On 05/04/12 21:33, Greg KH wrote:
> On Fri, May 04, 2012 at 09:27:05PM -0400, Richard Yao wrote:
>> On 05/04/12 20:58, Greg KH wrote:
>>> Why do we really care about non-udev and non-dbus users?  It's only
>>> going to get worse and worse if people don't want to use these core,
>>> base libaries of the Linux "stack".
>>
>> I was under the impression that in order for there to be a Linux stack,
>> the Linux tree would need to include a userland in addition to a kernel.
> 
> Huh?  Don't you consider the kernel + glibc + xorg today a good "Linux
> stack"?  Isn't the "Android stack" another example of a good "Linux
> stack"?

glibc and xorg can run on top of Linux, but I would not call them a
Linux stack. glibc is the C standard library for the GNU operating
system while xorg is a windowing system intended for UNIX operating
systems. People have them working on top of Linux, but people have them
working on top of other kernels too. The Debian developers have both
components working on top of FreeBSD's kernel as well as HURD, which is
glibc's native kernel.

As for the Android stack, it is currently used on Linux, but nothing
prevents it from being used on other kernels. In specific, both Solaris
and FreeBSD the ability to run software built against the Linux kernel
ABI. If one were sufficiently motivated, it should be possible to run
the Android stack on either of them.

My understanding of a stack is that it generally includes a kernel, a
libc, a C compiler, an assembler, a linker, a bootloader, an init
system, a getty implementation, a command shell, a text editor and some
basic UNIX commands (e.g. cp, mv, rm). There is some userland software
in the Linux tree in ./usr and ./tools, but aside from the kernel, I
cannot find anything that constitutes a stack, or even a stack minus a
few components.

Plenty of regressions stem from using other projects' stacks on Linux.
The following regression was particularly painful:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638477

I would love to use the Linux stack on my Linux systems to avoid such
regressions, but I cannot find one. If one exists, please let me know.