What’s In a Name

GNU/Linux refers to the GNU environment and the GNU and other applications running in that environment on top of the Linux operating system kernel.

Ubuntu and its underlying base distribution Debian are complete repository based distributions which include many applications pre-built for the particular choice of operating system kernel. The repositories house pre-built packages ready to be installed.

X Window System is the common windowing system used in Ubuntu and is a separate complementary component to the operating system itself.

Microsoft Windows (or MS/Windows and less informatively just Windows) usually refers to the whole of the popular operating system, from kernel to applications, irrespective of which version of Microsoft Windows is being run, unless the version is important. Microsoft Windows is one of many windowing systems and came on to the screen rather later than the pioneering Apple Macintosh windowing system and the Unix windowing systems. We will refer to MS/Windows version 10 as the last release of this Microsoft operating system, which going forward has snaptshot releases rather than new versions.



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