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

hey

[Mohammed Al-Sahaf]

Its Xouvert, not Xoutert.

Re:hey

[oever]

From the xouvert website:

What kind of a name is Xouvert?

Xouvert is named after the ancient Babylonian goddess of open windows, wooden digging implements, and moonlight. A notorious ritual among the higher levels of Freemasonry has kept her memory alive until now. Xouvert, awake!

Which is of course, complete bollocks. Xouvert is french for Xopen.

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.

Re:This reminds me...

[snake_dad]

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.

DOS wasn't perfect, had issues with memory, very large filesystems were not supported, 1.0 did not even have directories and the available commands were a sorry bunch compared to unix, but to say that OS's from the Middle Ages were better is taking it a bit too far, IMHO.

http://www.freeesktop.org/?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to put to fine a point on it but your hyperlink is incorrect

http://www.freeesktop.org/

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?

[Chris Sontag]

He has it the wrong way round, my friend. Do not listen to the lies. Linux is like a snake we are going to cut into pieces. Unix will rise again! We will push those crooks, those mercenaries back into the swamp. They are retreating on all fronts. Their legal effort is a subject of laughter throughout the world.

Re:UNIX is dying?

[martin-boundary]

So what you're saying is: "Luke, I *am* your father."

"Nooooooooooooooooo!"

Re:UNIX is dying?

[emil]

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.

Re:UNIX is dying?

[green pizza]

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.

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

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.

Heh

[arvindn]

Verisign could have made a lot of money by redirecting http://www.freeesktop.org/ and http://www.xoutert.org/ to their own ad pages :-)

Gnome will kill Linux

[DrSkwid]

Dan Egnor says it best :

Somewhere deep inside the secret headquarters of the RedHat/GNOME/Ximian/Mozilla Cabal, there's a hidden document with a list of everything in Unix you know and love, marked with a date for its final expurgation. I think 'ls' is slated to be finally replaced with a symlink to 'nautilus' in 2007. Except that symlinks will have been replaced by ".shortcut" files, which are interpreted by the Mono implementation of GNOME-VFS.

Luckily the spirit on Unix lives on.

Havoc Pennington?

[JazFresh]

It is me, or does that sound like the name of the next Bond villain?

Re:Bad article style

[RobotRunAmok]

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.

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.

Re:Havoc Pennington has the right idea

[IGnatius T Foobar]

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.

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.

OSNews, blah...

[vsync64]

While reading through the interview, I noticed such bizarre and nonsensical statements as:

Looking Red Hat's recent press releases and web site lately, it reveals a new, stronger effort to shift focus further into the Enterprise and leaving Red Hat Linux to the hands of the community for the home/desktop market while leaves a "hole" in the previous target of Red Hat at the "Corporate Desktop market".

At the end of the day, we have seen patents being so "duh, brain dead", that many have said that writing software is almost impossible anymore. What a solution for this issue OSS software should find, to ensure a future that is not striked by lawsuits left and right?

Once, you started a C++ wrapper for GTK+, but then the project got sterile.

Do you feel that Linux is replacing Unix slowly but steadily, or do they follow parallel and different directions in your opinion?

I said to myself, "This article must be by Eugenia Loli-Queru", looked to the byline, and lo and behold I was correct. The local rag is more respectable, which is saying a lot, considering that they routinely misspell the names of cities in front page headlines and such. Even JeffK makes more sense than Eugenia.

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: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.