this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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That is not entirely correct, the definition of hacking you are using is much newer. In the past, hacking was a much more broad term, like those above you were stating.
It is still common in the open source community for people to use the original meaning of hacker. The hackers you are referring to are security hackers or crackers.
Actually the Open Source use of the term is already incapsulated in the
extendingportion of the definition I provided. Along with themodifying source codeexample.Additional example : Kernel Hacking; Linux.
You're a 3rd party extending it beyond it's original design by modifying the source code to add additional or new functionality under the legal protection of the GPL, regardless if you do or don't make a PR that gets accepted.
Actually no. The definition provided is far broader as already shown.
The key in the definition is
beyond it's original design, say for example I take source code from Grub and I extend it by adding additional functionality that allows me to play pacman directly inside it. This modification goes beyond the authors original design and doesn't just change a pre-existing feature from it's default setting like running a terminal command does.Anyway, none of this is the point.
The point is that there's a hard distinction between a Hacker and your Average Terminal User running a command in a shell interface. Shell interfaces like that of ZSH, BASH, etc. only serves as a way for the user to interact with the pre-existing features of the system.