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It's very popular to refer to the GNU operating system by the name of the kernel Linux, but to paraphrase Penn Jillette, popular doesn't mean right! Calling the GNU operating system "Linux" is wrong. Here's why.The project to create the GNU operating system began in 1984, and there's significance to the name GNU. There used to be a tradition of naming new programs after the programs that it was based on (if it was based on another existing program). For example, there was a text editor based on emacs that was called EINE, which stood for "EINE Is Not Emacs." Then someone made another version of emacs based on EINE, which that person called ZWEI. ZWEI stood for "ZWEI Was Eine Initially." Following this tradition, the operating system most people call "Linux" was dubbed GNU, which stood for "GNU is Not Unix."The clever programmers (a.k.a. hackers) who worked on GNU were bright students at the Artifical Intelligence Lab at MIT. After these hackers hacked on GNU for about 8 years, the operating system was nearly complete. The only missing piece was the kernel -- the part of the operating system that handles memory management, process management, and devices. They were working on a kernel they called Hurd, based on theoretical work from Carnegie Mellon, but progress was very slow. Then, in 1991, along came Linus Torvalds.Torvalds plugged in the kernel he was working on in college and made GNU into a fully functional operating system. When he shared this work over the Internet. This kernel was named "Linux" after Linus Torvalds. When Torvalds shared his GNU+Linux combo over the Internet, people got so excited, that they mistakenly began referring to the operating system by the name of the new kernel, Linux. And that's when all the confusion began.Now, when people say "Linux," you sometimes can't tell if they're talking about the kernel or the whole operating system. That's why a resonable compromise is to call the operating system GNU/Linux.Now that that's cleared up, we need to corect the misuse of the term "hacker." That will come in another post.