Slashdot Mirror
Interview With Linus
Hairy1 writes " Cisco has an interview with Linus which discusses among other things his thoughts - or rather lack of thoughts - about Windows.
When asked about Microsoft he said - "Well, I don't know. I'm actually not a big Microsoft basher... They're very good at marketing. They're very good at trying to see What do we have to do to sell this? The bad part about it is that it does have a huge market share. And that means that it can be lazy, sort of. They don't have much competition on the desktop, which means that they have very little incentive to really fix some of the problems it does have.""
Linus Torvalds, the same guy who makes the Linux kernel, works at Transmeta and his salary is paid thanks to MS's fortune.
Good call by Linus. In the post XP world today, it really is a good thing to be able to sit down at the end of the day and not really care about Microsoft as a corporate entity.
As long as there are people that can still do this (and who also possess L33T HAX0R SK1LZ) there will never be a true monopoly in the operating systems market.
-ERTW (EngScis Rule The World)
for Heather Donahue!
I just realized how true this is - My girlfriends mother was visiting this weekend, she has no computer, and indeed has never actually used a computer. She was wondering if Mandrake was Windows XP since she HAD heard of that..
air and light and time and space
http://www.krazyyak.com/mirrors/tree.taf.html
Have at it.
M$ think he is just a beginner, but with is honesty and simplicity he will "SURPRISE YOURSELF" (Microsoft slogan for XP)
Great!
Yet another interview with the Geek that
doesn't care to give his opinion on important issues.
People look up to you Torvalds! You should take a stand - NOW!
Then I hate to imagine what Linus thinks of those folks whose idea of innovation is cloning Microsoft products for the Linux.
Who is Linus? Is he Linux? Or Linus Linux? Or vmLinuz?
Linus Torvalds, put simply, created the Linux operating system. Linux was not meant to replace Windows - he just felt that what was available that day (DOS and UNIX) was just either not powerful enough, or too expensive. So he took little bits of his instructor's code, and glued it together to make a platform in which he could code. HTH --jw
What the hell are you talking about? AFAIK Transmeta is not affiliated with Microsoft in any way. If you are referring to Paul Allen then read the article, he was bought out.
I'm really glad to see that Linus didn't have too many ill words for MS. I think we could probably all stand to learn from his restraint. I think the whole Linux community would benefit very much if we gave up this Linux vs. the world attitude, no matter how romantic it may be, and just focus on our own community and what we can do to make Linux better. Reading throughout that interview I really got a feeling that Linus truly does appreciate the true hacker spirit in that he does his work "Just for Fun", like it used to be back in the 60's when the MIT boys would hack up the PDP-10 late at night.
I posted to
Yo mama!
But Charlie Rose is a NPR / PBS journalist (among other things). Even though it is on the cisco site, has anyone seen the interview in audio format (or even video?)
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Relevant quote from the article:
I was the technology guy who had no clue about business.
He admits that he does not know enough to have a good opinion, so he keeps it to himself. *Sniff* ... smells like "maturity" to me ...
I would also like to know Linus's true opinion on the matter, but his voice carries a lot more force than an unknown's voice (like mine!), would. That means that he has a responsibility to be more careful in what he says than I have to be.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
I thought this was going to be a different interview... :-(. Something where they don't ask Linus a bunch of questions that he A)doesn't really care about and B)doesn't really know. In fact after I was done reading it, I could of swore I saw the same interview on pbs over the summer, roughly june or so. Typical linus interview:
:Could you if you want to?
:What about microsoft, how much do you really really hate them?
:Are you sure you don't want bill gates head on a stick?
:No. So about Microsoft and money...
:You own linux?
:No
:No
:Huh...??? I couldn't care less
:Ok, this is stupid... don't you want to ask me about the decision about andre vs rick's VM system... or potential changes for 2.5?
So when are people going to get it through their minds that he doesn't care... i've never met the man, never spoken to him... but from all the interviews i've heard and read thats the conclusion that i've come to. Linux cares about tinkering... creating... and programming. Basically the technology. He doesn't care about business... *sigh*. I would love to hear an interview on technology with him... that would be incredible. I remember in that pbs show, the interviewer actually asked him how he got started programming... and you could see him get excited and start talking about an old video game he wrote way back in the day. Aww... I wouldn't have him any other way.
ps - I think the interviewers need to read up on some of linus's quotes, my personal fav being
"I'm a bastard and proud of it"... closely followed by:
"If you didn't read my last post, go back and do it and make sure to read the line about me being a bastard twice".
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
you don't need to mirror cisco.com
it's like having to mirror microsoft.com or yahoo.com.. might as well mirror google.com while you're at it.
The Slashdot Effect: A new for
On a Linux-show in the US, the first thing
Torvalds said was "I am your God".
Who does he think he is?
ÜberGeek?
