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Wired Interview with Linus Torvalds
Tones125 writes "Wired has a lengthy interview with Linus Torvalds contrasting the tedium of his humble life with his superhero cult status, and also briefly mentioning his take on the SCO mess, Richard Stallman and John "maddog" Hall. My favourite quote: "He jokingly refers to himself as Linux's hood ornament"."
Linus tied to the hood of his pickup like a slaughtered deer. Oh, that and 5 wives.
My favorite quote is another one:
Torvalds, 33, looks like a supply clerk.
Although I wonder, where did he get that impression. Looking at Linus' face I can say a normal human.
Less is more !
I used to jokingly call my (now ex) girlfriend a hood ornament.
I wish Linus the best. This SCO garbage will blow over eventually... or we'll just have to start fresh with a new kernal... call it FU/Linux -KS
I work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies, and I think I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community at the moment. I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology.
I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to back it up! At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult for, we wanted to integrate the shareware version of Linux into our server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing fees was too great to ignore. I reccomended the nstallation of several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of serving HTTP requests, DNS, and fileserving.
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming. I don't believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go
just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast. I took it upon myself to configure the system from scratch and even used an optimised version of gcc 3.1 to increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3 machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say
the results were less than impressive... We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system. The
3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise" environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that
the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour, we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server
pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the Linux boxes.
Needless to say, I won't be reccomending Linux/FSF to anymore of my clients. I'm dissappointed that they won't be able to leverege the free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.
Oh, great.
With so many Slashdot users not reading the Wired article, now Wired will suffer a massive loss of advertising revenue due to so many people not accessing their site.
His dispassionate and detached approach just makes sense.
BOO! TERRO
No, wait, the other thing - tedious.
I agree that Linus trovalds did a great job writing Linux and promoting its implementation thereafter. What was in the past, let it be in the past. the GNU is a rock-steady license but it has NEVER BEEN CHALLANGED in the court. The battle with SCO isnt going to take place, SCO will just clam down after sometime. the people who will suffer will be all geeks, the very people who invented the concept of computers in the first place. With all gayness, I refuse to agree that open source implementations have proved to be ineffective. Once it takes a rock-steady firm base in the market its hard not to believe its going to fail.
Great interview, btw. Hope to see some of this implemented.
Tove Torvalds! Now that just sounds silly.
I mean honestly, nerds have to take whatever women they can get BUT why would Tove have chosen a husband that would help to create such a foolish name? Unless of course she was originally Tove Goatse.cx
Hello slashdot! Hello World!
I for one welcome our old Linux overlords.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Yes, Man ofthen tends to misread words that are phonetically similar to the one's he is most sensitive about :-)
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Yes, you are fp as in FudgePacker, and you Fail It!
Read
all about them here!
Wrong! That would be "GNU/Linux's hood ornament". And if truly follow Stallman, that would be the bug that hit the hood ornament because its all about him! HIM! HIM! HIM! Muhahahaha! Now where's my HURD so I might smote thy kernel.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing! Small World.
Is it just me, or is Linus' attitude towards Linux, Microsoft, etc. one of nonchalance? It just doesn't seem that he cares one way or another as to what happens. Is this the mark of a man of utter confidence? Or, is this someone who is just relaxed to the point of almost being stoned?
Having never met him personally, I'm curious as to what people who have interacted with him in person make of his personality.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
His wispy brown hair frames preternaturally blue eyes and a soft, open face with an ample nose and heavy jaw. He's almost never without a benign grin, a smile so pearly-white perfect that he could get work in a teeth-bleaching ad. And he's dressed as though ready for a casual morning of tennis: white socks, white shorts, and a slight variation of the same shirt he more or less always wears - a white polo obtained for free at some Linux event.
When did Wired start hiring gossip journalists from In Touch magazine?
[*] Full Disclosure: I thought the smallest species of penguin was the Adelie. No Really. Although the thought of the father of Linux having a "Fairy Penguin" as a penis bird is pretty amusing.
Um, please refer to my name for the correct spelling of d00d. Thank you, and have a pleasant and splendid life.
i don't see an interview here... :P
What the heck has be been smoking?
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
That wasn't even a very good troll. Try harder next time. Linux has all of the features you say it lacks, and there is no 'shareware' version. But of course, you know this. I highly doubt that you are a consultant of any kind. 'Kernel level' programming in VB? Please..
More likely you are just a wannabe slashtroll hiding in Mom's basement.
I know..don't feed the trolls. This one as so bad though that I couldn't resist. A good troll should at least sound plausible!
This is more true than you know. According to the article, Stallman declined to be interviewed for the article unless the article used "GNU/Linux" instead of "Linux" throughout. Which would have effectively made the article about him and not Linus.
Stallman may be smart and may have accomplished great things, but his actions bespeak a petulant toddler more than a great man of vision.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
He confesses to being terribly disorganized. His approach to voicemail is to let messages stack up and then delete them without listening to any. .... never mind.
I called 15 times about a bug in line 31337 in the latest release and never got a response. Why am I paying all this money for
Dissenter
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
Amen!
Yes, my experience exactly! My VBScript kernel runs perfectly on a cluster of Windows 98 boxes, which are so stable that I'm using them as a support for the desk.
... HEY!
