Slashdot Mirror
Torvalds Tells All
Eugenia writes: "Linus Torvalds gives an interesting interview to OSNews.com, talking about everything people are wondering about his personal opinions on several matters: on the GNU/Linux naming, the GUIs currently offered for Linux, the kernel 2.6, his plans for hot-plugged devices & drivers, Microsoft, FreeBSD and the future in general."
(emphasis added)
Now that has GOT to hurt. The guy that tons of geeks look up to (rightly or wrongly), has just said that he doesn't really give a rats ass about what one of the Big Names keeps going on about.... Definately not what anyone in a philosophical debate wants to hear - people loving your idea is great, people loathing your idea is still something you can work with, but disregard? Ouch.
It seems to me that the more interviews I see from Linus, the more tired he sounds, or is exasperated a better word, anyone else noticing this? I think everyone in the UNIX community would like to see real answers to the questions in regards to .NET, and "competing" softwares. He even dodged the "Where do you see Linux in 5 to 10 years" question. Maybe he took some advise from Steve Jobs and decided not to be a preacher. :)
Linus Torvalds: I was never a "big thinker". One of my philosophies in Linux has always been to not worry about the future too much, but make sure that we make the best of what we have now - together with keeping our options open for the future and not digging us into a hole.
This philsophy above all others, it seems to me, has kept Linux competitive, developed, and effective. The fact that this sort of stance is impossible to take - or is it? thoughts welcomed - in the business world prove the viability of free software.
Cheers,
levine
Yeah this one caught my eye too ... he slagged a whole bunch of OSes after saying he didn't follow them. Its pretty tough to know if something is techinically interesting if you don't follow any of the developments on it. If you don't know anything about the OS, just say that.
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
You're assuming he considers the other competition the enemy. Why should he? He develops linux because he enjoys it, and something tells me he'd continue to develop linux regardless of what the competition is doing.
Dinivin
"Sure, he's not marketing driven, he said as much in the interview, he's only concerned about technical matters...Hoo hah, excellent..But we shouldn't try to pass this off as interesting."
In an increasingly market-driven world, I think having someone who knows to look at the job at hand without giving a fig for what others do with it is an "interesting" perspective. Try working as a consultant for a while, you'll see a lot of "don't care" attitudes around, but someone with that focus on what is going to happen is a welcome rarity. It's good to see `market' versus `geek' become separated out more; slashdot should take the hint.
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
No kidding.. I mean, BSD was out way before Linux (Note, not trying to start a flame war, simply pointing out some facts) which means that Linus had to have looked them over and while not copying code, looked at BSD and other *ixs for ideas on what to include and what to leave out in Linux. To say that there is nothing technically interesting in it is quite insulting and in fact, not a very acurate.
Back in '92 when I first started working with Linux it was kind of cool. You could do things on your home computer that before were not very possible, or very expensive.
It was just kind of cool, and fun.
Then sometime in '97, shortly after the OS/2 regime was destroyed, Linux took on this holy jihad. Now it was a battle, it wasn't just good enough to create something kind of fun and geeky, the goal was to destroy all the infidels from Microsoft.
It was at that point that Linux became no fun to use, and it was no longer fun to be around the Linux geeks.
Linus has the right attitude. There is no enemy.
When a journalist can't come up with an origional question, they seem to want to come up with a question that they know might generate controversy if it is answered, or not answered.
Do you have a beef with RMS over GNU/Linux ?
Do we have ground troops in Afghanistan ?
Have you had sexual relations with an Intern ?
When will journalists learn to at least ask a good question.
What do you think RMSs biggest contribution to the Open source movement is ?
Who inspires you today, who do you see as your idol ?
What message would you like to deliver to todays incoming college Computer Science Freshmen, what do you think they should be looking at ?
[yawn] I'm so sick of people quoting "The Art of War" and "On War" and "The Book of Five Rings" and other military classics in reference to software development. First of all, as several other posters have pointed out, L.T. sees himself primarily as a programmer, not a businessman -- he doesn't define other OS'es as "the enemy" and therefore doesn't worry about ancient military wisdom. Second, and perhaps more important, even more business-oriented programmers are fools if they think military advice translates to any business, especially software. No matter what the Japanese say, business _isn't_ war.
Whatever happend to that fabled Japanese "business is war" economy, anyway? Oh, that's right -- all those warrior businessmen had a couple of decades of success with their slash'n'burn tactics, then kept going with it and drove one of the world's largest economies straight into the toilet.
There's a lesson here, one which Microsoft and Oracle and Sun should learn really fast: war is about killing people and breaking things, and business (ideally) is about empowering people and building a stable, lasting structure to create good products. These are not only different goals, they're opposite and mutually incompatible goals, and techniques that work for one simply _do not work_ for the other.