Why do they ALWAYS want to know what Linus thinks about MS? If I were him, I'd get really fed up with
;)
reporters.
Just let them monitor the kernel list for a while, then you get a much better idea of Linu[sx]. I really liked the decision to just swap VM systems in the middle of 2.4
Marijn
Whenever I've met someone of major technical merit in the Linux comunity (AC, Raph Levine, George and Marceij from Eazel, Taj from KDE) they've always been clear headed and non religious about their choice of OS. They don't really like Windows, but they're not `against it' per se and they don't have a problem with Windows users - they just prefer Linux for their own use. Gearing reaports that Linus and Ted Tso have similar attitutes doesn't surprise me.
Unfortunately its the few who do turn a technical argument into a religious one that give the rest of us a bad name and get the attention from the media. I still believe the majority of Linux users choose it because its the best tool for the job, not because Windows is evil and wrong and completely technically inferior (becuase it isn't).
However, that doesn't make much of a story for the media, and doesn't give the trolls something to talk about. Hence the nasty reputation of the ranting Linux zealot. This sucks.
You can always tell a Charlie Rose interview. He does all of the talking. Another great job, Charlie. Next time, ask some questions.
In the interview there is a comparison between Gates and Torvalds where Torvalds is compared to Edison and Gates to Rockefeller. I'm not sure that either is very much like Torvalds. Edison was quite into marketing his ideas and wasn't beneath slandering his competitors (such as Tesla). Torvalds isn't at all like that. I'd say Torvalds is more like Bill Thompson (a.k.a Lord Kelvin after the Brits honored him). Thompson contributed a lot to the public knowledge of physics but at the same time supported himself through engineering contracts, much like Torvalds works on Linux for the public but supports himself by working at Transmeta.
You can mod this down right now. I'm going to have a trolling Stallman moment.
Linus created the Linux *kernel*. Has anyone noticed the "GNU/" that keeps popping up in front of the word Linux? That's because Stallman made a whole stink about how he put together everything else other than the kernel and that he should get some credit too. So stop saying Linus created the Linux OS. He created the kernel.
In this case you are right, but earlier he has been slightly more bitchy. Like this one, where Linus respons to Mundie which cracked me up:
"I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks up the room less."
Although it was a funny quote, IMO Linus went too far with it. I'm sure all the Linux geeks giggled, but it's just not very professional, and if we want Linux to have a clean image (I do), than we gotta have a clean fight - not a cat fight.
-Kraft
Live and let live
yea, i've met his wife... could be a stand-in, but i think he's got a kid with her.
Eh, Linus is promoting his book. It's all for the best.
This is something that we seem to forget. Windows and MS are not all that evil. Just a monopoly. And this leads to a lack of effort in attempting to improve their product, no competition you see.
If we want to see MS lose their massive market share there needs to be a product capable of competing with Windows. As much as I love Linux, this is not the OS. Linux is a server OS, whereas Windows is a desktop OS. So to compete with Windows, there must be an open source desktop OS. Sadly there is only one other desktop OS right now, and thats macOS. Unfortunatly I have yet to see such project even discussed, let alone acted on.
---
Kwanza is not a Polish holiday!
Videos episodes of the Charlie Rose show can be ordered from http://www.800-all-news.com/transcripts.shtml. Their online search engine doesn't return values up to the present, so you'll either have to do it over the phone (1-800-255-6397) or via email ( web-orders@800-ALL-NEWS.com. Since you get something of a discount when ordering multiple transcripts, you might also want to order last May's episode where Charlie Rose interviewed Linus about his book.
The kernel IS the os. If you used an NT kernel, and wrapped all of the gnu tools around it, it would still be NT. Sure, you could call it GNU/NT, but it would still be NT. Its the same with Linux.
It's Cisco, the load balanceing king. Nobody had better see any slashdot effect on this story or we're all doomed.
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
I saw this interview on public television a few months ago. My brother was flipping through the channels and I'm like "hey, that kinda looks like Linus Torvalds". He flipped back and we're like "holy !#* that is Linus; cool!".
It was exciting to see him being interviewed on TV. Is Jay Leno next ;-)
?
You'll be lucky to find an interview with Linus Torvalds in which the interviewer does not ask him his stance on Windows or Bill Gates or Microsoft. He always has the same humble and modest response.
Linus has stated that he does not try to be a threat to Microsoft and he does not view MS as competition. It would indeed be an steep uphill battle for Linux to be a competitor in the home computing world (whether you like it or not).
Some people are so blind in their love for a certain OS, whether it be Windows or BSD or Linux or Mac OS or Unix, that they won't admit the truth. Windows and Linux have a different goal.
Torvalds has stated that he was interested at Windows NT at one point. He says lately it looks more and more like traditional Windows with a stabler kernel. That is what does not interest him. In an interview he said "In my opinion MS is a lot better at making money than it is at making good operating systems." And maybe he is right.
