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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.'"
Why is it that all interviews online are posted as question, answer, question, answer... Why not do what grown up journalists do and actually write something?
Because most online tech-site interviewers are *not* "grown up journalists," or even writers, and their operations are in fact run on shoe-string budgets which do not provide for in-person interviews. Consequently, when the interview is being conducted over the phone, through IM, or across several e-mail sessions, it's kinda tough to get a feel for what type of sofa upon which the interviewee is sitting.
Note, too, that most of the readers of tech-site interviews are not as discerning as you. They are looking for "news" or "answers" -- and quickly. No one browses OSNews in anticipation of savoring the linguistic bons mots of some proto-Hemingway.
Just imagine for a moment what might happen if Sun released some version of the Solaris kernel under the GPL.
Solaris is far more scalable than Linux; Linux would begin bleeding enterprise market share, and would probably never recover. Solaris doesn't seem to scale down very well, so it is probable that Linux would retain its embedded systems market share.
The moment that Linux becomes a real threat to the software environment of an E15k, I have to believe that Sun will do whatever is necessary to protect this segment.
Of course, the sooner that Sun does this, the sooner that the question of enterprise Linux is put to rest. Sun is probably dragging its feet because they don't want to see Solaris running on the HP Superdome (especially since HP is killing their own UNIX and thereby depressing sales). They already have to contend with Solaris running on Fujitsu Primepower (which are arguably better machines than an E15k), but I am convinced that eventually, Sun will have to level the playing field by truly opening the Solaris source.
In fact, if your parents don't call you already, even with their Windows questions, you must suck. Or be a bad child.
Or perhaps just someone with enough guts to put a foot down.
I finally got so sick and tired of doing tech support for family and friends that a couple of years ago I simply declared to them all, no more computer help for Microsoft products. I don't get paid for tech support, and Bill has too much money, so go bug him instead.
There was one person with a clue. My mother-in-law switched to Linux. I installed it for her and she finds it a pleasure to use compared to the constantly broken dozebox she sits in front of at work. It never has any significant problems, and when she does have the occasional question or concern it's a reasonable one that I can help her with.
Would she be able to compile a kernel? Shut up idiot, that's a stupid question. She doesn't have to. She turns it on and It Just Works (tm). And when the latest dozeworm comes wriggling across the wires, I don't have to drive 100 miles to her house to patch things up, because, like my own computers, hers is immune.
So yes, it's doable, and no, it doesn't mean you're a terrible friend or relative. Friends don't let friends use broken Microsoft products. And for that matter, true friends and family members don't try to press each other into involuntary servitude doing tech support.
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Just imagine for a moment what might happen if Sun released some version of the Solaris kernel under the GPL.
This is happening now, though not with Sun/Solaris... SGI's Altix handles up to 64 processors on a Linux kernel using the patches they release as opensource. As SGI hacks away at their bigmem and numa patches, they'll be able to handle more and more processors. The plan is to eventually graft enough IRIX technology to support just as many processors on Altix as they do with MIPS processors in Origin with IRIX.
Even if you aren't a fan of Itanium2, Linux, or NUMA, these patches are bringing some nifty high-end tech to the free software arena.