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Marcelo Tosatti on UnitedLinux (And More)
PDAJames writes "There's a new interview with Marcelo Tosatti online. He talks about what it's like to be kernel maintainer after nine months on the job and identifies the biggest problems with the kernel now. He also defends UnitedLinux against Mandrake's criticism. He would, since he works for Conectiva..."
what some hippie dago has to say.
K tnx!
Interview with some Linux freeloader fuckwit. Oh this has made my day complete. Really. No really.
Roadkill is yummy.
is that Microsoft beats it on the desktop, as show yesterday.
The new Linux kernel maintainer speaks to ZDNet UK about opportunities for Linux in applications big and small, and explains why UnitedLinux is a good idea
Marcelo Tosatti, a Brazilian developer working for Linux distributor Conectiva, took over maintenance of the current "stable" Linux kernel, version 2.4, last autumn. He took over from Alan Cox, a major figure in the Linux community and long-time maintainer.
In an interview with ZDNet UK, Tosatti talked about his daily job of applying kernel patches from all around the Internet, the way ahead for Linux and his US visa problems.
Q: Are things much more difficult for you as a programmer now that you're maintaining the kernel?
A: It was much, much easier (before). Because before I could say, oh, I want to do this, or I have to do this. I could work on one area (of the kernel). Now I receive one page which touches VM, and then the next page which I read two minutes later touches on ACPI, and the next page touches on drivers. So I can't really have a mindset any more, because I have to work on so many different things. It's very difficult.
How are things different now that you've been on the job for about nine months?
It's less stressful. At the beginning I was not used to doing interviews, and I had like ten a day. So I was like, what is going on? Now I'm used to it.
Do you still try and find time to work on other projects?
Yes. There are some things that I thought I could work more, but I realised I couldn't. I couldn't hack too much any more. I need to do more boring things, to be more methodical. Because it's really keeping the thing working, it's not anything exciting.
It's not like working on 2.5 (the development kernel).
Yeah, that kind of thing is really sexy.
Why did you want to take on the role of kernel maintainer?
I don't know... A new experience. To try something new.
I just received this Linus email... The thing was really weird. I just got an email one day. There was an email from Linus to Alan saying: "You don't want to be maintainer any more, so who do you suggest?" Alan says, "Marcelo or Andrew Morton." And Linus says, "Oh, I'm OK with it." Then they fired off the message to me. I answered yes.
Do you think you realised how much work it would be?
No! At the time I answered that mail, no. It's a lot of work but it's worth it.
Alan Cox stuck with the role of kernel maintainer for several years. Do you see yourself remaining in the role for as long?
No, not for such a long time. I don't know if Linus is OK with me maintaining 2.5. He probably is. But, I'm willing to maintain 2.6, and after that I want to do some more hacking.
What are the biggest challenges of the job?
Making the right decision. It's really difficult. I mean, some stuff is really non-obvious. Sometimes you have a bug and you have a bug fix which looks obvious, but it may introduce lots of other problems, so you have to be really careful.
Because it's the stable (kernel). You have a responsibility. It's easy to go and do stuff, but when you think of the number of people who are working on this, who are using Linux, then you realise, OK, I need to be really careful. And that is challenging, for me at least.
What are the main issues with the kernel at the moment?
With VM (virtual memory) on high-end machines, we have some problems. We have IDE problems too. Some chipsets are corrupting data, which I'm really worried about. IDE and VM are the big issues.
Do you see the increasing size of the kernel as an issue -- in other words, kernel bloat?
Kind of. It isn't necessarily a big issue... If you have several drivers, that's alright, you can have a lot of them. Things are layered. You have the core, and then you have the drivers down there. So if this (the drivers) bloats, it's not as bad as if the core bloats. We have to make sure the core does not bloat.
The number of drivers will increase, and that is a problem. Because, for example, when you change an API you have to change all the drivers and you kind of cope with that. You have to deal with all of the drivers because you have to support a large amount of hardware.
What is the hack you're most proud of?
