abstract
| - Linux is technically an operating system kernel (like Darwin for OSX and NT for Windows) for the "GNU operating system". The entire operating system is called GNU/Linux. Many user space internal components were initially produced by the Free Software Foundation and historically, main developer of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, offered his kernel as a basis for this operating system. Thus Linus' kernel and GNU's user space tools were primarily geared to work together. However, for the reasons of simplicity; because Linux is usually (but not always) paired with the GNU toolchain anyway; and because some felt little sense in such a long name, some people started to refer to the whole operating system simply as "Linux". Thus "Linux" may refer to a class of operating systems, and also to the "Linux" kernel itself. Packaging, maintaining and distributing Linux operating system along with various different software is called a 'distribution', and distributions may pick their own name that sometimes omit 'Linux' or 'GNU/Linux' completely from the title. For example: OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Debian GNU/Linux, Calculate Linux.
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