GNU variants (also called GNU distributions or ) are

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s based upon the

GNU GNU ( ) is an extensive collection of free software (394 packages ), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popu ...

operating system (the

Hurd GNU Hurd is a collection of microkernel servers written as part of GNU, for the GNU Mach microkernel. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation, designed as a replacement for the Unix kernel, and ...

kernel, the

GNU C library The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the GNU Project implementation of the C standard library. It provides a wrapper around the system calls of the Linux kernel and other kernels for application use. Despite its name, it now also dir ...

system libraries In computing, a library is a collection of resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled functions and classes, or a library can ...

and application software like

GNU coreutils The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a collection of GNU software that implements many standard, Unix-based shell commands. The utilities generally provide POSIX compliant interface when the environment variable is set, but otherwise offers a ...

, bash, the Guix package manager, etc). According to the GNU project and others, these also include most operating systems using the

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

kernel and a few others using

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

-based kernels. GNU users usually obtain their operating system by downloading GNU distributions, which are available for a wide variety of systems ranging from embedded devices (for example, LibreCMC) and personal computers (for example,

Debian GNU/Hurd Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

) to powerful supercomputers (for example, Rocks Cluster Distribution).

Hurd kernel

is one of two official kernels developed for the GNU system, and was the exclusive official kernel before

Linux-libre According to the Free_Software_Foundation_Latin_America , Free Software Foundation Latin America, Linux-libre is a modified version of the Linux kernel that contains no binary blobs, Obfuscation (software), obfuscated code, or code released u ...

also became an official GNU package.

was discussed for a release as technology preview with Debian 7.0 Wheezy, however these plans were discarded due to the immature state of the system. However the maintainers of Debian GNU/Hurd decided to publish an unofficial release on the release date of Debian 7.0. Debian GNU/Hurd is not considered yet to provide the performance and stability expected from a production system. Among the open issues are incomplete implementation of Java and X.org graphical user interfaces and limited hardware driver support. About two thirds of the Debian packages have been ported to Hurd. Arch Hurd is a derivative work of

Arch Linux Arch Linux () is an Open-source software, open source, rolling release Linux distribution. Arch Linux is kept up-to-date by regularly updating the individual pieces of software that it comprises. Arch Linux is intentionally minimal, and is meant ...

, porting it to the

GNU Hurd GNU Hurd is a collection of microkernel servers written as part of GNU, for the GNU Mach microkernel. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation, designed as a replacement for the Unix kernel, an ...

system with packages optimised for the Intel P6 architecture. Their goal is to provide an Arch-like user environment (

-style

init In Unix-based computer operating systems, init (short for ''initialization'') is the first process started during booting of the operating system. Init is a daemon process that continues running until the system is shut down. It is the direc ...

scripts, pacman package manager, rolling releases, and a simple set up) on the GNU Hurd, which is stable enough for at least occasional use. Currently it provides a

LiveCD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete booting, bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than lo ...

for evaluation purposes and installation guides for LiveCD and conventional installation.

Linux kernel

The term GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux is used by the FSF and its supporters to refer to an operating system where the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

is distributed with a GNU

system software System software is software designed to provide a platform for other software. An example of system software is an operating system (OS) (like macOS, Linux, Android, and Microsoft Windows). Application software is software that allows users to d ...

. Such distributions are the primary installed base of GNU packages and programs and also of Linux. The most notable official use of this term for a distribution is

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

GNU/Linux. As of 2018, the only GNU variants recommended by the GNU Project for regular use are Linux distributions committed to the Free System Distribution Guidelines; most of which refer to themselves as "GNU/Linux" (like Debian), and actually use a deblobbed version of the Linux kernel (like the

kernel) and not the mainline

BSD kernels

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is an operating system for

IA-32 IA-32 (short for "Intel Architecture, 32-bit", commonly called ''i386'') is the 32-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture, designed by Intel and first implemented in the i386, 80386 microprocessor in 1985. IA-32 is the first incarn ...

