Talk:Linux

Wasn't Linux the #1 kernel much earlier?

I'm pretty sure Linux became the #1 kernel years earlier. The first article section says 2022, but I think it happened earlier (2010s) as used to be written elsewhere on Wikipedia such as maybe a computer (science) history timeline. Android became popular in the '0s to 2010s, and the only major competitor was Apple/iOS which its kernel never was as widespread. Can anyone dig up records when Linux actually became the #1 kernel?--dchmelik☀️🦉🐝🐍(talk|contrib) 07:55, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

"Components and freedom of choice of a Linux system" diagram

The diagram, added in this edit, has a number of issues, including:

• it's sufficiently complicated that it's unreadable, except by those with extraordinary vision, without being significantly enlarged;
• it's divided into "layers", the relationship between which is not obvious;
• the "Essential Layer" appears to be divided into sublayers by color, and some of those sublayers have sub-sub-layers, but they aren't "layers" in the sense of API layers or dependency layers (the "Various layers within Linux" has this issue to a lesser degree) - the underlying issue is that dependencies between OS components form a graph more complicated than a path graph, so any layering is inaccurate if it's meant to indicate dependency;
• it's not clear what the distinction is between stuff in the uppermost yellow sublayer of the "Essential Layer" and stuff in the green layer two layers above that ("tail -f"? Yes, that can be a useful tool when watching logs, but you're usually running it from a shell, so "tail -f" depends on a command-line shell, which is two layers up);
• the "tty" layer might be "essential" for command-line users, but not all Linux users are command-line users, especially if they're using an embedded Linux system;
• the layer containing GUI login managers is below the display server layer, but most if not all GUI managers depend on the display server layer;
• the display server layer says "X-server", but it sits above two items, one of which (if the "W" stands for "Wayland") is not an X server;
• window managers don't necessarily fit into the system the way the "Window-Manager" layer indicates - a window manager might be a component of a desktop environment, and a compositing window manager performs some if not all of the functions of a display server.

I think the problems with it are that:

• it tries to do too much, making it complicated enough that it's hard to understand, and much of what it does is probably not necessary;
• much of it is based on original research, and some of that research is incorrect;
• as a result of trying to do too much, it's too big that it's not very readable unless it's significantly enlarged.

I think the "Various layers within Linux" suffices, so I'm going to revert the addition of that diagram, and suggest that it be discussed here before being re-added. Guy Harris (talk) 06:19, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Hello Guy Harris,

thanks for your opinion and information.

I´m the creator of this linux graphic. Let me explain why it looks like like it did.

- The goal of this graphic is to make a visual understanding what a linux distribution is.

Which components working with each other to make this great stuff happen.

For this i made the decision to use the common community logos of this components which also used in software magazines, Linux books for beginners and advanced, Wikipedia itself and of course the community repositories. The graphic match knowledge of linux distributions in a very compressed form.

As a example the normal linux books explain this layers on 2000 pages.

- The graphic is usable in the Linux wikipedia page for the chapters History, Design (It matched great with the table in this chapter), User Interface and Development chapter at once.

So by a bunch of text what the wikipedia page is you can use the graphic at any point there is something unclear in understanding or which component has which task to do for and where it his place in the linux distribution.

if you want to know about linux or more people which search for linux meaning to want to know more about linux distributions. It is what they search for.

The bunch of text make it not clear by the hole number of special words how they matched together eg. bootloader. The graphic did that.

We should more focused of what the graphic did for readers than what it did maybe wrong.

If you have a look on the linux kernel page and the graphic there.

It also have too mutch information and is not good readable without max out in a separate browser window.

- It is separated in layers because you also explain the linux distribution in sub-parts of there components as you can read in the Design section of this page. The colors only said that these are separate layers. More similar colors mean they can work together eg kernel and init with the c-Libraries).

A linux kernel can not use software user-friendly without a TTY and the bash as common shell.

Deamons cannot work without a common init system.

A minimal desktop environments need a display-Server and a window Manager as Client ( Wayland is possible to do both as server and window-manager client), but if you read on Wayland wiki page they said that Gnome and KDE do it by itself with a specialized version of Mutter and Kwin.