BTW: Somebody might want to format that post a little better, it has awkward page breaks all over.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Whenever I've met someone of major technical merit in the Linux comunity (AC, Raph Levine, George and Marceij from Eazel, Taj from KDE) they've always been clear headed and non religious about their choice of OS. They don't really like Windows, but they're not `against it' per se and they don't have a problem with Windows users - they just prefer Linux for their own use.
One word: politics. Do you really believe that the major players in the Linux / free software community don't have complete overthrow of the proprietary software "regime" in the back of their minds when they say such things? It's only a matter of time. Cut the crap with that 'best tool for the job' business. And yes, greed is evil and wrong.
Very nice article.
Rose: What's the best and worst thing you can say about Windows?
Rose: I didn't ask you to bash 'em.
Torvalds: Well, you did ask me to say something bad about them.
That is great. It shows someone who not only understands himself, but he understands the world around him. He's not drawn into petty bickering, and he is obviously not so filled with hate or angst. It's quite obvious he wants to make a good product, but also doesn't seem to be swept up in material gain above what he may or may not have. I remember when I first started using Linux and was introduced to ipfw in Redhat 5.something. I was truly shown something technically refreshing. While I encourage desktop GUI pursuits, many a Linux contributor seems to be caught up in widgets and not solving real problems or addressing new ideas. I don't mean that GUI's is every contributor's focus, but it seems to be the main thrust.
Linux will be truly successful if it can go places *before* Microsoft can, and do them better than Microsoft can. It wouldn't help to have a couple Rockefellers to help out the cause.
And all you lame-ass Microsoft bashers have been proven wrong.
Oh well..
In Scandanavia, everyone gets paid. :-)
But his clever dance around the Edison/Rockefeller insinuation (same topic), along with his other responses, infers his steady practice of english and a good grasp on current politics. Even with the interviewer trying repeatedly to put words in his mouth, he held his own nicely.
Here's hoping this fellow continues to extend his US visa.
There is more to life than bashing Microsoft. One should follow the example that Linus set in the interview. Instead of keeping continued malice toward Microsoft, live a little. Do what you think is interesting as opposed to what you are told should be interesting, and then hope that whatever it is will end up punching Microsoft, or some other evil entity in the ribs by accident :-)
I did a word count after separating their two threads of dialog into different files and removing the leading names from their lines.
Final counts:
Torvalds - 1669
Rose - 456
Never let facts get in the way of looking stupid though...
LEXX
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
he was for world domination...
Seems he has calmed down a bit...
I'd rather he have a lack of thoughts on it than say "d00d, m1kr0s0pht 1s 3v1L.... f1r3"
Actualy, im catholic. I just don't like to see people bashed based on religous preference.
---
Kwanza is not a Polish holiday!
In the quotes, he keeps referring to Microsoft as "it".
Nothing wrong with that. "It" is singular, the legal entity Microsoft Corp. is singular - and not a collective noun either. Using "they" or "them" can be a problem since now you're not really talking about the single company, but rather "all the people who work there."
For example:
"Microsoft is poised to launch Empty Box 1.0. It hopes there will be enough customers to provide a platform for future upgrades."
"Microsoft is poised to launch Empty Box 1.0. They hope there will be enough customers to provide a platform for future upgrades."
Who is "they"? The company? No - it's one company. The people who work there? Then it needs to say so.
Yeah yeah - I had this beaten into me on a newspaper with a rather original fining system. Companies are singular.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
How is the job at McDonald's going? :)
The lead programmers probably don't care.
But the personality leaders(ESR, RMS, etc) certainly care and push the trolling to the edge of reason.
Also as a caveman, OOG has a reduced frontal lobe. Normally this is not a handicap in discussions on slashdot. But it caused him to forget his password.
HTH.
Dude, not only has that been mentioned before, (by the founder of 3Com no less) it even has a Slashdot article.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
We need a new term for the component technology in .NET. I imagine that's what the interviewer was asking about, not the Passport aspect everyone loves to bring up.
.NET's component technology, the part that will replace COM to some degree, has only J2EE as its rival. I was hoping Linus's response would've mentioned Mono. But, then again, object-oriented programming probably doesn't interest Linus.
Well, we could all hope that the next interviewer will read slashdot, before asking the questions.
:)
Therefore we could collect a few questions for Linus.
Like:
What about Andrea vs Rick's VM system?
What important changes are already planned for 2.5?
Could you think of a situation/decision where other issues (like ego) went to be more important than the technical issues?
What do you do with your time besides working at Transmeta and hacking on Linux?
Then again, it would even be nicer if Slashdot could collect 10 questions for the next Slashdot interview
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
Curious parallel, at a time when we're entering a major war that's essentially a religious argument. There is no OS but Windows and Gates is its prophet. There is no freedom but American and Bush is its prophet. There is no god but Allah and bin Laden is his prophet.
