Taken from the CompTIA IT Fundamentals Exam Guide book (2nd edition, published 2021). I’m not sure if they fixed this in newer versions, if at all.
This is great.
Yeah, it’s misleading but technically still correct. GNU/Linux is a variant of an OS using the linux kernel.
Edit: nevermind they didn’t even mention GNU tar but instead calls it “Linux”
Nobody gives .arj any love anymore. It’s even current. 🤷
Arrrrrrrj matey
This is why I never bothered formally learning anything computer-related in school.
When I was a young 'un we learnt a lot of this basic stuff just by being interested in computers and using them. These formats are so ubiquitous that anyone who hasn’t come across them must have pretty limited experience using computers. So I guess this textbook is for people who want a job in IT but aren’t motivated enough to actually use computers? Seems like a bad formula for a career.
Man. I remember taking the CompTIA exams back in the day.
I mean, it’s technically correct? The G does stand for GNU, and GNU tools can be used to build Linux. It is indeed worded very badly.
No basically all Linux uses gnu Coreurils as a foundation and is therefore best called gnu+Linux. There’s a great RMS rant about this , it’s what the title is referring to.
Aren’t their embedded systems that run the Linux kernel without the core-utils (maybe with busybox instead) and would therefore be non-gnu linux variants?
Yep, Alpine Linux does this as well.
And the next time RMS invent Linux, he can call it whatever he wants.
Calling it now, 2024 will be the year of the Hurd desktop.
They should make a new version of Linux From Scratch where all you get is the Linux kernel source code and you write the compiler and core utils yourself. Now that would be Linux.
No, that’s a big confusion.
I hate the RMS rant about how you’re supposed to say “GNU/Linux”, but here we’re talking about a GNU package that can be used without Linux. It’s on FreeBSD and even macOS.
It just goes to show how important it is to come up with a good name. Recursive acronyms are clever and all, but if no one likes saying it they aren’t going to. T
GNU’s Not… Linux
Damn it, it’s now GNL and we have to rewrite all the textbooks!
Nice.
At this point RMS should seriously consider changing the name to GNL.
Might as well make it ANL since the first letter is arbitrary 😹
ANaL. ANaL Not a Linux.
Has anybody mentioned yet that tar isn’t even a “compression format”?
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It says archive not compression.
Isn’t that like common knowledge or something?
Well, neither is iso…
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@TheImpressiveX I’m still confused about GNU/ Linux thing.
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@Neil Thank you. I hope that I can remember this.
The whole concept of claiming that GNU is the actual OS never made much sense to me. Like yeah, glibc and coreutils are very major components, but so is the init system, and the package manager, and the WM, and the DE… I don’t really understand why RMS draws the line at GNU arbitrarily other than to stroke his own ego. Following his underlying logic, shouldn’t I call my system Plasma/KWin/pacman/systemd/GNU/Linux?
None of this is directed at you btw, it’s just something that always springs to mind for me whenever this topic comes up.
Because what you mentioned is ahistorical and based off reactionary history by bad actors.
Rms draws the line a GNU because GNU stands for a free operating system, which is what the GNU project is aiming towards. If this were purely a discussion about technicality, then we would be wise to let the matter drop, but that’s not whats at stake here.
shouldn’t I call my system Plasma/KWin/pacman/systemd/GNU/Linux?
You can, you literally can and it would be better that way to accurately describe what operating system you’re running. The shortest possible name is GNU, but that would be unfair to the contribution made by the linux foundation and the fact that multiple kernel projects do exist: so the name is GNU/Linux.
His essays on the topic which are publicaly accessible from the GNU website do discuss this.
other than to stroke his own ego
Rest assured that rms does not doing this out of ego tripping. Maybe you should tease Linus Torvalds for calling his kernel linux and the ENTIRE operating system linux. Torvalds is a multimillionaire who has used an apple M1 laptop. Stallman has never budged on libre software and directs his own life by his own stated principles. Call Rms stubborn, but never call him egotistical.
None of this is directed at you btw, it’s just something that always springs to mind for me whenever this topic comes up.
Please read Free Software, Free Society by Richard M Stallman so that this doesn’t have to keep springing up anymore. There are very few “linux” comm members who have read the foundational literature in full so I hope you do take my advice.
Here’s a link to the book:
Free Software, Free Society, Third Edition - Richard M. Stallman, 2015 (PDF)
I was preparing to search for it and your comment ! Thanks lol
GNU is a project whose goal is to create a free operating system.