I've seen this from both sides, by the way -- I was in the Air Force when A.F. leadership went through a "TQM" craze. It didn't work worth a damn then, and "Sun Tzu's Guide To Crushing The Competition In The Global Marketplace" doesn't work now.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Therefore those skilled in warfare move the enemy, and are not moved by the enemy.
-=-=-
The ultimate skill is to take up a position where you are formless.
If you are formless, the most penetrating spies will not be able to discern you, or the wisest counsels will not be able to do calculations against you.
I agree, this is a major step and I'm glad to see that he's looking to it. Not only is he looking to have things be automatic, but he wants to get away from the whole "device manager" idea, which is what pervades windows. While he does say he doesn't care about the competition, he is trying to make Linux the best Linux it can be, and that will involve beating the competitors in some areas like this (hopefully!)
Personally, this is my biggest complaint about the kernel as is. It's gotten much much better over time, but once it's really handled for the user it'll be one more relatively large hurdle that a user won't have to overcome. While Mandrake et al. have done a great job on autoconfiguration during install, things like adding a new CD-burner are often done later. It all obviously fits in to his notion (that I agree with) that the innovation will happen in the userspace, among projects like KDE. Autodetection and loading will be another kernel contribution to userspace enchancements.
I'm just glad to see that, while most people gripe about what Linux can't do right now, the people who are actually doing the work are thinking about what it's going to be doing soon. This may frustrate people who just want a perfect system to appear magically before their eyes (as though Windows just showed up in its current form on the day they bought their computer) it'll wind up satisfying a lot of people in the long run. Makes it much more exciting to watch too.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
It's not great unless you're willing to assume that every great idea and innovative feature that will ever be invented in the future will only come from your own developers.
While I think that ryanf's comments and quotes from Sun Tsu elsewhere in this thread completely miss the point, Linus' head-in-the-sand attitude to the many great and exciting developments that are taking place in other operating systems is a shortcoming not a feature.
There are people in this world who are at least as clever as Linus and they will continue to come up with new and useful ideas and refinements to operating system design. Pretending that these innovations aren't useful to you is not the best way to improve your kernel.
Linus have just said exactly the right things. I mean, why Linus would known where Linux will be in 5 to 10 years? I think that if you've had asked him that question when he started Linux first, he would have had an answer like in this interview... surely he want Linux to become great and liked by many people, but I just don't think that it's what he want the most. Like he said, he want Linux to be better than Linux, that's all, and that is great!
Stop willing to be better than the others, and just improve yourself to be better than yourself, and then look around you to see where you are, you'll be the best. By just looking around first, you miss the chance to see what you can do...
That said, it was a great interview, at least to me!
I have to admit that I haven't been following Linus's interviews too closely as of late, but I do remember reading in 1996 or 1997 (when I first tried to install Linux) about why he created it; he did it for himself.
He wanted UNIX for his PC because he thought DOS was crappy.
He had a lot of people appreciate his idea and even make him a Geek Icon. Hey that's pretty exciting stuff for a young geek to have lots of other geeks look at you in awe.
Eventually the reality of what you are doing sets in. It's not a hobby anymore and you are not doing it for yourself anymore. People depend on you to run their businesses, they want you to lead an OS holy war, so to speak.
Eventually you either let the crowd push you to insanity, or you have to decide not to care what everyone is screaming at you, and you have to remember why you started all of it in the first place.
Linus is right, though, he shouldn't really be caring much what everyone else is doing. Linux should be it's own product and not the "me too" product that it has become.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
So he annoys the faithful by proving himself a mortal?
I never had the misconception he was out to slay the evil Microsoft or other such competitors. He has always been "the author of Linux", nothing more, and certainly nothing less.
This interview simply confirms it, he really is just trying to make it better. He isn't at WAR with anyone, he isn't into that grandstanding.
Maybe a few people here could take a lesson from his interview. Then, maybe you might know what it is all about.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It's perceived as "cocky" because it's just another way of saying: "I'm the only one capable of coming up with good ideas."
You gotta love the focus.
.Net, Hailstorm and other M$ attempts at digital domination:
Linus on the competition:
I don't actually follow other operating systems much.
Linus on
See my answer about not caring what the competition does
Linus on Linux vs GNU/Linux:
I don't mind what rms calls the system...I really couldn't care less.
Linus on the marketing of Linux in the years to come:
I don't use a marketing eye, I simply don't care.
Linus rules the kernel, and the kernel is good. His ability to avoid distraction, rhetoric and bullshit is highly commendable.
