The GNU Operating System

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If you're looking for a whole system to install, see our list of GNU/Linux distributions which are entirely free software.

• About the GNU Operating System
• A historical overview of GNU
• A more detailed history of GNU
• The initial announcement of the project
• The GNU Manifesto
• BYTE interview with Richard Stallman (1986)
• My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (by Richard Stallman)
• One Man's Fight for Free Software, an article about Richard Stallman and the early GNU development, published at The New York Times on January 11, 1989. One problem with the article is that it uses the propaganda term “intellectual property” as if that referred to something coherent. The term is such a confusion that talking about it makes no sense. The article is also somewhat confused in regard to Symbolics. What Stallman did, while still working at MIT, was to write, independently, replacement improvements comparable to the improvements that Symbolics made in its version of the MIT Lisp Machine System.
• 15 Years of Free Software (1999)

GNU and Linux

• The relationship between GNU and Linux
• Why the ‘Linux system’ should be called GNU/Linux
• GNU Users Who Have Never Heard of GNU
• A GNU/Linux FAQ

Other GNU-related resources

• GNU/Linux, GNU/Hurd, and free software user groups