Way back in the dark ages when commercial UNIX was relevant, it was common to install various GNU utilities to get a better user experience or get things like a C compiler without having to pay tons of money for it.
The kernel part of the project didn’t work out, so the de facto purpose of the GNU project morphed into creating better utilities and libraries for other operating systems.
When the Linux kernel came around, the GNU software was the base of system. That’s why RMS insists on the GNU/Linux thing.
Things like the window system and desktop environment aren’t really considered part of the OS by folks like RMS (and me, for that matter). It’s probably an age thing - used to be there was a “core” system and various add-ons. The core system is the OS in our world view.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!
Ehh… Not really incredibly outdated? I mean most Linux systems with a few exceptions (looking at you Alpine) use gnu software in them, and it is a somewhat fair argument to say that a kernel isn’t an entire operating system and other factors should be considered. Also why the quotation marks? It is a Linux joke, and if you don’t like our humor than you can just kinda… Ignore it? I mean it’s not like someone has you chained to a chair, forced to only look at linuxmemes.
First of all, this copypasta has never been said by anyone at the FSF or from the GNU project. People falsly attribute it to rms even though he has already made his thoughts clear on the matter. It’s just misinformation and a bastardized take on the naming discussion.
I mean most Linux systems with a few exceptions (looking at you Alpine) use gnu software in them
It’s not “GNU software in a linux system”, again, GNU is the name of the operating system. GNU packages were developed for that operating system. Alpine is not GNU, it is a NonGNU/Busybox + Linux operating system mainly targeted for embedded devices. Linux is not a GNU package, but was liberated by Torvalds to be included in the GNU operating system which we now refer to completely as GNU/Linux.
and it is a somewhat fair argument to say that a kernel isn’t an entire operating system and other factors should be considered
Such as the freedom of software writers and computer users. Calling the operating system “Linux” is taking away (even if not by intent) the very principle of freedom of the GNU operating system. It isn’t “somewhat fair”, far too many people who use Free software do not understand it entirely and thus are vulnerable to closing their hands from further liberation.
Also why the quotation marks? It is a Linux joke, and if you don’t like our humor than you can just kinda… Ignore it?
If “Linux humor” is repeating the same 5 or so jokes and endless banter about the same topics then it isn’t productive. Especially if that humor is just spreading misinformation in service of a cheap gag made by others. I’m just calling it out when I see it because I’m done giving a lot of yall the benefit of the doubt anymore.
So any time someone posts the “I’d just like to interject for a moment…” speech, we should now copy and paste the “First of all, this copypasta has never been said…” speech in response, thus making the meme a) longer, b) interactive, c) technically correct?
These textbooks are trash and written by morons. When I was in college one of the required books said very clearly that sleep and hibernate are exactly the same thing. It said that both suspended to RAM and hibernate was just some lower power version of sleep. It was even a question on an exam that I got wrong for some reason. I argued with the professor about it and proved to him thats not the case by taking one of the lab computers, hibernating it, physically taking the ram out and swapping it with another computer and resuming into the same state on power on. He said “Well thats what it says in the textbook so I have to mark it wrong”
It really highlights that there are probably a lot of other inaccuracies that I didn’t notice. This is the standard of education nowadays.
most CS “textbooks” are a scam these days I’m general. a huge red flag when I scan resumes now is actually if they have a textbook published without some sort of advanced degree or qualification to write a textbook. I get resumes of people a year out of college, work a junior position, and have a “Advanced JavaScript” or “JavaScript the not boring way” or “Complete guide to typescript” or some other quirky textbook name. if you actually click into any of these books, they’re complete nonsense written by somebody who just copied another textbook from another idiot who knew nothing. all these people are over confident resume padders. in practice they don’t know shit and didn’t legitimately write a lick of the book. I’ve had some of these applicants claim their books are used by professors too.
I went to college early 2000s. The textbook said something along the lines of “The fastest RAM is 100 MHz”.
DDR was still relatively new then. I took a clipping of an ad showing higher speeds, and he literally claimed I faked the printed ad …
Missed opportunity to amend and reprint the textbook every time a faster RAM was launched and force all the students to buy the new edition.
what kind of prof is that?
In my country, the vast majority.
Here professors are so underpaid, that anyone with an IQ above 75 is doing something else.
Where is that?
America or post-soviet
He said “Well thats what it says in the textbook so I have to mark it wrong”
The mark of a great teacher. It’s nice however that he had the patience to wait for your experiment (or maybe he was expecting it to fail miserably?): no prof of mine would have went along with something like that (not to mention, I’m pretty sure we couldn’t take apart the lab PCs at our leisure).