VM performance hacks really. VM and processor hacks.
When you go back to hacking, will you go back to VM?
No, because I've already worked on that for a long time, so I want to do something different. For 2.5, if I have time, which I don't think I will, I wanted to do some SCSI subsystem and some things for the high upper end, high availability.
There are a lot of potentially clashing personalities in the Linux world. How do you deal with them?
I just try to be as technical as possible. It is very important to me... People do not use the right words some of the time. Starting a fight is really easy. But instead of saying, for example, "You are full of shit," you can just say, "I don't think you are really right." You have to use the right words.
But that is not a terrible problem in my opinion. Just using the right words and trying to be nice to people.
It's just technology, so why do these clashes come up, do you think?
Because people are there. Egos show up.
What do you see as the big opportunities for Linux at the moment?
We are getting into a lot of markets. Embedded is a really big market and I guess people don't realise how big it is. You could have Linux in a camera mounted on the wall over there. It's everywhere. So it's a really big market. And it's a really big challenge, because it's really hard and complex to work with this stuff in my opinion.
And the enterprise is a big market, a big opportunity for us. Linux could be moving much more deeply into the enterprise. And the desktop. Linux is growing in the enterprise very quickly but not so quickly on the desktop.
A study with an anti-Linux slant recently implied that you can tell Linux is buggy because of all the patches that vendors distribute. What's your take on this?
That's a false assumption. It depends on what's being patched. It might just be a minor patch. And it shows we're doing our job. No piece of software is perfect. The patches just show that we're correcting the problems that always exist. If Microsoft could do this they would have much more updates than we have, because their software is much bigger than ours. So I think this anti-Linux assumption is just nonsense.
Red Hat, SuSE and others have started to release servers tailored to the enterprise, which have fewer updates and are much more controlled. What do you make of this new direction?
I think there's a need for that. Enterprises don't want there to be so many changes, they don't want to be applying patches all the time, so it makes sense to have a version that doesn't change so much.
Your company, Conectiva, recently joined with three others to standardise on a single distribution called UnitedLinux. MandrakeSoft has criticised the move, saying that UnitedLinux has no technical reason to exist, and is purely market consolidation. What's your response?
It is more a business issue. In fact it is completely a business issue. But it is better this way, because it reduces the number of big commercial distributions down to about two, really.
Certification is one of the biggest issues. For ISVs it's incredibly expensive to have to certify their software for every distribution. Somebody like Oracle has to test its software on every distribution to make sure it works. So this makes it a lot easier for ISVs.
MandrakeSoft implied that distributions and ISVs could simply certify for the Linux Standards Base (LSB), instead of for UnitedLinux or Red Hat or whatever.
That doesn't really work, because there are a lot of things that aren't covered by the LSB. You can't just certify for the LSB.
What are the challenges ahead for Linux?
We need to get ordinary people used to using Linux. It isn't that it's so hard to use, it's just different. People say Linux is hard to install, but if you gave somebody Windows and had them install it, not everybody would be able to do that.
There are some simple problems that non-technical users might have with Linux, such as installing new software, or finding certain files that they need in the system. What's the solution to that?
With things like installing software, I don't know. There are just some things you have to know to use a computer. It's the same with Windows. There are some people already working on this, like Mandrake. Everybody is working on this, in fact. Maybe they aren't pushing hard enough.
Do you see the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) as a problem for Linux developers? Would you, like Alan Cox, avoid going to the US because of it?
The DMCA is a big issue. But it doesn't affect Linux developers so much. For the DVD rippers, though, it's a big problem.
I wouldn't avoid going into the US because of the DMCA, but I can't go there anyway. I went into the US for business on a B1 tourist visa, by mistake. I've been doing it for a long time, I never thought about it. They turned me away, I had to turn around and fly back. Before they always let me into the country on this visa, but after 11 September they're more paranoid.
It's not a big deal, with the B2 (business) visa you just have to pay $40. But now I can't go into America.
