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I just tried to retag a question as which was based on not finding a Ubuntu boot disk

However I see Linux is a synonym of Unix which surely is wrong for this group as the differences matter a lot here. Can we have this synonym broken?

, , , , , , and are currently 's synonyms.

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    We even have sed and awk mapped to unix, hmm.
    – nohillside Mod
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 12:17
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    and gnu :( Hmm tag highlighting does not work in comments
    – mmmmmm
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 12:28
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    I could argue that unix should be banned as it does not help in this site want command-line osx linux bsd gnu and we need to distinguish - but that should be a later discussion
    – mmmmmm
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 12:33
  • To break the synonym, I'd like to see some consensus on what would be tagged Unix and what would be tagged Linux - I'm of the view that for a site that's devoted to user level questions and not programming languages - larger tags are best. For example - why any of these would exist as anything but synonyms to open-source or command-line seems to dilute the power of having tags to follow a topic.
    – bmike Mod
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 14:28
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    There is a difference as in the question I tried to retag and this one in trying to boot linux or just running linux e.g. getting correct drivers - as per my earlier comment I think the unix tag helps nothing and user needs to choose command-line or linux or osx. unix cannot be used as a tag for open source as unix contains OSX and is non open source (and linux video drives could be there as well)
    – mmmmmm
    Commented Mar 25, 2016 at 0:44
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    I don't understand why the tags have been lumped together in the first place.
    – Dictionarics Anonymous
    Commented Mar 29, 2016 at 22:38
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    @user151019 That follows due to the acronym "Gnu's Nominally Understood-to-be-unix"
    – Conspicuous Compiler
    Commented Nov 13, 2019 at 21:45
  • @Dictionarics Anonymous, because having too many detailed tags is more harmful than useful.
    – Vladimir Botka
    Commented May 4, 2023 at 6:33
  • @VladimirBotka The issue here is that some of these tags do matter as the answers would differ depending on the tag - e.g. in my scenario linux should have different answers to bsd (but we can't split bsd freebsd and macos as they are the same in the mac context) - The other issue is unix is meaningless here - just as apple is - almost every question is unix (classic macos and winws are the exceptions). ALso each site sets its own ruiles there is not common definiotion of a tag across sites.
    – mmmmmm
    Commented May 4, 2023 at 10:35
  • You say: "We can't split bsd freebsd and macos as they are the same in the mac context". This is not true. bsd and freebsd are synonyms of unix, macos is not. bsd and freebsd are not among the synonyms of macos.
    – Vladimir Botka
    Commented May 4, 2023 at 12:42
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    @VladimirBotka I am not talking about current synonyms which I agree are wrong - but what should be there. As the macOS userspace system code is FreeBSD the you can't really split them
    – mmmmmm
    Commented May 4, 2023 at 13:40
  • Yes. It seems the other synonyms of unix is just a smoke-screen for freebsd. You can't use it as a tag. Then where else should you put it?
    – Vladimir Botka
    Commented May 4, 2023 at 14:58
  • For AskDifferent the freebsd tag makes no sense query apple.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4212/… gives 8 results of which only one really is FreeBSD so FreeBSD tag should simply be burniated
    – mmmmmm
    Commented May 4, 2023 at 15:04

1 Answer 1

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I would say, no we shouldn’t break the synonym until we have a clear picture of what to move towards.

  • What would Linux mean if it’s not Unix (and we should probably have a clear picture of what FreeBSD / BSD / Centos / Ubuntu / GNU vs Linux) look like if we don’t decide to continue to have one tag for all non-Apple Unix based OS questions here.

Here is a nice example of a good question that proposes specific actions on another meta - https://unix.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5166/suggested-change-of-tag-definition-for-anaconda

My main thinking is that for specific questions that need to differentiate between the flavors of POSIX compliant Unix based os should be asked on the Unix / Ubuntu / Android site and not here. Most questions here are going to be how to dual boot or virtual boot, and then it’s not really about the OS differences, but I’m open to some evidence or questions that show how the current tag system is hurting this site.

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    The main problem I see is that currently unix is used both for questions relating to the Unix-like parts of macOS and for installing Unix-like OSes on Apple hardware. Both are on-topic on AD, but they are usually totally unrelated. So I would be strongly in favor of a split here
    – nohillside Mod
    Commented Oct 6, 2019 at 14:12
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    Yes, I think we need better tags, just not sure what names / scope to start with. Maybe asking a couple example questions or collecting example questions will help us get consensus. For example - command-line should absorb / host all “Unix” questions that are really about macos and using shells IMO. Then we can restrict the usage of Unix a bit in the definition and do some clean up @nohillside
    – bmike Mod
    Commented Oct 6, 2019 at 14:45

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