Maybe, on a certain level, these all are religious wars. We are somehow in cultures that want one answer to be a total answer: one god, one OS, one brand of freedom, one superpower. Okay, we don't all want that. Some of us are happier in a world with many gods, many OSes, many freedoms, diverse powers. But that's why bin Laden, Gates, Falwell see us as decadent and evil.
So if there's a deeper psycho-social vortex that sucks so many members of our cultures in mono-moniacle delusions, whether of the defeated fascist kind, the waning communist kind, or the ascendant worship at the temples of Microsoft and Disney ... well, don't we have to somehow ease the effects of that deeper vortex if we're to get on with our personal choices of OSs and goddesses and musics and causes to die for, and not be sucked into the looming battles of the competing vortexes, each of which believes not just in its immortality, but that, "There can be only one!"
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I think what you've hit on is a quality known as "Maturity". It comes with age to most people, and the youth show the least amount of it.
Linus is an old man by slashdot standards. As is Ted Tso and the other's you've named.
Somebody's watched the movie Wall Street a few too many times and never read, the Wealth of Nations.
What's the point in hating (in a personal, emotional, sense) a computer program?
Antipathy towards MicroSoft-the-company's a different thing, though, as individuals run it and individuals are responsible for the fact that it seems to have no respect for the laws of the United States. Which happens to be my country. As a citizen of this country, it is perfectly reasonable for me to loath the company and its leadership for its business practices.
But hate Windows, per se? Like most folks, I need to use it from time to time, and other Microsoft products. Some of them work well enough, none of them are worth hating.
In a world where MicroSoft acted as a responsible corporate citizen I would have no problem with them. My feelings about their software would be unchanged - hey, Win2K's a lot more stable than NT, cool! - but my feelings about their company would be a *lot* different.
We in the Linux community - and in the world at large - have every reason in the world to dislike MicroSoft-the-company.
What is there to like about a corporation that falsified evidence in court? That ignores consent decrees? Whose very success is due to their having violated a contract with two programmers in Seattle (who'd written what became the basis for DOS)?
Please refer to How Do You Like Your Buns? A Comparison of Two Sandwiches .
The Old Cut : This is what a sandwich should look like. Neat. Tidy. Perhaps a little spillage around the bottom, but that extra stuff is all good.
The New Cut : Look at it. It's disgusting. It looks like somebody gutted a muskrat.
cpeterso
My question is how can the open source community produce anything truly innovative that might catch on? Now we all (myself included) love to bash ms, but they are the ones that have the market share that allows them to "think outside the box" and the force it on damn near the entire computing world. I am not saying that they *are* innovative (not trying to start that flame war either), just that they can be. Meanwhile the open source world is busy coming up with their own version of .NET (yawn). I do believe that paradigm shifts in computing are still out there, but I think think that 1) we are all too busy playing catch-up to be able to step back and come up with that next great idea (just look at the resources being expended on gnome and kde - and they are still working on "innovative" stuff like ole) or 2) we may have a great idea that truly differentiates an open source product from a commercial product, but we don't have the markey share so very few people ever actually see the innovation - and ms makes it apart of the os upon their next release. I ask this because I (and many others) have a bunch of great ideas that are just waiting for a platform that we can implement them on. These ideas do not include window managers, office suits, journalled filing systems, vm subsystems, or even menus with a "fade-in" effect. I am talking about doing things that have *never* been done before. It seems the slashdot community is split between those satisfied with the "innovation" of the command line and those who can't even understand the difference between X (the hacky pile of C code) and X (the protocol).
Anyway, enough ranting...back to work in the commercial software world (where using the keyword "class" allows you market a project as object oriented).
This interview had less insight in it than the +1 insightful posts on slashdot.
When I have a house, I'd rather own my house and take the problems than rent it. And I think the same is true about software.
.net yet.
I think that's the best quote I've seen about
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
Recently though, English speaking people on the east end of the Atlantic have been using a simplified rule for determining when to use plural vs. singular. An entity that has multiple people get a plural, while here in America we have kept the hard-to-remember rule that a company is a singular entity. Though I'll forgive any ESL person who makes this mistake - I find it sad that the Queen's English is being dumbed down.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Do you really believe that the major players in the Linux / free software community don't have complete overthrow of the proprietary software "regime" in the back of their minds when they say such things?
,seems fair enough given their busines practices). Ted Tso does brilliant work on making the Linux kernel better but has stated before that his wife will continue to use Quicken for her accounting because its, well, better than the alternatives. Linux, from this interview, doesn't hate MS, the GNOME and KDE people can recognize good ideas from other OSs an integrate them into their respective desktops (and hopefully reject the bad ones).