How are things different now that you've been on the job for about nine months? It's less stressful. At the beginning I was not used to doing interviews, and I had like ten a day. So I was like, what is going on? Now I'm used to it
It's not like working on 2.5 (the development kernel). Yeah, that kind of thing is really sexy.
I'm glad to see that hard-hitting interviews are still around and I'm even happier to see that the answers are raw and uncut. This interview hit on everything that I wanted to know about kernel development including how sexy the 2.5 kernel is. Yay.
How are things in the civilized world? You probably don't know who I am. That's
;).
okay. I'm here to inform you of my mission, what I've found, and what I hope to
teach all of you.
I work for the United Christians Food for Poor Kids Foundation, and let me tell
you, there's a lot of poor kids in Afghanistan. As in most countries in the
Middle East, most people are unemployed, and therefore poor. And where there's a
lot of poor people, UCFPKF is needed.
UCFPKF always has the latest in technology. In this instance, we had access to
some Pentium 4's(r) 2GHz. Obviously, we needed an operating system that could
handle the power of Intel's beast. Unfortunately, we didn't have any computer
experts on hand up to the task, so it was going to be trial and error.
We'd heard good things about Linux and its "ACL's". Little did we know of its
incompatibility with modern hardware. It didn't even support Token Ring
networking, the newest form of Ethernet(r), which we require to always keep
in contact between bases. Also, it didn't seem to use SSE optimizations, which
when processing food amounts, are also very important. Also, there were
homo-erotic implications in the structure of Linux, which is strictly
unallowable in a Christian organization such as ours.
The next obvious step was to install Windows. We hesitated because we knew that
it was common knowledge that Windows crashed incessantly. Our experience was
less than stellar. It also didn't support Token Ring networking. Security is
important in this region because many people try to steal food, but "Windows
2000" (which I hear didn't even come out in 2000) doesn't even allow you to
have seperate permissions. Once again, the SSE optimizations were not used.
I was in a situation that seemed impossible. The two most famous operating
systems had failed me. I walked around the base in a dazed stupor. What was I
going to do for our ultra-important network? A boy saw me pouting and sighing,
and asked me what was wrong. I said nothing, but we exchanged names, and little
did I know, that young Junis had a gift for computers.
Junis saw me the next day, slaving away at the sparse terminal that "Windows
2000" makes you type in. He asked what I was doing with that primitive OS. I
laughed and told him that I was doing inventory. He ran to his village, into his
hut, and pulled out a box I had never seen before. The box said "SCO Xenix" the
front. I had never seen or heard of this Xenix before. But I soon learned that
Junis was a computer genius.
All we had to do was put the Xenix CD into the computer, and everything worked
like magic (not the devil's magic... good magic:) ). Our Token Ring network
integrated flawlessly with it. And it even used SSE optimizations. Well, me and
Junis are now on a new mission. We're spreading the word. It might not be the
word of the lord, but then again, maybe it is
SCO Xenix: The Unix of Tomorrow.
Janet Milman
Network Administrator, UCFPKF
Afghanistan base
- poopbot: news for turds, stuff that splatters
It's not like working on 2.5 (the development kernel).
;)
Yeah, that kind of thing is really sexy.
Marcelo is a kernelophile! He should be locked up for having feelings like towards kernels!
Yes, I know it from the submitter (not an editor), but it's still a dumb comment.
Just because you're an employee doesn't mean that you can't have opinions and express them. If anything, I'd think an employee of a company dealing with Open Source software would be more likely to express dissatisfaction when warranted. I suppose PDAJames (the submitter) only says nice things about the company he works for?
8 posts so far, all but one are trolls. What a good day this is turning out to be :D
Roadkill is yummy.
There are some simple problems that non-technical users might have with Linux, such as installing new software, or finding certain files that they need in the system. What's the solution to that?
