[ale] Absolutely deplorable Linux quiz

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Sat, 2011-02-26 at 14:44 -0500, Pat Regan wrote:
> You made it way farther than I did.  How many did they mark you wrong
> for that you actually got right?  I only went through the first
> section and I counted 3 that I was absolutely correct on that were
> marked wrong.  Those were only counting questions without strange
> ambiguous wording. 

I couldn't even get past the Q&A on the front page.  I never made it to
clicking on any of the links to take any of the actual stuff.  The
"information" on the front page was enough to make me close the browser
tab...

The thing that bugs me the most is how there is stuff there that is
presented like it's the only way to do it in Linux, or even the only
viable method to use.  The one thing about Linux systems in general is
that everything---literally everything---is open to being swapped out
and replaced with something different.  There are a good number of init
dæmons, syslog dæmons, suites of core utilities and so forth (GNU and
otherwise) that are out there that you can have Linux systems which are
completely different from the normally expected thing.

What people do not get---most likely because almost nobody who ought to
be in-the-know says anything about it---is that Linux is just the
kernel, which is only half of an operating system.  Really and truly,
different distributions can be (but do not have to be) distinct
operating systems.  Consider, for example, Android vs. Ubuntu; Android
really is built around the Linux kernel, just as Ubuntu is, and it is
thus every bit as much "Linux" as Ubuntu is.  But the entire
userland---right on down to the C library---is completely different.
They use one of a couple of different busybox like things (including
busybox itself) depending on the build.  I have even seen builds with
the GNU userland in the system, but I've never seen those in
actually-used configurations on the phone (except as an add-on).

Don't get me wrong.  The Linux kernel by itself is an amazing and
impressive thing.  It's what makes the systems that are built around it
as wonderful as they are.  And while everything in userland can still
talk to the kernel and you can have a fully functional integration
between Android and a typical distribution (for example, through the
creative use of chroots or containers), it's nonsensical to draw
relationships between the userland and kernelspace that do not exist;
Linux itself does not specify what is required in an init dæmon, it just
expects to be able to start up an executable and give it process ID 1
(and so help the whole system if that process somehow crashes and
burns).  As long as PID 1 is running, anything goes in userland.

	--- Mike