Of course if we all had that kind of focus then slashdot wouldn't have any comments, now would it?
m00.
He just wants to make something cool and have fun with it. That's the whole agenda. Linux is not about competion for Linus--and, please, "world domination" is a joke! As others have put it, "Chase the dream, not the competition".
When he says "Linux", he's usually not talking about the whole system the way most of us are. You say, "well, the only point of the kernel is to serve as the foundation for the rest of the system"; but that's not the way Linus et al think. They mostly want to build a beautiful kernel. Ask a glibc developer if you doubt this. (They'll say Linus doesn't give a flying fig about user-space, which is an exaggeration, but....)
None of this should be a revelation. Read what Linus has said during any of the last ten years.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
I am not part of the Kernel development team. I have never met or even seen Linus.
With that clarified....
Why should he care?? This started as a pet project in college to him. Does anyone see a distribution of Linux with his name on the cover?? Does anyone see him trying to market Linux in any real way?? I sure don't. He likes to thrash around in the code. He has proven that he is good at it. He makes pretty good decisions about what is the next thing to be added to the Kernel. I think we are expecting a lot of him already. Why expect him to be the person with all the answers.
Linus and Linux are not the same thing. Granted, he started it, but it has grown well past what any one man can handle. Why should he care what everyone else is doing?? He is doing good with the Linux Kernel as it is. He sees where people want to go by what they submit to him and he and his group put it into the kernel tree as they feel it is ready. There is no reason that he should care where Microsoft is going in the future. I know I don't care much. I can't even see a reason why he should care about what the BSDs are doing. That makes a differance to most of us, but why should we expect it of him??
He does a good job at what he is doing. Why should he need to care what anyone else is doing??
That is simply wrong!
He is calling the entire system GNU/Linux.
Linux is a kernel of an operating system not an entire operating system.
( Note that you'll often see GNU/Herd when someone is talking about that system ).
Of course Linux doesn't need any of GNU software. Just as GNU doesn't need Linux but why write new software or use some proprietary software? Both GNU and Linux are great.
Quite frankly, Linus is writing code. He is contributing to Free Software.
The vast majority of Free Software advocates are exactly that - advocates. They aren't developing code, they aren't reading the source to make improvements.
Free Software isn't about anything philosophical. It's about software and being able to share it to build upon itself. After that, it doesn't matter.
Aside from some work in the HURD, RMS isn't a software developer anymore. He has become a philosopher, trying like Socrates to convert others to his way of thinking.
Linus is coding, creating usable technology. It's HIS technology that acted as the catalyst in the Free Software world. Without Linux, GNU would still be a rather obscure name that many computer scientists don't even recognize. Sure, the GNU tools allowed Linux to start off sooner, but there was nothing special about the GNU tools at the time Linux was created -- save that it was free (gratuis), and our beloved Finn could afford them on a student's budget.
The coders have the right to make the names and use them however they please. The philosophers are only being hypocritical by making any attempt at changing that.
Linux doesn't owe GNU anything. The GNU project gave Linux a tiny stepladder. But Linux gave GNU a Saturn V Rocket.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
A lot of people have pointed out Linus' very empty, casual answers. A lot of these people are now predicting the doom and failure of Linux because "Linus doesn't care."
Well, mission accomplished; Linus has pissed off the Linux zealots. Hopefully, when these people find out that Linus doesn't share their religious fervor about the righteousness of Linux and the darkness of the Enemy, they will leave Linux alone so that it can gain some actual credibility.
Good job, Linus.
On the other hand, if you aren't strictly dependent on specialized hardware, then scrap your old stuff and spend a couple of bucks to buy modern hardware that IS supported.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Changing the API often will result in companies that *do* opensource drivers to drop support as well. If there's a valid technical reason to change API's, great - go for it. Otherwise, you're pulling the exact same kind of crap that Microsoft does to try to force people to use their platform and that people on this forum regularly complain about. If I were a product manager and got told "you're going to have to have a developer spend 2 weeks rewriting some code because some guy decided to break the API for no good reason", I would *not* be a happy camper.
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
Oh Please!
This is not a religion. It's a product. An invention. Just as people didn't pray to Henry Ford when the model T came out, we don't need to get all 'Brave New World' over Linux.
He already gave you the rights to keep the open source model alive for Linux, the GPL. Even if he retired to a desert island tomorrow, Linux will live on.
What more do you want? If you want Linux to be better, then improve it yourself. That's what the GPL is for.
In the hours that it took you to compose enough bullshit to reach the Karma cap, Linus probably answers hundreds of emails, merges some patches, does some testing, etc. He does not, and should not involve himself in every Slashdot-style controversy. That doesn't mean he's a worse person than the average karma whore, but sounds like Slashdot is disappointed he's not trying to become one.