Why do people keep insisting on asking kernel maintainers questions that only related to user level apps? What's the point? That's like asking the Gaim team about the newest block device code.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
devloperWorks has this interview with Marcello from March. Ignore the Java exceptions :)
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Although I am Mandrake/SuSe/RedHat user, I still find each distro great in their own individual way. I think United Linux offers an interesting solution to the bigwigs (Red Hat, and Mandrake on a lessser scale) but it will be tough for them especially when RH/Drake have both the server / desktop markets in their palms.
But we all know that things can change in a 90 degree turn on a day, i.e. Sega Saturn vs. PS, Genesis vs. SNES, OS9 vs. OSX, etc...
Only time will tell.
I think that he has made some good points about the value of UnitedLinux. It's nice having all the choice when selecting your distro, but for software companies writing for linux systems has to make sure that they can run on all distros is certainly an expensive undertaking.
And I think that pushing embedded linux is also an excellent point. It is a marked that linux can take over (unlike the current desktop).
I was disapointed he didn't talk to much about linux on the desktop, and what his views are about where/how to proceed. Anyone know of other interviews of his where he mentioned them?
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
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Attorney of Intellectual Property and Copyright,
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I miss by weekly Linux Kernel update... Those stories and the dicsussion really added to the excitment surrounding Linux...
Actually, can we get meaningful and interesting stories here... The last two days have really sucked.
I ain't trolling... Just tired of UnitedLinux, wait until they accomplish something rather then just talking...
Tournament Management Online &
FUCK United Linux.
And fuck you too, if you're a supporter of it. Death to Ransom Love, Al Qaeda style!
This bit really stood up, IMO:
And it could not be explained any more simply than that.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
-12 days till LNUX gets delisted.
Q: What do retired employees and computers from after Jan 1st 2000 have in common?
A: They both don't work!
That joke and many more can be found in The Y2K Jokebook , one of the fine books on amazon.com that I have purchased.
What's up, Doc?
I just try to be as technical as possible. It is very important to me... People do not use the right words some of the time. Starting a fight is really easy. But instead of saying, for example, "You are full of shit," you can just say, "I don't think you are really right." You have to use the right words.
Slashdot could learn a lot from this guy.
He said he got turned back at the border once for having a B1 visa when he needed a B2, and now he can't go back. What's the deal here? Is he banned for life?
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Is this a permanent condition? And is there any way to appeal this? Contact INS or our local representatives?
I understand the government's paranoia post-911, but this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
It's funny, laugh.
Hey I am not a programmer but this doesn't seem to be the most efficient way of doing things? Has this efficiency question ever been raised??? enlighten me linux hackers
***I GOT NUTHIN***
So, totally off topic, but how come Gene Kan's death hasn't been mentioned in the normal geek places until only in the last few days? Or did I just miss something? Google Search
what a waste of a so-called 'article'. Does anyone care what this slackjawed sodomite has to say?
...you are really right.
United Linux leaves a open door for .gov infection, personally with all the win backdoors i cannot see this as a good thing in the new age of aggregate information gathering.
We have IDE problems too. Some chipsets are corrupting data, which I'm really worried about.
Linux: Ready for the Desktop.
No offense to Marcelo, 2.4.18 was a great release.. but I honestly think Andrew Morton would have been a better choice for maintainer. The delay between 2.4.18 and 2.4.19 has been several months long - a few months is acceptable because of the IDE changes, but this is just a bit much. The time between pre-releases has been too long recently as well - the longer between each pre, the more changes that are made between them == less testing of the changes seperately.
(Yes, I know all the arguments about how it is a "stable" series and all - but some people want new features, and 2.5 is not an option, thanks to IDE being 0wned by Martin).
This is _NOT_ a troll.
He also defends UnitedLinux against Mandrake's criticism. He would, since he works for Conectiva...
Marcelo was polite and reasonable throughout the interview, and gave clear reasons for his position. What's with the bitchy editorialising?
> He would, since he works for Conectiva...
That's fine, work that remark in there, but maybe you should have thought about the fact that Conectiva is essentially supporting the guy maintaining the kernel...what, are you going to pay him to do the job? Are you going to quit your job or work the hours to do it for free?
