
Debian GNU/Hurd is the Debian project's distribution of the GNU operating system, using the GNU Hurd microkernel. Its developers are hoping to be able to release Debian GNU/Hurd for the next major release of Debian, "wheezy"....

is under development but not ready for official release in the near future. It is not considered yet to provide the performance and stability expected from a production system. About half of the Debian packages have been ported to Hurd.

Linux variants

The term GNU/Linux is used by some to refer to an operating system where the Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....

 is distributed with a GNU userland and GNU system software
System software
System software is computer software designed to operate the computer hardware and to provide a platform for running application software.The most basic types of system software are:...

. Such distributions
Linux distribution
A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like operating systems built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions are operating systems including a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players, and database applications...

 are the primary installed base of GNU packages and programs and also of Linux. The most notable official use of this term for a distribution is Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...

 GNU/Linux.

BSD variants

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is an operating system for IA-32
IA-32
IA-32 , also known as x86-32, i386 or x86, is the CISC instruction-set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors, and was first implemented in the Intel 80386 as a 32-bit extension of x86 architecture...

 and x86-64
X86-64
x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. It supports vastly larger virtual and physical address spaces than are possible on x86, thereby allowing programmers to conveniently work with much larger data sets. x86-64 also provides 64-bit general purpose registers and numerous other...

 computer architectures. It is a distribution of GNU with Debian package management and the kernel of FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

. The k in kFreeBSD is an abbreviation for kernel of , and reflects the fact that only the kernel of the complete FreeBSD operating system is used. The operating system was officially released with Debian Squeeze (6.0) on February 6, 2011. One Debian GNU/kFreeBSD live CD
Live CD
A live CD, live DVD, or live disc is a CD or DVD containing a bootable computer operating system. Live CDs are unique in that they have the ability to run a complete, modern operating system on a computer lacking mutable secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive...

 is Ging, which is no longer maintained.

Debian GNU/NetBSD was an experimental port of Debian GNU/Linux user-land applications to NetBSD
NetBSD
NetBSD is a freely available open source version of the Berkeley Software Distribution Unix operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. The NetBSD project is primarily focused on high quality design,...

 kernel. No official release of this operating system was made; although work was conducted on ports for the IA-32
IA-32
IA-32 , also known as x86-32, i386 or x86, is the CISC instruction-set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors, and was first implemented in the Intel 80386 as a 32-bit extension of x86 architecture...

 and DEC Alpha
DEC Alpha
Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations. Alpha was implemented in microprocessors...

 architectures, it has not seen active maintenance since 2002 and is no longer available for download.

OpenSolaris variants

Nexenta OS is the first distribution that combines the GNU userland (with the exception of libc; OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris was an open source computer operating system based on Solaris created by Sun Microsystems. It was also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around the software...

' libc is used) and Debian's packaging and organisation with the OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris was an open source computer operating system based on Solaris created by Sun Microsystems. It was also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around the software...

 kernel. Nexenta OS is available for IA-32
IA-32
IA-32 , also known as x86-32, i386 or x86, is the CISC instruction-set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors, and was first implemented in the Intel 80386 as a 32-bit extension of x86 architecture...

 and x86-64
X86-64
x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. It supports vastly larger virtual and physical address spaces than are possible on x86, thereby allowing programmers to conveniently work with much larger data sets. x86-64 also provides 64-bit general purpose registers and numerous other...

 based systems. Nexenta Systems, Inc initiated the project and sponsors its continued development.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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