To some extent - the technical ones would like for Linux to replace Windows in every situation, but they don't hate Windows or Windows users on some personal level or see that Linux can replace Windows in every way (hating Microsoft, OTOH
A follow up poster put it simply: the difference between the silent technical types working away making Linux am even more viable alternative and the ranting `Windows is inferior in every way and must die now' folk is maturity. I'm inclined to agree.
How is the job at McDonald's going? :)
:)
Actually, I work for Burger King
1. Are you sick of giving interviews? ...or do both at the same time?
...about Bill Gates?
...about commercializing Linux?
:)
2. Are you sick of being asked the same questions?
3. Would you rather code, or drink a beer?
4.
5. Do you code better while half-drunk?
6. Do you code better when fully drunk?
7. Would you drive a stake through my heart if
I asked you about microsoft?
8.
9.
10. Do you regret linux's popularity in regards to
the fact that you've been forced into the
position of "geek god"
11. Does RMS get on your nerves as much as he does mine?
12. If you're ever in tennessee, would you consider hanging out with me?
13. What are the odds of the windows API's ever getting kernal support for running windows apps natively?
e-mail: mccann@telalink.net
Linus - if you're out there, answer these questions: Inquiring minds want to know!
MS patches are getting old too. LOL
Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
And since I was away for the first 2 hours after this story was posted, when I get to read it, it is slashdotted.
Sigh...
Read it???? I wrote it! Die pinko GPList scum
> So MS is forced to add fancier features, launch a major marketing blitz
A marketing blitz is _not_ a 'feature'!
bzzz... wrong answer!
That quote applies to Socialism, not Communism.
Believe it or not, the site is slashdotted....
This box must have some kind of bandwidth control because I can't believe a CISCO website would get slashdotted.
This has to look bad for CISCO.
Now would be a good time to mod up those mirrors instead of modding them down for karma whoring...
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
There isn't anything spectacularly interesting about it I'm sure. Just simulates a cpu. AMD and INTEL provide such utilities whenever a new cpu comes out. They just shoved them onto a flash rom! :-) Of course, like intel, they proved that this isn't terribly efficient (see: Itanium.)
Derek Greene
I'm honestly impressed with Linus' reaction towards MS. I don't really like/use Linux, but respect its creator, I'm more of a Windows guy because I don't have the time to devote to learning a new OS at the moment. However, the rampant OS-bashing from both sides going on is relatively petty, and Linus seems to realize it isn't worth anything.
People expect Linux to work like Microsoft. They expect the same windows/mouse/pointer user interface. There's plenty of innovation, but people don't want it. For example, we in the open source world have Pie Menus. They are measureably better (faster and more reliable) than Microsoft's linear menus. If you give people a choice between pie menus and linear menus, which do you think they'll choose?
They'll choose the one that requires the least retraining on their part. THAT is why Microsoft products get cloned.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Do you suppose Jesus had an opinion about Linux?
Shouldn't you be doing something else on Sunday? Like worshipping bodily fluids, eating children, and telling everyone they're going to hell?
Sort of. When talking of superiority/inferiority of a program compared to another one, you always have subjective criteria. I'm still on Windows and trying to make a choice of what distro I'll take. The arguments Mandrake vs. Suse vs. Debian etc... are just as confusing as Windows vs. Linux.
Since security and privacy are very important to me, Windows XP is a no-no for my home-computer. Other people will say, let's buy a firewall for 100 bucks and we won't have any problems with security any more. Simplicity of use is the most important.
Hint: part os the world *are* against linux, from microsoft who wants to squash it by using their monopolistic strangelhold to the MPAA/RIAA (whichever or both, I don't remember) with their SSSCA which would make linux illegal. There are people who very much want to get rid of linux, and it would be in the best interests thereof if they were not allowed to succeed.
Kind of like Bin Laden and the US.
Wake up. Linux has (prettymuch declared) enemies. What you're advocating is the stance that the US took before world war II, and before the september 11th attacks.
Life doesn't work that way. You can't just retreat into your shell and ignore the world - if you do, someone in the world will come along and eat you (metaphorically speaking, of course). Those who don't adapt, die.
Essentially, closing your eyes doesn't mean other people can't see you, no matter how much you wish that it did.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Lefsa or oyster stew will work too, so lets not get too picky.
Personally, I really hope that Linus and the others really are just in category A. Because I think that when people are focused on improving linux and not destroying microsoft the development of the OS will be much better.
Total disarray
I thought this entire posting would be anti-Microsoft.
So many people complain that Microsoft got where it was through trickery and cheating and illegal methods. Of course, the millions of Microsoft software users and developers don't seem to notice this for some reason.
It is good to see that Linus doesn't have this anti-Microsoft stance. I am sure that he doesn't have this idea that he can overthrow Microsoft.
In fact, I still don't understand why people ask him his opinion on so much stuff anyway.