Why was the parent post modded up? Not unless there is truth to the rumor of massive homosexuality at Dirty GNU/Linux websites. Must be something in that Lunix OS.
I have been all over the place looking for a linux distro to use, and a distro that does everything I want it do do. I started off with redhat 3 years ago, suse, slackware, redhat again, jblinux (http://www.jblinux.net), and now debian. Debian is the best distro, ever. If I am going to think about changing one more time it will have to be Gentoo. Can anyone please tell me what will make UnitedLinux so special?
In the interview, Tosatti brings up how careful you have to be when patching the "stable" kernel due to the number of people using it. He later declairs that UnitedLinux "is completely a business issue." Yet, the UnitedLinux v1.0 specifications makes technical decisions involving major patches like the inclusion of IPSEC support. Since FreeSwan is the most mature implimentation of IPSEC, one can only assume FreeSwan will be filling this part of the specification when the final release of UnitedLinux comes out later this year.
So... if FreeSwan is technically ready for UnitedLinux and the four Linux distributors involved then why not just add FreeSwan into the main v2.4 code?
"he would" is to marcelo as "they wouldn't" is to slashdot...
Considering they have not mentioned that VA had a downsizing and ousted their CEO.
Hello, AC, you big wuss you,
It's perfectly valid to make the point that he has an interest in promoting United Linux, since he does work for Conectiva.
There are ways and ways, my son. "He would, since he works for Conectiva" suggests that Marcelo is incapable of making a technical case for UnitedLinux. This is far from the truth. By all means point out the connection, but lets not dismiss anybody's opinions merely on the basis of who their employer is.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Attitute? I suck at this.
See, I'm even disagreeing with myself! Point proven.
"Informative" my ass. When was the last time ZDNet couldn't handle a little slashdotting? Quit stealing their ad revenue.
-davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
This is going to destroy Microsoft
Say Good Bye to the Evil Empire!
FreeBSD already has had a stable high-performance VM for years now. Why waste any more man years of effort with this NIH syndrome?
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!
Debian is still putting out stale kernels.
Because most people don't know the difference between Linux, the kernel and a Linux distribution. The concept is alien to them because of their upbringing. This includes mainstream journalists who know nothing other than Microsoft and Apple.
What are the challenges ahead for Linux?
We need to get ordinary people used to using Linux. It isn't that it's so hard to use, it's just different. People say Linux is hard to install, but if you gave somebody Windows and had them install it, not everybody would be able to do that.
Not true, windows is easy to install and has fail safes and no dead locks, linux has BAD interfaces regarding PARTITIONING and bad help/feedback/error detection. THere are some badass interface errors there (redhat).
Sure its a lot easier than it used to be, but it still needs refinement, and give the user more confidence and not assume they know all terminologies, but windows isnt harder.
With linux I always think to my self, "god i hope it works", with windows its, "allright hurry up, get it completed" - im more confident it wont stuff up in Windows (latest,xp)
He has trouble getting into USA, see this is the precise thing why usa is so fuggered up!
Surely an intelligent/risk assesment will see that big deal, a guy used a tourist visa for business purposes, whoooppdi dooo! what a disaster to security.... this aint Nazi germany. He is not going to do anything. America is full of millions of criminals any way, any 'tourists' at least spend money. If X person is a threat inside USA, then why not arrest them in their home country, if they are a 100% good citizen in the home country being in EU or AU, then thats good enough.
Typical usa , letting in bad-ass people faking their way in, but honest good people with silly mistakes and BANG, KLINED/BANNED from entry.
I often see GOOD linux related stories or techy news, that totally gets missed by $loshDOT, often its new for IT workers thats perhaps not boring and sensationlistic.
Only 25% of the stories are 'stuff that matters'
Each story needs a VOTE/POLL to ask
"Does this story matter??? yes/no" to guage if it was useless.
Oh the editors, so many mistakes/miss quotes/spelling mistakes.
What are they doing? posting at 3am after 12 beers?