GNU is the only operating system developed specifically to give its users freedom. What is GNU, and what freedom is at stake?
Escape to Freedom: A video from the FSF
What is GNU?GNU is an operating system that is free software—that is, it respects users' freedom. The GNU operating system consists of GNU packages (programs specifically released by the GNU Project) as well as free software released by third parties. The development of GNU made it possible to use a computer without software that would trample your freedom.
We recommend installable versions of GNU (more precisely, GNU/Linux distributions) which are entirely free software. More about GNU below.
Dragora / TDE
Guix / GNOME3
Hyperbola / i3
Parabola / LXDE
PureOS / GNOME3
Trisquel / MATE
What is the Free Software Movement?The free software movement campaigns to win for the users of computing the freedom that comes from free software. Free software puts its users in control of their own computing. Nonfree software puts its users under the power of the software's developer. See the video explanation.
What is Free Software?Free software means the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”
More precisely, free software means users of a program have the four essential freedoms:
Developments in technology and network use have made these freedoms even more important now than they were in 1983.
Nowadays the free software movement goes far beyond developing the GNU system. See the Free Software Foundation's web site for more about what we do, and a list of ways you can help.
More about GNUGNU is a Unix-like operating system. That means it is a collection of many programs: applications, libraries, developer tools, even games. The development of GNU, started in January 1984, is known as the GNU Project. Many of the programs in GNU are released under the auspices of the GNU Project; those we call GNU packages.
The name “GNU” is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not Unix.” “GNU” is pronounced g'noo, as one syllable, like saying “grew” but replacing the r with n.
The program in a Unix-like system that allocates machine resources and talks to the hardware is called the “kernel.” GNU is typically used with a kernel called Linux. This combination is the GNU/Linux operating system. GNU/Linux is used by millions, though many call it “Linux” by mistake.
GNU's own kernel, the GNU Hurd, was started in 1990 (before Linux was started). Volunteers continue developing the Hurd because it is an interesting technical project.
The GNU Project strongly urges the community to communicate in ways that are friendly, welcoming and kind. See the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines.
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.
—Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
Can you contribute to any of the long-term high priority projects?
Can you help maintain a GNU package? These packages are looking for maintainers:
Also, these packages are looking for co-maintainers:
See the package web pages for more information.
Short descriptions for all GNU packages
Today's random package…
Midnight CommanderGNU Midnight Commander is a command-line file manager laid out in a common two-pane format. In addition to standard file management tasks such as copying and moving, Midnight Commander also supports viewing the contents of RPM package files and other archives and managing files on other computers via FTP or FISH. It also includes a powerful text editor for opening text files. (doc)
RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo
HTML:
3.2
| Encoding:
UTF-8
| Version:
0.7.3