Yeah, whenever people use a term with a very slightly different take on the subtleties of its technical meaning from me, I dismiss whatever else they have to say.
I do too! It makes me feel better than other people when I latch on to meaningless (in context) technical details and then publicly pretend that that invalidates not just some of the other content, but ALL of it! That way I don't actually have to read or think anything, and as a bonus I can humblebrag about knowing the "true" definition of an engineering term that I just learned myself in my undergrad OS class last year, and I can go show off my awesomeness by posting about it on HN! This a really good approach to life in general, it scales to all sorts of interpersonal and professional situations. :)
It's more than a subtlety, imo. A distro is an OS, and linux is the kernel. An OS implies direct user interaction; the kernel runs the hardware in the background. Seriously, take a moment to explain the technical shit in a way that someone unfamiliar with it will understand - 'linux is like an engine, and distros are like the different vehicles that use it under the hood. Anyone can use it, and even change it, but Linus has final say on the design of the official engine.' Was that so hard? Even grandma can wrap her head around that.
Once upon a time, before RMS re-defined the term for his benefit, the phrase "Operating System" meant what we now call the kernel. You can see the legacy of this in Computer Science departments around the country where they teach an "Operating Systems" course which covers implementing schedulers, file systems, device drivers, etc... Maybe if the GNU folks could have made a usable kernel, they wouldn't have had to stoop to the petty tactic of trying to take credit for the Linux "Operating System" with all that GNU/Linux nonsense.
However, clearly the RMS propaganda machine has worked, and now the phrase has a new meaning to the new generation... So feel free to not read anything that might contradict with your point of view.
To be fair to RMS, commercial entities selling "Operating Systems" have usually used the label, even before RMS and the Free Software movement were widely noticed by outsiders, to refer to not only the kernel, but the whole package of software and tools sold as a package with it.
Actually, all of those have something strongly resembling a kernel, and DOS in particular makes a nice distinction between the basic services (BIOS) and whatever userland you choose to install on top of it. I think you're making my point - "Operating System" used to mean the "kernel" before RMS wanted to ride on Linux's coat tails and Microsoft wanted to bundle their browser anti-competitively - both of which are distasteful.
Depends... if the conversation is a short coming in any part of Linux that isn't the kernel, then Linux means the kernel. If it's something positive, then Linux is the kernel, boot code, userland, and anything else that can be fit under the umbrella.
As evidence, take the POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface) standard, which included portions of the user-space C library in the POSIX.1 (Core Services) published in 1988. While the name "POSIX" was suggested by RMS, the notion that it might have been part of an agenda to claim credit for Linux violates causality (the very first version of Linux was released in 1991).
POSIX.2 is "Shell And Utilities", and was published in 1992.
Clearly, the notion that the operating system extended beyond the kernel was not a fringe one.
The joke is that rms is really upset about people calling Linux an operating system and thinks Linux distros should be called GNU/Linux, a position he hasn't gotten a lot of people to support him on.
"I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser..."