I personally still use and program games in DOS. It is fun. I don't do it to make money.
I am using Linux only to learn how to use it. It is fun for me. I still use Windows as my main OS simply because it works. I like tinkering, and GNU/Linux makes it that much more easier to do, so I use that when I can.
If I program something major, I would have no problem making it for Linux and Windows. It isn't like Windows or IE or anything else Microsoft produced is intrinsically evil.
It is tiring to see posts about how Microsoft sucks or how it's products are going to send the world into the fiery pits of hell or how it's business practices are just wrong.
Then those same people who posted that contradict themselves and say that IE should be banned from websites among other things.
Linus did well not to bash Microsoft. He is smart enough to know he has no reason to do so. And the media needs to learn what it is they are investigating before they ask silly questions.
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
What moron modded this a Troll?
An interestin mirror
ThinkGeek">Linus on Linux
You are absolutely right.
Only the "power" users appreciate what
linux can offer them. Complete freedom
from dependency on the avarice of large
corporations and the various ways to suck
money from people...Freedom of choice.
No,if people realized that there was a decent alternative to paying huge fees, that it could be responsibly maintained and utilized with
some training and personnel, they "might" still not switch just because of MS's huge marketing
footprint.
Linus commented on just this as the most aberrant thing that they do, and if the criticism is not acid, it is still trenchant.
Maybe an appeal to people pocketbooks will not be enough..maybe it will take a "religious"
effort to make linux a desktop item...
IBM's efforts with linux seem dedicated toward the server room..how are you going to convince the average joe that linux isn't exotic if
the biggest corporate supporter seems to have
relegated linux to the basement?
So where is the fuckin mirror? It has been modded down...
If I were the CIO of DoubleClick.net, CNN, MSNBC, or another top-10 site would I want to entrust my operations to Cisco? If their hefty price premium doesn't buy outstanding quality, what does it buy?
a deeper psycho-social vortex that sucks so many members of our cultures in mono-moniacle delusions
Someone mod this person up, its probably the most insightfull thing ive read here in weeks...
Microsoft Lazy? .Net Server, Pocket PC 2002, etc.. In fact I have never seen so much activity out of ANY software company.
Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? Microsoft is releasing so many new products that its hard to know where to start. Lets see Windows XP, Office XP, XBox, Visual Studio.Net,
Er, no they're not. (Well, this is 100 minutes after your post, so things might have changed...)
Being John Malkovitch anyone?
I'm proficient with the Arrowpoint (now Cisco CSS) load balancers, and they truly are amazing pieces of equipment.
The thing to remember, though, is that a load balancer is only as good as the servers you've put behind it. I manage a big hosting network with lots of these boxes, and it's not uncommon to see an entire site come down during times of extremely heavy load. Inevitably it's a network of Windows servers that comes down. The site gets lots of traffic for whatever reason, then one of the servers bluescreens or otherwise crashes. The load balancer does its job: takes that server out of the rotation, and the traffic gets sent to the other servers in the farm. The problem with Windows servers, though, is that with the increased load resulting from one server being out of the rotation, is that they start crashing too. This effect propagates exponentially until there aren't any servers left.
And before you say "oh, he's just Microsoft bashing" keep this in mind: some of our customers run Arrowpoint/Cisco load balancers with Linux or Solaris servers, and these networks never die. In fact, the servers keep up so well that sometimes if there's an improperly configured load balancer, it will crash instead. (There's a per-port buffer size limitation that you have to stay inside of. Windows can't pump out data fast enough to blow it up, but Linux and Solaris both can.)
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Well. Its kinda good that linus really doesn't have too much to say about this whole deal. I hope he really just ignores Windows and does what linux does best: be linux.
Just as a secondary comment: why don't people give up this whole M$ bashing thing? I really thing that people need to just let it go. Bashing M$ just makes our community look childish.
Rants and Free Speech synclog.net
--Sean
Microsoft is hated because they are big and popular and seen everywhere.
You just fill in reasons to hate the company after the fact to justify yourself.
Think about it...
AGREED!
But the reason it will eventually succeed is that Microsoft can't compete against it, can't put it out of business. It will eventually succeed because it cannot be stopped.
By the way, I just got Mandrake 8.1 and the desktop looks phenomenal. Once the office products start to mature and we see some more games I think the desktop will start seeing market share numbers like Linux on the server. You have to understand, the server has 30 years of development behind it. The desktop will eventually get there. Its not a question of if, but when.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
shouldn't that read the only site on the internet that never gets it right?
You could not be more wrong.
Microsoft called me a communist for that I hate them.
Microsoft called me anti american for that I hate them.
Every time an MS executive speaks he lies for that I hate them.
MS has broken the laws of the United States for that I hate them.
MS has bribed politicians and got off scott free for that I hate them.