Perhaps the obvious fact he has something better to do hits a bit too close to home among the Slashdot crowd.
Softupdates? KSE? SMPng? KQueues? They're all worthy of discussion, and not only that but Linus has discusses kqueues on linux-kernel in the past, and while putting down the BSD interface as being over complex, he hasn't managed to get any similar into Linux last I checked. I'd really like to hear what Linus has to say about KSEs vs. clone() as well. And SMPng is doing some very interesting things with giving interrupts a context so that you can use adaptive mutex locks in them to increase scalability -- I'd appreciate hearing Linus' opinion on those as well.
I have a bad feeling, though, that Linus would take his usual tack of being casually dismissive of what other OSes do, while not really adding anything useful to the larger ongoing discusssion. And I'm sorry if people feel that statement is flamebait, but I've read linux-kernel and seen Linus behave this way. He needs to mature a bit and give credit to other people's work, even though he might disagree with it.
kernels are essentially a solved problem, and future interesting stuff will be going on above the kernel level, not in it.
That's incredibly naive. There's a lot of interesting stuff still to do in kernel development. If you think that kernels are "finished" maybe that is because you're spending your time in the Linux world too much?
>If I were a product manager and got told "you're going to have to have a developer spend 2 weeks rewriting some code because some guy decided to break the API for no good reason", I would *not* be a happy camper.
.asp files as octet-stream/binary when its HTML? Just wading through the broken javascript is enough to give you chills up your spine! (www.telemann.com for the interested)
I realise that. I guess its a fine line between making Linux a binary-freindly mess like Windows and making it company unfriendly. Maybe I should have been a little less extreme. But I really prefer open source drivers -- they usually just work more properly (not always higher performance, but in a more standard way).
I've been down the road of products that are half supported in Linux by the manufacturer. I have a telemann skymedia card whose drivers are binary. The company pretends their card is fully Linux compatible, but I have to run an out of date kernel 2.2. This wouldn't be a problem but the skymedia card is a satellite network card! This is the sort of thing that the new IPTABLES and NAT were cut out for. Argh!
I have to question that if Telemann thought their card was only going to work for a month in Linux, would they have decided to open source the drivers? In which case I think they'd have been ported to 2.4 by now. I have heard of some hacks that get the 2.2 binaries working with 2.4, but they just didn't work for me.
Yeah, they could have decided not to bother with Linux support at all. In which case I would have found another card to do the job from a manufacturer that "gets it" and they wouldn't have my money. As it is right now Telemann has left me high and dry and I have no interest in ever doing business with them again. That's not cool.
They have become so M$ified I can't even browse their website in Netscape last time I looked! What kind of idiot sets the webserver to send
Bottom line, IMHO, is that binaries give you short term gain for long term customer lossage.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I guess it's kind of fuzzy, what exactly the kernel is supposed to do. As far as Linus seems inclined, the kernel should provide a safe interface to the hardware, certain conventional operations (like the filesystem), process control, and not much of anything else.
If that's what the kernel is supposed to do, then it's mostly done and there isn't much interesting left to do. Tweaking isn't generally considered all that interesting (though of course some people are interested in it -- that doesn't make it interesting).
Of course, some people think more things should be added to the kernel than what's already there. But Linus is pretty clear that he usually disagrees with those people, and the functionality belongs in userspace.
Note that he didn't say that there was no interesting work to be done on the operating system, of which the Linux kernel is a small and not-very-interesting part. There's a ton to be done there, but it's being done by the distribution people, not the kernel developers.
I really don't understand why more people don't direct their ideas for cool hacks to libc, which seems a much better level for it. It doesn't seem like anyone's done anything interesting to libc for many, many, many years.
fnord
Naturally Linus would like to distance himself from anyone who tries to call a chunk of code a religion. Look it's fun to run Linux and give MS the finger and all that, but there's gotta be limits. You've gotta keep those sanity checks and reality checks in your code (of conduct!). If you don't, you might wind up in a very strange and dangerous place. (Maybe hanging off the side of a building threatening to jump if the boss won't let you install Linux, I don't know.) Please, please, please, never start thinking of Linux as a religion.
Try Discordianism instead. fnord It's much safer. :-)
Furry cows moo and decompress.
you seem to be confused about the difference between source apis and binary apis. binary apis can change without breaking the source-level api. so, no work has to happen with the open-source drivers, since they get the new binary api when they are next compiled.
people with binary-only drivers, on the other hand, are screwed.
it doesn't do much for folks like nvidia, who have an open-source module layer to load their binary driver.