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.""

Comments

Linus, always a classy guy...

[moniker_21]

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.

More Edison than Rockefeller?

[Jonathan]

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.

Re:More Edison than Rockefeller?

[sheldon]

http://www.theelectricchair.com/history.htm

"Edison's strategy was to convince everyone that Westinghouse's AC current was unsafe. He hired scientists to travel around and give public demonstrations of this by electrocuting cats, dogs, and horses with AC current. His ultimate victory came with New York State's switch from hanging to the electric chair, which was, of course, powered by a Westinghouse AC generator."

Edison wasn't really that great of a scientist, he was just exceptionally good at marketing his ideas and himself.

Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, Edison... all great men, but ruthless as hell. Gates certainly follows in all of their footsteps.

Re:Sad, yet true

[martinflack]

A non-techie will never figure out the mess that is /etc. Until there are applets and/or wizards for every single file in /etc, Linux will not be ready for prime time.

I, on the other hand, dread the day that there is a wizard for every /etc file.

There are a couple trends I hate about GUI config, and certainly not all config programs are guilty of this, but I have noticed all of these "in the wild" at certain times:

• When the GUI config tool is intended as the primary configurator, and the actual config file is in XML or binary, or documentation on the commands is sparse.
• When the GUI config tool completely overwrites the existing configuration to achieve it's functions instead of reading in the existing file and delicately changing just the lines needed. (linuxconf is guilty of this, especially to the sendmail setup where it practically takes over.)

Although nobody has made one that I've seen, I'd love to see a configurator that has the original text config file in a window pane below or beside the main options panel, and update it as options are changed, so you can see the actual commands and what is being changed. Maybe even color highilight the changed lines. That would rock.

What we need to do is start a project which will create these applets, with a consistant look and feel, which will appear in a control panel when an app is installed.

We don't need to _start_ anything, just join one of the existing projects if you want to help: linxuconf, gnomecc, webmin, etc.

Re:Its the squeeky wheel that gets the most attent

[truesaer]

You sound like the only point of Linux is to get rid of Microsoft. I think you've just proved his point. There are two schools of thought on Linux. Either its "I want to develop Linux into a really cool and useful operating system," or "I want to use Linux to destroy Microsoft."

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.

Re:Bah ... it *proves* that he cares

[FFFish]

Or it could be the way of Aikido.

In Aikido, you don't try to destroy your opponent by bashing hell out of him.

You destroy him by aligning with him, turning so that you face the same direction, allowing him throw himself using his own momentum. All you do is facilitate his action. He does all the work.

it's rather like bullfighting, I suppose. Only a fool would take the bull head-on. Rather, what's done is to let the bull pass by.

Of course, the matador then goes and sticks the bull full of spears. Linus, I think, is more subtle: he's slowly moving toward the wall. One of these times, the bull is going to run into that wall.

Which makes for an oddly appropriate metaphor, given that I'm really refering to Windows. Can't have a Window without a wall...

(And I suppose I could, if I worked at it, get in some bull-in-china-shop and stones-glass-houses stuff...)