MS has cheated and stolen from other countries for that I hate them.
MS reoutinely breaks standards for that I hate them.
MS keeps incresing their prices while all other software and hardware costs decline for that I hate them.
MS is abusive towards it's customers for that I hate them.
MS has harmed the consumer for that I hate them.
It has nothing to do with their popularity and everything to do with how they act, speak and think.
They are slimeballs, liars, cheaters, and immoral bastards. They are worthy of your hate.
Are you saying that there is no way to make a desktop operating system based on the Linux kernel? It doesn't seem possible that you would really mean that we need to start over from scratch. I would like to know exactly which components of the Linux/GNU/KDE/wtvr system are so hopelessly barring it from being a "desktop OS." Yeah, yeah so everybody says X sucks. Aren't there lots of alternatives which are at least nearly ready to replace X though, for example? Can anyone tell me what the other major components of Linux are which prohibit it from being a desktop OS, and explain why they couldn't just be replaced with "desktop os" components?
Whatever you may think about Linus, he certainly remains pretty noncommittal about the future of Linux, and that has to make some PHBs somewhat uncomfortable. I wouldn't be suprized to see someone put some spin on:
"If I were to make a prediction right now, which I?m not going to, if that prediction actually came true, I?d be really disappointed."
indicating a lack of direction. But, with mention of IBM and the way the license has been set up, he almost seems willing to pass on the torch.
"People are doing things with Linux that I?m frankly not that interested in, and that?s fine."
Who's editing content for Cisco? At the time I hit the link this was displayed at the bottom:
if (_sv==10){if (document.cookie.indexOf("CP=")!=-1){_ce="y";}els
Also, the document was posted twice. I hope most readers here realized this before they read the entire document 2 times.
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
You are a moron, but I don't hate you.
Ever take a look at that mess that is the windoze registry? /etc is great. You know where every program's config is, it's text, it's commented, you can reconfigure things through something as simple as a telnet session or as complex as a web interface. You actually prefer the windoze crap to that? Some people really are masochists, I guess.
I have to disagree on both points here. Outlook is a pretty nasty email client. I know, for a long time all my shining Linux examples were on the command line. No way my girlfriend is going to use mutt, though. Now, however, KMail is looking very good. The version shipped with Mandrake 8.1 is the best GUI mail client I've used yet.
As for VisualStudio, it's a bit clumsy. Try out Borland's Kylix for development on Linux. Borland's development tools have always been more consistent and easier to use than the Microsoft equivilents.
"Whatever can go wrong, will." --Finagle's Law
GNU/Linus, because Stallman says so.
Great storey comming from Cisco, secret abusers of the GPL.
Qick quiz
Where in a 6509 might you find a modified Linux Kernel and other GNU software
Here's what I've used, if it's any help:
Mandrake - friendly, commercial, pre-packaged Linux- Good: Easy to install, has more of a Windowsish "just works" effect - automatically installs KDE and looks very friendly. Uses RPMs so you'll find pre-packaged copies of most software.
- Bad: When you run out of GUI tools, you get very confused; you'll have to use the console eventually. Everyone and their dog use RPMs in their distro, so you'll find lots of RPMs with dependencies that don't make sense because they're depending on someone else's distro.
Debian - free distro developed by a non-profit organisationAt the moment I use Debian unstable. Draw your own conclusions...
You forgot one: There is no OS but Mac OS and Steve Jobs is its prophet.
Oh, wait. Mac OS zealots are constantly being 1) made fun of by everyone else, 2) told they are complete idiots, 3) reminded of that 95% operating system.
The truth is, passion for something one believes in is a good thing, regardless of what that something is. But fanatical devotion is when things can get bad.
I think Mac OS fanatics are a good example of how a fanatic should act. You tell others of why you think something is better, and argue to prove it. You don't kill people who you disagree with (as anti-abortionist fanatics do), punish teammates who "sympathize" with the "enemy" (as those RedHat fanatics did, and as government, and therefore society, does), or force your beliefs upon others (as every nation in power has done throughout history).
If only people were content to tell other people why they think something is great or better, and leave it at that.
"I think Mac OS is the best OS, and using it is its prophet," said the Mac OS, Windows, DOS, Solaris, Linux, and FreeBSD user.
But hate Windows, per se? Like most folks, I need to use it from time to time, and other Microsoft products. Some of them work well enough, none of them are worth hating.
Karl Fogel, author of The CVS Book, points out that open-source software is designed differently than closed source software. He makes many rather insightful observations in the odd numbered chapters (in the printed book) about how open-source software is different. I spent a few minutes searching for a couple great quotes... but saddly his text is heavily designed towards a tutorial and not a reference.