So my graphic is not wrong at all. I think in the future it is more common that wayland use the upgraded window managers also as client that other.

- The layers are separated in Essential Layer and Optional Layer because this is exactly what a linux distribution is.

A modular stack of software components match together to do great stuff.

It present the common linux distribution but said also that a desktop environment isn´t necessary to use.

- The linux kernel layer has gnu commands in it to make it clear what a kernel did, what the user did with the kernel.

And that gnu utilities necessary to work with the kernel. ( I know it change a little bit with systemd tools).

If you like do things like a normal user which want to know more about linux distributions. They start with the hardware components and the BIOS because they know or heard about that.

They know the common components you use to control your PC are CPU, GPU and the Sound.

Because that is what you first let configure on a system. And by the way this the common logos you know directly.

So the kernel made process scheduling in fact it use EEVDF to control the CPU for the deamons and so for the running programs.

And the init system is the translater layer between the Kernel and the deamons. The first deamon process.

The kernel also has the modules for sound and graphic that your monitor can present anything to control the system ( DRM / KMS ) and Sound ( ALSA ) etc.

- At least as i mentioned above. If you do things like a normal reader your understanding is that linux is also kind of IOS, Android. Maybe you heard also about OpenBSD.

The graphic make it clear that it is not possible wrong at all. But this are two other shoes.

IOS, MACos is a unixe like system distribution created from BSD and from the first software of apples researchers and later a bunch of parts of NetBSD.

Android is a mobile distribution with a lot of other created programing layers.

What it´s similarity with linux is the linux kernel. This is the reason it is presented on the graphic on top right of the linux distributions but separated from the rest.

The graphic said nothing other in visual form than the complete linux page said by it self in chapters in text form.

I would be very happy if this graphic get a chance to help people to understand the linux distributions in a visual view, because that is exactly what i searched for as i have began with linux.

And why i made the decision to create this graphic by myself.

Best Regards

Larry Larrys-World-is-42 (talk) 14:34, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

The goal of this graphic is to make a visual understanding what a linux distribution is. To know what a Linux distribution is, see Linux distribution. The graphic just shows a bunch of words and phrases, a few pictures, and some arrows that don't clearly indicate anything.

The bunch of text make it not clear by the hole number of special words how they matched together eg. bootloader. The graphic did that. What it does is show a grey box with a bunch of names in it and with "Bootloaders (Bootstrap Loaders)" does; I see nothing that indicates what a "Bootloader" does. If you want to know what a bootloader does, see bootloader, although perhaps it should briefly mention the two stages of boot loading in the lead. Or, if you're wondering about how Linux boots, see booting process of Linux.

We should more focused of what the graphic did for readers than what it did maybe wrong. First demonstrate, based on what readers say they learned from it, what it did for them. (And if they learned something that's not valid, that doesn't count as doing something good for them.)}}

So by a bunch of text what the wikipedia page is you can use the graphic at any point there is something unclear in understanding or which component has which task to do for The diagram is words and pictures; to what extent, if any, does that graphic make anything clearer?

It is separated in layers because you also explain the linux distribution in sub-parts of there components as you can read in the Design section of this page. In what sense are they "layers"? It's not as if the kernel is at one layer and the daemons are at another layer, as there are places (e.g., FUSE-based file systems) where the kernel sends messages to a user-mode daemon to perform actions, rather than user-mode code making system calls to the kernel. (And, yes, those daemons do make system calls; they must avoid making system calls that would cause, for example, a call back to them that the daemon could service only by making another system call that makes a callback, but, other than that....) The C library also may send messages to a daemon, e.g. sending a message to a DNS resolver running on the same machine.

Perhaps just listing components, without implying any "this component is at a layer below this" relationship, is the better way to do that.

A linux kernel can not use software user-friendly without a TTY and the bash as common shell. Many appliances that use Linux as platform on which their embedded software runs provide a user interface without a TTY. A TiVo box, for example, uses a Linux kernel, but you don't log into it and type at a shell (which, BTW, need not be bash) to set it up to record TV shows. Furthermore, shells are not only run interactively in a terminal session; they might also be run as a result of executing a shell script.

