Re: Guix != GNU GSD ==> True

[taylanbayirli@gmail.com (Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer)]

Bruno Félix Rezende Ribeiro <oitofelix@gnu.org> writes:

> I hope GNU GSD will have a logo of its own where your suggestion may
> be written.

I suspect that the more "branding" we give to GSD, the more it will
cause people to see it as "yet another Linux distro" and not understand
that it's a distribution of GNU.

This is why I like the name GSD (Guix System Distribution) which is
relatively dry and doesn't stand out as a fancy "distro name", why I
think it's important to only use the name in technical conversation
where it's necessary to distinguish GSD from other manifestations of GNU
(otherwise just say GNU when a lay person asks about your operating
system preference), and why I think we should intentionally not have a
logo.

I wish projects such as gNewSense and Parabola had done the same and
gotten direct links to their installation images on a page such as
<https://www.gnu.org/download/>, where they're simply listed as "models"
or "versions" of GNU, with names like "parabola" and "trisquel" only
serving as code-names or "model" names, perhaps analogous to Astra and
Vectra (from Opel) to make a good old car analogy.

We really need a break from, or almost a fight against, this whole
"distro" culture, which is tied to the "Linux" mindset, and perhaps even
"open source".  Everybody knows open source, "Linux", and what "distros"
are (flavors of Linux, duh!), nobody knows about free software and GNU.
This is my experience in Germany with lay people who happened to hear
about "Linux", people who are "Linux enthusiast" themselves, and even
some programmers and others in the tech industry.  I work at a software
company of around 20 people, and while about all 20 know what "Linux
distros" are, maybe one or two of them have a bit of a clue about GNU,
and another handful think it's a software license, or some obscure side
project alongside "Linux", or something like that.  (I actually
questioned many of them in small talk.)  It's an incredibly nasty
situation.

Taylan