and

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...

computer architectures. It is a distribution of GNU with Debian package management and the kernel of

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

. The ''k'' in ''kFreeBSD'' is an abbreviation for ''kernel of'', and reflects the fact that only the kernel of the complete FreeBSD operating system is used. The operating system was officially released with Debian Squeeze (6.0) on February 6, 2011. One Debian GNU/kFreeBSD

live CD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete booting, bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than lo ...

is Ging, which is no longer maintained. was an experimental port of GNU user-land applications to

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was fork (software development), forked. It continues to ...

kernel. No official release of this operating system was made; although work was conducted on ports for the

and

DEC Alpha Alpha (original name Alpha AXP) is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Alpha was designed to replace 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computers ( ...

architectures, it has not seen active maintenance since 2002 and is no longer available for download. As of September 2020, the GNU Project does not recommend or endorse any BSD operating systems.

OpenSolaris (Illumos) kernel

Nexenta OS is the first distribution that combines the GNU userland (with the exception of libc;

OpenSolaris OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system for SPARC and x86 based systems, created by Sun Microsystems and based on Solaris. Its development began in the mid 2000s and ended in 2010. OpenSolaris was developed as ...

' libc is used) and Debian's packaging and organisation with the

kernel. Nexenta OS is available for

and

based systems.

Nexenta Systems Nexenta by DDN, Inc., is a subsidiary of DataDirect Networks that sells computer data storage and backup software. It is headquartered in San Jose, California. Nexenta developed NexentaStor, NexentaCloud, NexentaFusion, and NexentaEdge. It was f ...

, Inc initiated the project and sponsors its continued development. Nexenta OS is not considered a GNU variant, due to the use of OpenSolaris libc. Multiple Illumos distributions use GNU userland by default.

XNU (Darwin) kernel

Windows NT kernel

The Cygwin project is an actively-developed compatibility layer in the form of a

C library The C standard library, sometimes referred to as libc, is the standard library for the C programming language, as specified in the ISO C standard.ISO/ IEC (2018). '' ISO/IEC 9899:2018(E): Programming Languages - C §7'' Starting from the origina ...

providing a substantial part of the

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX; ) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines application programming interfaces (APIs), along with comm ...

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

functionality for Windows, as well as a distribution of GNU and other Unix-like programs for such an ecosystem. It was first released in 1995 by

Cygnus Solutions Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore (activist), John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software. Its tagline was: ''Making free software affordabl ...

(now

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

). In 2016

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

and

Canonical The adjective canonical is applied in many contexts to mean 'according to the canon' the standard, rule or primary source that is accepted as authoritative for the body of knowledge or literature in that context. In mathematics, ''canonical exampl ...

added an official compatibility layer to Windows 10 that translates Linux kernel calls into

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

ones, the reverse of what

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

does. This allows

ELF An elf (: elves) is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic peoples, Germanic folklore. Elves appear especially in Norse mythology, North Germanic mythology, being mentioned in the Icelandic ''Poetic Edda'' and the ''Prose Edda'' ...

executables to run unmodified on Windows, and is intended to provide web developers with the more familiar GNU userland on top of the Windows kernel. The combination has been dubbed "Linux for Windows", even though Linux (i.e. the operating system family defined by its common use of the

) is absent.

References

External links

Arch Hurd

Superunprivileged.org GNU/Hurd-based Live CD

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD

Debian GNU/NetBSD
* rc://irc.oftc.org/debian-kbsd #debian-kbsdon

OFTC The Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC) is an IRC network that provides collaboration services to members of the free software community in any part of the world. OFTC is an associated project of Software in the Public Interest, a non-profi ...

Ging live CD
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gnu Variants Free software operating systems

variants Variant may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Variant'' (magazine), a former British cultural magazine * Variant cover, an issue of comic books with varying cover art * ''Variant'' (novel), a novel by Robison Wells * " The Variant", 2021 epis ...