whatis gnu
GNU
Also known as: GNU's Not Unix, GNU/Linux
The free software project that produced most of the core userland on Linux systems, including bash, coreutils, glibc, and GCC.
What Is GNU in Linux?
GNU was started by Richard Stallman in 1983 to build a complete free Unix-like operating system. By the early 1990s it had a compiler, a C library, a shell, and the familiar command-line tools, but no finished kernel. The Linux kernel filled that gap.
That history is why some people say "GNU/Linux". Commands like ls, cp, and grep on most distributions are the GNU versions, which often add long options such as --human-readable that the stricter POSIX versions lack.
Example
ls --version | head -1
# ls (GNU coreutils) 9.5Learn more about GNU
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