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Linus Moves To OSDL, Will Work On Kernel Full-Time

Posted by timothy on from the send-linus-more-penguins-for-his-desk dept.

worldwideweber writes "With the announcement of the release of the 2.5.72 version of the Linux kernel came the news that Linus Torvalds will be leaving Transmeta for OSDL to work on the linux kernel full-time. The email calls this a leave of absence for about one year." Update: 06/17 17:19 GMT by T : As many readers have pointed out, the length of Linus' leave is not actually specified in this email.

15 of 400 comments (clear)

  1. This comes at a surprising time... by greppling · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...as he is just about to hand over maintenance of 2.5/2.6 to Andrew Morton. So maybe he actually hopes to do some hacking again, instead of just integrating other peoples' work. Cool!

    1. Re:This comes at a surprising time... by chabotc · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually if you break ./ tradition and read the article, you'll notice it says "I do not expect a huge amount of change as a result, testament to just /how/ freely Transmeta has let me do Linux work"

      The motivation he gives for the move seems to involve more around "Transmeta has always been very good at letting me spend even an inordinate amount of time on Linux, but as a result I've been feeling a little guilty at just how little "real work" I got done lately"

      If anything, if he's switching desks and work envirioment, it'll slow him down for a little bit to get settled in again

    2. Re:This comes at a surprising time... by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The actual rumors are that he is going to spearhead the jump to the 3.0 kernel...

      A major rewrite is rumored to be in store for linux to give us some features that other OS's only dream of.

      But these are purely the wil rumors that are running around and I give no credibility to.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  2. Re:Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was looking at transmeta based notebooks, couldn't seem to find one that shipped without windowsXP. Hands up anybody who thinks this strange.

  3. Guy is crazy! by OpenSourced · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Leaving his new, shiny, recently minted e-mail address in the open like that, with all the nasty spammers that prowl the wilderness. Poor, poor address. I notice that his "old" address is properly obscured, but the "new" one is not. Sad mistake :o(

    --
    Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
  4. Hmmm, SCO related? by LinuxGeek · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is this related to Transmeta wanting to distance themselves from Linux until the SCO bull$hit is resolved? Hopefully it will be quick, but I can't help but wonder what kind of ace SCO is holding in reserve. Even if they don't really have an ace, businesses seem to be preparing themselves for the possibility that SCO may win a partial victory.

    --

    Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
  5. Interesting timing. by Picass0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A year's leave also just happens to give him time where he could be an expert witness or consultant in certain legal matters.

  6. List poisoning clearification. by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Excuse my ignorance but what is List Poisoning?
    I feel like I should know this but I don't.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  7. Re:Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been critical of Transmeta for their hype-building. But one should give them credit for attempting a very tough feat: trying to build an x86 compatible CPU that is faster than both Intel and AMD. This is *not* easy. Particularly since they came on the scene right in the middle of particularly fierce AMD/Intel performance competition. They failed, so they repurposed their design for small power requirements, which is respectable and a reasonable attempt to recover the original investment. And now they find that beating ARM isn't that easy either, eh? Quelle surprise.

  8. Re:Yes, but... by minus9 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Nor could you say that linux was a stable OS. Stable, in the sense of Solaris or bsd, that is.

    Well it seems fairly stable.

    [root@www /root]# w
    2:43pm up 481 days, 22:46, 1 user, load average: 0.35, 0.34, 0.30
    [root@www /root]# uname -a
    Linux www 2.2.14-5.0smp #1 SMP Tue Mar 7 21:01:40 EST 2000 i686 unknown


  9. Re:Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... by samhalliday · · Score: 4, Interesting
    why bother with putting GNU/Linux on a laptop? i mean, we are all so fussy over which version of what-not we want anyway, that we'd just end up cfdisking it anyway... :-/

    the best you can ask for with a laptop is a ditributor who is prepared to sell it OS free, and knock a few £ (or $) off the asking price because of that.

  10. Re:Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... by dasunt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The nice thing about Linux/BSD (compared to Windows) is that for older laptops, Linux gets you more bang for the buck.

    I'm not sure what your typical laptop usage is for, but I tend to use my laptop for email, news, coding and light web browsing.

    Either I'm stuck with older windows OSes and unpatched software, or I can throw in a debian cd, install only what I need, and have a fast enough system for 90% of what I do.

  11. Re:Yes, but... by Saint+Stephen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The actual number of people maintaining the NT Kernel is comparable. The Kernel perf team (with whom I worked) is about 3 people. That total team responsible for the kernel is maybe 50 people -- similar #s for SQL Server.

    There are hordes of "evangelists" and "managers" surrounding the core team. But within the small core group, the personalities and philosphies of the NT team and the Linux folks are remarkably similar, with the minor exception that neither understands why the hell the other exists!

  12. Re:Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... by mj01nir · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yeah, especially when they came out with Midori and were touting embedded devices. Sadly, Midori hasn't been updated in almost two years. I still run it on my Compaq IA-1 and it does what I need it to do, but it would be nice to see some new features / updated packages.

    --
    the no .sig .sig
  13. Re:Linus: so thoughtful, human, and down to earth. by drix · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Time to brush up on your Ayn Rand and your ESR. Most open-source developers (including me) couldn't care less about "the benefit of everyone on earth", "the common good", or any of those other throwaway commie bromides. We're doing it to "scratch an itch"--either we want some software that doesn't currently exist, and the fastest way to make it exist is to fire up a project and harness the collborative power of the Internet; or we're intellectually attracted to some or another project that our day job doesn't let us touch on. Assuming we even code for a day job. It has way less to do with altruism than you make it sound. Humans are selfish.

    --

    I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.