Interview with Havoc Pennington of Red Hat

JigSaw writes "OSNews published an interview with Havoc Pennington, the head manager of Red Hat's Desktop department, also known for his freedesktop.org initiative and his very active/leading role in Gnome. Havoc discusses the internal changes on Red Hat, the future of the desktop version of Red Hat Linux, the XFree86 fork Xoutert, GTK+ and Gnome while he characteristically says regarding Linux eating UNIX's marketshare: '...nails are firmly in the UNIX coffin, and it's just a matter of time.'"

Comments

This reminds me...

[PakProtector]

...somewhat of the time I said DOS was dead, soon to be replaced by OS/2 Warp... ...Well, not quite. But isn't it premature to predict the death of such a venerable OS?

Re:This reminds me...

[zakezuke]

I must admit, i'm a little confused by this. You can say that MS-Dos is dead as no one is developing for it anymore. In fact the last DOS version i'm aware of was IBMs PC-dos 2000, which to be honest I never saw.

You could say that it was killed by the more advanced operating systems of last decade of the 10th century. This would be fair and reasonable.

But Unix being dead... that seems a bit of a leap. It seems to me that development for Linux is actually helpful in keeping Unix alive. There are still a vast number of applications distributed for specific flavors of unix that are offered in their binary form only, and OSS seems to be damn fucking useful in keeping these systems up to date and useable.

UNIX is dying?

[Dancin_Santa]

I don't think you can seriously say that UNIX is dying and say that Linux is killing it. Linux IS UNIX.

Unless you are trying to say that commercial UNIX systems are losing ground to Linux, it simply doesn't make sense to make such a false distinction between UNIX and Linux. They are one and the same.

Re:UNIX is dying?

[MoralHazard]

Wha happen? You HAVE to be trolling. Come on--what?

Just because they both work with a BASH shell, they were both written in C, and they were both coded and championed by a geek clique don't make them both UNIX. Or are we going to say that BeOS is UNIX, too? Or how about Win2K with Cygwin? That looks a lot like UNIX, so it must be.

Can anyone believe this was at 5 (insightful)?

Re:UNIX is dying?

[godders]

Well what's generally accepted as "Linux" these days is actually correctly referred to as GNU/Linux.

UNIX / LINUX

[Manos Batsis]

Geeeez, lets get some things even I know straight:

• Linux is (in a way) derived from UNIX, so UNIX is not getting dead any time soon
• Linux is not as mature as the UNIXes used in demanding production environments, so UNIX is not getting dead any time soon
• UNIX is not getting dead any time soon

Not that I have a bad attitude, but...

[MoralHazard]

I really, really doubt that all of these efforts to push Linux onto the desktop will tend to attract more "developer"-type users, as opposed to more "user"-type users.

New developer-users make contributions, bug fixes, and give intelligent feedback on problems and solutions. Your secretary, on the other hand, will probably not be much use when it comes to putting out bug reports. So I'm not all that excited by Redhat's ever-onward desire to convert the masses. Actually, I'm a little bit DIS-excited.

Nobody hassles a thing when it's a fringe-user, ubergeek phenomenon. There's a reason why SCO is fucking around with Linux and not the BSDs--Linux is getting popular and widespread enough now that slimeballs like D and the boyz see opportunities to milk it. Sure, it's nice that IBM contributed all they did, but it wasn't a free ride.

(Not that the BSDs are dying, or anything--give them another couple of years, and maybe they'll get sued by a huge mulitnational... oh, wait.)

I'm NOT saying that it's a bad thing that more people use Linux, just that the next 10,000 users of RH's pre-packaged, duh-whats-a-compiler will be substantially less of a pure good thing for MY Linux experience than the the first 1,000 kernel contributors were. Even if nobody else whips out a lawsuit for a while (knock wood), the new luser influx will be at least temporarily troubling until people start getting up to speed. Go check out what's happened to the Samba listserv, if you don't know what I mean--I unsub'd entirely because of the 1:100 ratio of {sensible questions|useful answers} to droolers who can't find a fucking man page, let alone a step-by-step HOWTO.

I swear, if Redhat ever actually gets into the black, I'm switching to Apple, stat. Fuck market share--I want something where nobody will bother me with free tech support requests.

Re:Not that I have a bad attitude, but...

[Illbay]

So I'm not all that excited by Redhat's ever-onward desire to convert the masses. Actually, I'm a little bit DIS-excited.

So in other words, "user"-users like me aren't really welcome when it comes to Linux, because we won't "make Linux better" through code-contribution and timely bug reports?

Um, may I ask what is the raison d'etre for any operating system?

Following your logic, no one but automobile designers should be allowed to drive automobiles.

Re:Not that I have a bad attitude, but...

