Init systems - A perspective

eh I pick the second one.

get out

Now you're just trolling. GNU has been an operating system since 1983 because it was always one.

The standards emerged from a project that began circa 1985. Richard Stallman suggested the name POSIX to the IEEE instead of former IEEE-IX. The committee found it more easily pronounceable and memorable, and thus adopted it.

oh lol I really hope you think POSIX is an OS.

Part of this confusion has resulted from loose interpretations of what the term 'operating system' really means. For most people the term refers to the kernel, a user interface like a shell and a file manager, some basic utilities like a notepad and a calculator, and some libraries provided for application develoeprs.

To other people (including Brooks, the OG Unix crew, etc.) an operating system is all that plus the applications you need to support your daily work and other computing activities. In this sense your browser, image editor, email client, chat program, office software, GIS software, whatever you need in order to make your computer useful. A whole, operating, system. To this sort of person, the OS described in the first paragraph might qualify as a 'base' or 'bare' or 'minified' OS but as it can't really support your daily work it's not a full OS.

In this sense, Mac OS X is much more of an operating system than Windows, as it includes the office software, basic image and video editing utilities, and so on for free. Unix was designed as a "full" operating system because it includes utilities such as compilers, interpreters, typesetting, and in fact one of the first major users of it was inside the phone company, supporting secretaries, OS researchers, engineers, and even infrastructure like electronic switching systems.

POSIX defines not only system calls and other OS plumbing, but also the shell and utilities. It's an operating system according to my first paragraph and common usage, or rather the specification for one. There is no official single standard POSIX OS though many operating systems conform (mostly) to the standard.

I distinguish between the operating system and application software. The operating system is the ancillary software designed to support the application software. Under my definition, it's possible to have application software that is also part of the operating system. GNU is an operating system which includes application software that doesn't support other application software, they are additions to the GNU OS.

Let's not forget the systemD OS.

When will systemd implement a shell so you can get shell access while you're restarting your computer and waiting for it to time out on some thing or another or ping google? I'd like to be able to run Nethack to kill some time.

The point of distributions (especially Debian based) is to not touch (or the less possible) the per default settings and only configure the software that YOU install.

French you uncultured swine.