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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.

7 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 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. 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.

  5. 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


  6. 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!