[IamTheRealMike]

I'm NOT saying that it's a bad thing that more people use Linux, just that the next 10,000 users of RH's pre-packaged, duh-whats-a-compiler will be substantially less of a pure good thing for MY Linux experience than the the first 1,000 kernel contributors were

What an incredibly arrogant attitude. I am not a kernel hacker, and if I can avoid it, probably never will be. When I first started using Linux, I didn't know C, yet today I hack on Wine, which is used by a metric ton of people, and am busy writing and designing autopackage, which from the feedback we're getting seems to be something that people want. It'll make it easier for luser types to use Linux.

Oh, and guess what. I use Red Hat 9, because I prefer getting stuff done to dicking about with my WM configuration. So sue me.

By your logic, I should never have been allowed in, because these people might *gasp* hassle you for tech support.

Let me make you aware of something. If it weren't for those legions of "lusers" out there, buying their Dell PCs and surfing MSN with Internet Explorer, it's highly unlikely most of us could afford a PC at all. The only reason I can have my own computer is because I can put together a decent little box for less than 500, and the only reason I can do that is because economies of scale caused by mass market acceptance make it cheap for me.

If those people didn't use computers, there would be no mass market, no economies of scale, and I wouldn't have a computer at all! I'd never have been able to learn C, hack Wine or write my software.

So, feel free to spit and vilify people who don't match up to your supposed guru-ness (though I really doubt you are as good a developer as you think you are), I for one will continue to enjoy cheap hardware and free software, and I won't bitch when newbies ask me questions. That's fair game, in my books.

Re:You are wrong...

[botzi]

duh-whats-a-compiler will be substantially less of a pure good thing for MY Linux experience than the the first 1,000 kernel contributors were.

You forgot that the developers are those that give birth and educate, but it's the users that become close lifetime friends. The people who use a software(even on some profan level) certainly are not so useful for the products development as the programmers team, but are crucial to its survival. A product will die without its users and gaining a larger user DB can not be a bad thing.

Havoc Pennington has the right idea

[connect4]

Desktop standards are critical to Linux achieving greater desktop market share.

ISP: Hello?

Mom & Dad: Hi, I can't connect. I'm having trouble getting the modem to dial . . .

ISP: Ok, whaddya got? A Mac? Some kind of windows?

Mom & Dad: Uh, yeah . . . it's a PC

ISP: Ok, click on "start" in the bottom left hand corner of the desktop . . . . .

Mom & Dad: Um . . . I can't see start, there's like a "red hat / footprint / dinosaur" in the "bottom left / bottom right corner.

ISP: OK, we only support mac and windows, right. Bye now.

-Click-

The issue in this example is that tech-savvy call centre staff with no more than thirty minutes training can be expected to support mac and windows dialups over the phone. But until the same can be done for Linux, ISPs (for example) will never support it. This is a big barrier to Linux take-up by "Mom & Dad" type users. Standardising (across distros) things like the location of the pppd configuration would allow (again, for the sake of this example) ISPs to provide quick training to staff on how to support Linux users.

Things like this are great for Linux penetration, 'cause when someone rings their ISP saying "My computer won't start up properly, it states that ntoskrnl is missing, and I don't have the CD or windows key", rather than saying "too bad call back when you have the CD", the ISP support staff can prod these "Mom & Dad" users in the direction of Linux. Not possible when the ISPs position is that Linux can't be supported and staff who try are wasting company time.

Re:Havoc Pennington has the right idea

[Azghoul]

Not to pick on your nice thought, but if I put Linux on Mom & Dad's machine, you can be sure they'll be calling ME when something goes 'wrong', not the ISP.

In fact, if your parents don't call you already, even with their Windows questions, you must suck. Or be a bad child.

I hope they standardize.

[anonymous coword]

Gnome and KDE can't merge, but they can unify some of their interfaces. Here, in my opinion is what they need to do, which don't appear to be on freedesk yet.

• Ditch the Foot/K-gear and replace it with a standard menu button, something like start but better.
• Unify font/color configuartion. So when I choose green with arial size 12 on KDE my gtk programs comply too.
• Common shortcuts. For example, to open a tab on Konqueror you have to press ctrl+shift+n while mozilla and freinds use ctrl+t, Konqueror should switch to ctrl+t!
• Standards for icons/emblems/backgrounds
• Unified help/control system (man and /etc don't count), we need to be using gconf&scrollkeeper!
• STANDRARD BUTTON ORDER! THIS THE MOST IMPORTANT! And make it easy to switch. People usually say yes or no! Not no or yes in real life.

Re:Linux vs Unix

[Cro Magnon]

Maybe, but until recently if you needed SMP, BSD wasn't even an option! If you need support for the latest hardware BSD may not be an option. For many people Linux IS better than BSD!