A minimal desktop environments need a display-Server and a window Manager as Client ( Wayland is possible to do both as server and window-manager client), but if you read on Wayland wiki page they said that Gnome and KDE do it by itself with a specialized version of Mutter and Kwin. Wayland is, as the page's name indicates, a protocol. The server that responds to requests from clients, using that protocol, is, as the page says, a display server that performs the functions of a compositing window manager, i.e., the same program acts as a display server and a window manager. That's the case with the Weston reference compositor, as well as with Mutter (which, BTW, appears, at least on Ubuntu 22.04, to be a shared library, not a program) and KWin.

I think in the future it is more common that wayland use the upgraded window managers also as client that other. In the present, and probably in the future, it's commonly (and the article seems to indicate that it's always) the case that the Wayland display server is the window manager.

The linux kernel layer has gnu commands in it to make it clear what a kernel did, what the user did with the kernel. In what way does it do that? If the "Linux-Kernel" yellow box is the "linux kernel layer", and the "GNU-Core Utilities" is the GNU coreutils, then the GNU coreutils, from the list of "The programs that can be built with this package" on that page, appear to be a collection of various commands, most if not all of which have no special relationship with the kernel - they just run atop the C library API. Other items listed in that yellow box are a mixture of kernel subsystems that may include their own tools to manage them (such as SELinux), a tool to show a tree view of processes (pstree), etc., with no obvious indication of what those items all have in common.

So the kernel made process scheduling Yes, that's one thing that OS kernels do. in fact it use EEVDF to control the CPU for the deamons and so for the running programs The daemons are running programs, so that's redundant. The Linux kernel has had a number of different scheduling algorithms over time; EEVDF is the current one.

If you do things like a normal reader your understanding is that linux is also kind of IOS, Android. Maybe you heard also about OpenBSD. There are many operating systems out there - more than just iOS, Android, and OpenBSD. (My collection of virtual machines, used as development tools to allow me to test libpcap, tcpdump, and Wireshark/TShark on more than just macOS when necessary, include various versions of {Windows, various Linux distributions such as Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/SuSE, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD, Solaris, and Haiku}.)

So what are people trying to find out here?

If they want to know what a "Linux distribution" is, the page Linux distribution is a good place to look; it sums it up. It might be useful for it to discuss why Linux distributions exist, i.e. that, unlike most UN\*Xes, there's no single project that maintains the "core operating system". Instead, a "core operating system", i.e. a distribution, is assembled from pieces of various other (mostly) free-software projects. (Other OSes also do have some components that come from those free-software projects, but not all the components come from those projects.)

If they want to know what the architecture of a complete Linux system is, Linux § Design is a good start, although it still needs some work. Much of what it describes really may belong in other pages; for example, projects under freedesktop.org are not necessarily used by all Linux distributions and may be used by non-Linux OSes. The GUI layer should probably be described in pages that discuss the free-software desktop in general, as, again, they're not used by all Linux distributions and may be used by non-Linux OSes, at least when configured as desktop OSes. The "Other libraries" are mostly GUI toolkits, and belong with the GUI stuff; again, they are not used by all Linux distributions and are used by non-Linux OSes. The "User applications" is mostly GUI stuff; it mentions bash, but not the commands that are run from bash. (And the shell isn't only a user interface program; the "System V" init system, whether it's the original one in UNIX System V or the Linux clone thereof, is based on a lot of shell scripts, as is the BSD init system, for example.) Guy Harris (talk) 06:10, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

"To know what a Linux distribution is, see Linux distribution. The graphic just shows a bunch of words and phrases, a few pictures, and some arrows that don't clearly indicate anything."

The page Linux distribution missed the table and the counting list from the chapter Linux § Design what the graphic better match with. It´s possible to move the graphic to that place if it is better there.

I think you have a too technical detailed view of this website, the topic and the graphic. This graphic is more than a bunch of words and phrases, a few pictures, and some arrows that don't clearly indicate anything. Your answer looks like you haven´t tried to understand this graphic or it possibility to use. Show at it like a normal user want to know about linux and linux distributions following this chapters for this website.