One of the really important differences is that open-source software is designed to expose to the user a good conceptual model of how it works and what it's really doing internally. Perhaps this is because the author of the code also designs the user interface, but it's often times done this way so that users can understand the inner workings of the program, at least in a conceptual way, and perhaps become involved in the coding. (Karl's CVS book is well worth the money for the chapters that aren't downloadable if you're interested in the reasons for these sort of design issues)
Now some might argue that users are better off on a "need to know" basis, and the point of software is to bundle up all algorithms so the user doesn't need to worry about them. People who feel this way probably like closed source software quite a bit and it seems likely they would be uncomfortable using many open source programs.
Personally, I quite like having a deeper understanding of what software is really doing. Sometimes I don't bother to read the finer details, but it's nice to know that they are there and available should I want to know. It's empowering to have that sort of information readily available (as well as the source code itself) should I have questions or run into complex problems. It is more work than calling some tech support number, but investing the time to read about and learn what is really going on almost always leads to better solutions that some lame tech support help desk could provide, and (at least for me) I end up with a better long-term knowledge base.
After many years, particularly in the modern age of thriving open/free software, it's easy to get very used to this sort of openness, where the source is provided, and the design of the program and its documentation is such that you can really learn and understand what it's really doing. It's easy to get used to having command line switches or config files where you can really control things, and documentation that explains not just the "what", but also the "how" and "why" behind the configurable parameters.
It really does become easy to hate closed software, where the innards are some proprietary secret. It becomes easy to truely hate the overall design of "no servicable parts inside", where you get only a few simple dialog boxes to choose only a couple basic parameters, and even the "advanced" dialogs don't really provide access to really control much. It's easy to hate documentation which is a giant inventory of the radio buttions and check boxes, with simple brain-dead descriptions of each that would have been obvious, without any information about how the software really works.
That is the reason I hate Microsoft Windows "per se". Actually, Windows itself isn't so bad... you can actually learn quite a bit about how it works internally (I have a couple good books on the topic), and there are lots of good 3rd party tools that can give access to much of the internal workings. Still, it is the overall closed design that I personally hate about much of the world's closed source software.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
On Slashdot of all places. I?m tired of seeing it elsewhere. This is the last place I thought I would have to...
Was I just trolled by Hemos? How foolish.
The man has no opinion about anything. What a wimp!
How does he decide what's for dinner???
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
*chuckle*
It's like telling a buddhist that Budda was just a man. No one wants to believe it.
I feel so priviledged that my first "Troll" vote came because I attacked a self-proclaimed god in the industry (he did say "I am your god.").
All I have to say is if you can't take the truth, then don't come here looking for it.
Anyone care to "flamebait" vote me here? I'm waiting =).
SL33ZE - Artificial Intelligence is No Match For Natural Stupidity -
The Buddha was an omnipotent superbeing you worm-like vermin! He's gonna come and kick your ass!
Privileged is spelt without a 'd'.
Yours,
A Buddhist.
I have to be pedantic and say that a crowd can not be hypocritical as it is not a singular entity. A group my have differing opinions, especially when they lack a clearly defined objective and accept any and all for members.
Physicists are said to stand on one another's shoulders while programmers stand on one another's toes.
Wow, that really is insighful. We Americans seem to be mono-moniaclically delusional about everything:
- There is no car but Ford, and Henry is its prophet.
- There is no kitchen tool but the food processor and Quisonart is its prophet.
- There is no underwear but tightey-whiteys and Hanes is its prophet.
Gee, hold on why I sell my car, throw out my kitchen utensils and buy all new underwear. I never knew these were religious issues.
-Erik
I'm with you. malkovitch malkovitch -- the single greatest scene in movie history.
No, that's the Lutherans.
The catholics are drinking Lord Calvert.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Thank you. I would have felt somehow unfulfilled without having someone correct my jumbled spelling. Here I am trying to learn spanish and portuguese and I can't even get my native language right.
=)
SL33ZE - Artificial Intelligence is No Match For Natural Stupidity -
... And I spelled Buddha wrong in the first post too...
You failed to point that out. If you reely want two do spel chex on my pozt then plez do it thorohlee.
Thanx.
SL33ZE - Artificial Intelligence is No Match For Natural Stupidity -
This interview originally aired back in May. Cisco has posted an edited transcript of the original interview.
Linux may be better than Windows at some points, but I wouldn't refer to it as technically superiour.
But this does not change the fact that the public should know about Microsoft the company:
But I wouldn't expect this to come from an interview with Linus, this is not really his domain, and he would be too biased anyway...
You don't have to be meek to be professional. And if someone spouts a load of crap, it's not the "professional" thing to shut up and ignore it and pretend it's true.
I did not say that Linus created GNU/Linux - I just said he created the OS. I tried to phrase it simply for newbies (Win98 is just the kernel and Explorer is the OS? What?! or OK, so Microsoft is the shell and Windows is the OS, because Gnu made Linux right? :) )
--joshua