Every now and again, I come back to looking at device drivers and driver-writing, and I wonder why there is not some common interface for device drivers. What would the world be like if we could write a device driver for Linux, and be able to use it on FreeBSD without modification? There was a [...]

Of the many controversies in free software, this is one that I have long found to be interesting.  People seem to define things in different ways, which leads to confusion (and arguing) when one person calls a system a "GNU/Linux" system and the next calls it just the "Linux" system.  Too often, I have found people saying "You [...]

Jon wrote “For Me, It’s Linux, Not GNU/Linux” today. I notice that every so often, this issue crops up again in some circles. Many people feel that saying “GNU/Linux” is confusing and shouldn’t be said at all… and, I would even agree with them—but not in the usual “let’s just call it Linux” way. See, [...]