At the moment this chapter Linux § Design give us a detailed overview of linux distributions based on the kernel and user space table and a counting list of linux components (linux distribution components). If you don´t understand how this matched together you hover over the word links on this website and see the project logos. You could follow this links and read the other hundred linked websites in detail to understand the hole thing if interested in. Or and that´s the point you see the logo first , see the linux graphic and know OK this is on this level with this tasks of a linux system. Is this the right component you want to know more or do you search for another component deeper as this. Want quickly know how linux distributions are build.

Eg. Search for window-managers, heard from GNOME -> wiki landing page Linux -> search for GNOME on the page -> Is on Chapter user mode -> Linux § Design table -> looks like is on user mode Layer window-manager ? ->hover over the Gnome word -> Gnome Logo appears -> Looks at the graphic "Components and freedom of choice of a Linux system" -> Oh well this logo looks the same. Ah its the desktop environment not the window-manager well go on.

This is the goal this graphic will do for you as a linux newbie, linux interested person (teacher, pupil, student etc.). Fast and easy overview as a wiki should also do for you.

Your other comments are also too technical annotations to answer all of it again in my words. Yes Wayland is exactly speaken a protocol. But if you read this on the wiki page Linux § Design and the table and hover over the word wayland and see the logo it is this you visual link with it. Not that it is a protocol. With the table you see also it´s a window manager whats possible wrong because Wayland is a protocol , X-Window is a Server ( easy view) for display in- and output, using window manager (Client) eg. xwm etc. Most don´t care about at this point. They heard about wayland and x-server. It is necessary in the future for desktop environments to handle as window-server and window manager. If the users are interested to know more about they went to the wayland wiki page.

The graphic shows the most common components of linux distributions based on a low (technical) level, readable and to see on computer-magazines, computer-books, youtube videos etc.

It would be great if you or all the other users at wikipedia could tell what in the graphic had to change to be valid for you. At the moment i heard only it is not ok for a technical person and the graphic is nothing at all based on logos and bunch of words and phrases .

Or if this a special opinion of yourself and the other users are compliant with this graphic.

We should focuse of normal wiki reading users not scientists.

Have a nice day

Best Regards

Larry Larrys-World-is-42 (talk) 14:10, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Odd changes

@Dan100 Regrding this [[1]] edit, could you explain why you changed GUI to 'graphical some interface' which is a broken link, and changed the last sentence to 'More recently the Linux community has moved to using Wayland as the display server protocol, replacing X11.'; which isn't true, as many distributions still use X11. 𝙏𝙚𝙧𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙢𝙖𝙣地形人 (talk) 19:13, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

could you explain why you changed GUI to 'graphical some interface' which is a broken link I undid that change, as:

• a Google search for "graphical some interface", to quote Google, "did not match any documents";
• there's no Wikipedia page for "graphical some interfaces";
• it's not clear why this is an improvement, as graphical interfaces are generally for users, not for other machines.

So, yes, that change needs to be justified. We entered the "discuss" phase of "BOLD, revert, discuss" after your reversion of the change, before Dan100's reversion of your reversion. Guy Harris (talk) 20:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm sure it was good faith, however the User doesn't seem to respond to any talk page messages judging from the two years of un-replied messages on their talk page. I also altered the latter sentence I mentioned to not indicate Wayland is universally used, and added sources. 𝙏𝙚𝙧𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙢𝙖𝙣地形人 (talk) 20:51, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

"Wii Nunchak" in diagram under Hardware Support

Hello.

In the diagram under Hardware Support, on the first green oval on the left titled Keyboard & Mouse, there is a list of input devices. Under the input devices, there are 3D Mouse and the Wii Nunchuk. Both should be removed and/or replaced with other more common input devices. If a 3D mouse is common and I am mistaken about its rarity, then at least Wii Nunchak should be changed by either

• Removing it,
• Spelling it "Nunchuk" instead of "Nunchak", or
• Replacing it with Wiimote

While I would do it myself, and I have an edited version of the SVG ready to use, I am unsure about uploading it. I do not edit wikipedia articles very often, and I do not own the diagram. Eggbladder (talk) 18:23, 28 December 2024 (UTC)