that old GNU/Linux argument

[Tim]

On Thu, 2008-07-24 at 16:42 -0700, Nifty Fedora Mitch wrote:
> Your simplification almost covers DOS or perhaps CP/M and misses the 
> fact that they are also program loaders.  That is a serious step
> back....
> 
> In addition to the hardware abstractions there is the issue of policy
> enforcement and file system data management...  Lets start with the
> ATT SUID single bit patent and two data input files /etc/passwd
> and /etc/group...
> the policy enforcement implied in this single bit and those two files
> has had legs.  Now we also have SELinux and also network policy NIS,
> LDAP, Kerberos...

And just about everything you mentioned is not the operating system.
Part of a computer system, sure, but outside of, or on top of, the OS.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.25.10-86.fc9.i686

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