The mark of a great teacher.
Perhaps not great, but effective. This attitude is exactly how working in the corporate world works. Reality and being right are rarely, if ever, the important thing. Following the rules, doing what you’re told, and sitting the fuck down and shutting the fuck up? That’s what this teacher was teaching their students.
Following the rules, doing what you’re told, and sitting the fuck down and shutting the fuck up? That’s what this teacher was teaching their students.
Sadly, this is opposite of what teacher should teach.
They’re not testing you on what you know, they’re testing on did you study the course material. I had the same problem when trying to pass my written motorcycle test when I moved to California after riding in Canada for years.
To be fair, when you drive in California you really have to apply the Californian traffic laws and not the Canadians.
It wasn’t the rules/signs portion of the test. They litereally had questions like:
Which is more dangerous when riding beside a row of parked cars?
A) A car pulling out.
B) Someone opening a car door.
C) A child running into the street from between two parked cars.
It’s not an opinion question, personally I’d rather hit the car and the door over the child, but they want to know the answer that the study material gave.
Oh yes, I remember the paper test in California and it was really stupid. Things like “what should you do in foggy weather?” And the correct answer was “stay at home and don’t drive”.
Their whole booklet was a joke, instead of clear rules it was a mix up of actual rules, advice and trivia with no meaningful organization.
What a bullshit question. If they don’t want people to drive in fog they should make it illegal. Otherwise, they should just acknowledge that people are going to do it and not coerce them to lie on a test
In the UK all our questions were things like ‘You are about to drive into a wall, do you (a) honk your horn, (b) speed up, © stop’.
The rule was if there was a ‘stop’ answer, use that one, otherwise use the ‘slow down’ answer. You’d pass easily.
I always wondered if one day they’d throw in a curve ball… ‘you are being chased by a hoard of zombies…’
When I had to learn Novell NetWare the textbook we received was just as bad and the instructor didn’t have a clue either. Because internet wasn’t exactly widely available for information like this then, we wrote a DOS batch file that discarded our input and miniced the output of the client for the practical exam. We all passed.
So much to unpack here.
GNU is not a Linux variant. It is a set of programs and shared libraries.
ISO 9660 has nothing to do with compression. Just calling it ISO isn’t a good idea for an intro class like that because it is a set of MANY standards. They should have put a little side blurb and called it ISO 9660 in the table.
tar is an archive tool. It has no compression.
Why no mention of compression algorithms algorithms vs archive tools?
Why not have different compression algorithms and their tradeoffs?
ETA: jar files are just zip files for Java libs/programs. You can open them with zip file tools.
There actually is a compression format that used .jar as an extension, a would-be successor to .arj. It’s quite archaic though, and God help you if you find one in the wild at this point.
Just calling it ISO isn’t a good idea for an intro class like that because it is a set of MANY standards. They should have put a little side blurb and called it ISO 9660 in the table.
This is the only thing here I disagree with. The table is quite clearly putting extensions on the left and intro classes do not need to know about the International Organization for Standardization.
That line implying 7zip and 7z are different formats has just been pulled out of the air too
It was intended to be an OS and is if you use the Hurd kernel. In practice, Hurd isn’t really used, so it is just a bunch of programs and libraries. I guess it can go either way.
Agree. GNU Hurd is the OS. GNU Utils is a bunch of libre utilities that replicates the function of the UNIX utilities.
It is not “intended” to be an OS if you use GNU Hurd. That is literally the name of the operating system that launched the entire libre software movement. You don’t engage with it that way because linux comms don’t bother to educate their users at all.
Rms was right, “linux” users don’t care about history and “linux” communties stopped giving a shit.
Sorry CompTIa is fucking garbage. In all my years at faangs, startups, Silicon Valley ycombinators, mid west tech, have I ever hired or worked with someone who has comptia certs.
Is it a good start to level 1 help desk at a hospital? Maybe. But I feel like it’s a fucking scheme where the time to learn any language instead would make you leagues better. Or study and get Cisco certs instead for neteng.
I’ll add it’s not that I chose not to hire CompTIa cert people. But I think in my 15 years I have never seen one come across the desk. The only time I saw it on a resume was level 1 help desk at a shop that thought Windows ME was the best release at the time and should be used in all rural hospitals and it was 2006 and anything beyond it was full of bloatware.
His company went bankrupt. Fuck you Arco