Linux is obviously a sham, written by weekend hackers, and frankly I'm surprised that the Apache team dared to steal the Microsoft-developed HTTP protocol for their IIS-alike so-called "web server".
IHTB!!
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Quite simply, as he stated, he works as a consultant for several fortune-500 corporations. Now, granted, some fortune-500 corporations are companies like YAHOO but bigger, but a lot of them are going to follow "fortune-500" with ":a Dilbert Corporation".
Fortune-500 is by no means a sign of corporate health; it is only a sign of size. Further, because as companies get inefficient they merge in order to survive, your least efficient companies are going to often be in the Fortune 500.
So that being the case, they are probably often going to hire consultants whose names end in "-ogbert."
Which means that the consultant's job is not going to be to provide a new solution that gets the job done -- it will rather be to show how badly the new idea can be bungled, so as to provide the management with data that will reassure the board of directors that their incompetance is quite competent indeed.
So in the end, I have to say: if you are a manager in a Dilbert Corporation, quite possibly Linux is a bad idea. You should simply wash your hands (soap's on the left), hire a few consultants to prove yourself right, and get back to Good Management Techniques (TM). Don't forget the follow-through, of course.
GNU/SCO/Linux. Remember that Stallman rules them all!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
His wife is a multiple-time karate champion and could almost certainly kick your ass.
MORTAR COMBAT!
(Stallman declined to be interviewed unless this article used his nomenclature throughout.) Imagine that.
Maybe so. But she's still a fucking ugly dumbass who married a geek with a stupid name. So fuck you, and fuck "Tove" as well.
an office he shares with Tove, his wife of nine years ...
his three daughters, all younger than 8, while Tove runs errands.
I was beginning to worry, until the interviewer very specifically pointed this out.
And FYI, this troll's been around for ages!
I noted that she has a stupid name - ignoring the fact that I can easily slap any female to the ground - such an insult does not warrant a violent reaction. If someone were to insult my name, I would laugh it off as someone being silly. I see you post on games.slashdot.org and already knew that you were an idiot so your reply was without any value to me. In the future, don't turn your computer on you whiney little girl. Your love for all things Linus is sad and pathetic. GET A JOB KID!!!
On a related note, I too have decided to quit the international tennis circuit.
I anticipate that this will have about the same impact on the world of tennis as Anna's retirement.
T&K.
Political language
>__<
Microsoft went down 3 points.
Quite sad really, the way he dismisses Richard Stallman and the GNU project as a failed project predating Linux and now trying to cash in on Linux' good name by renaming it GNU/Linux.
Stallman refused to appear in the article unless the reporter got his terminology straight, which is reported as "Stallman insists Torvalds' work should properly be called GNU/Linux, because early contributors adapted GNU components for Linux - never mind that the Linux core is non-GNU and now approaches 6 million lines of code."
He further reports that "He obstinately rejects the term open source despite its now near universal use, preferring free software, the name he coined."
If the reporter had checked his facts just a little bit, he would have realised that GNU/Linux refers to GNU systems using the Linux kernel. Further, he would learn and that open source was coined to renounce some of the ideas behind free software. The names can never be interchangable.
The article also clearly states that while Linus started hacking on a kernel, he later wrote an entire operating system. It is quite clear that the writer actually believes this, despite being told otherwise by the actual original creator of the operating system most oftenly used with Linux. Why he chose not to check this claim baffles me.
As someone who believes that a correct retelling of history is crucial to progress, I am appalled at this blatant disregard of the truth.
...ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Is it a lack of more people with the Linus attitude?
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
Linus Torvalds is not all programers wear leather and ride skate boards like the people in "Hackers" and don't know kung-fu like the people in the "The Matrix."
To hell with this CS degree.
Note: this has been posted by r.future (a person who spends way to much time on the internet!)
And this troll has been around for ages in its different forms. YHBT. YHL. HAND.
What does that say about you?
You gonna slap him to the ground?
GET A JOB KID!!!
Sorry to nitpick, but the summary refers to Maddog as John Hall, whereas his real name is Jon Hall.
Nice guy too.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
its kind of odd... i know someone who considers himself good friends with maddog.. and has talked to linus.. im hoping i'll get to meet the someday lol i should tak to him more often..
I call your mom the same the thing.
They met up with the three at the village square. "There's not a bite to eat in the whole province," they told the soldiers. "You'd better just keep moving on to the next village."
"Oh, but we have everything we need," one soldier said. "In fact, we were thinking of making some stone soup to share with all of you. You, sir, look hungry. Would you like some?"
"Stone soup! What a ridiculous thing!" the villagers exclaimed. "You can't make soup from a stone!"
But the three soldiers gingerly reached into their pockets, and each of them in turn slowly pulled out a smooth, round stone. They inspected their stones closely and nodded to one another in assent. "We have brought with us some wonderful stones that should make for a great and hearty soup. Do you have a large cauldron we might borrow to make our stone soup?"
Overcome with hunger and unable to feed the guests staying at his inn, the local innkeeper was intrigued with the idea of making soup from stones. With help from the soldiers, he pulled a large iron cauldron from the kitchen of his inn and placed it in the center of the village square. The three soldiers filled it with water, and built a roaring fire under it.
Then, with great ceremony, the three soldiers took the three stones they had collected on their travels and placed them into the water one at a time. They waited for their stone soup to come to a boil, stirring occasionally with a large wooden spoon.
"Do you know what would really help this soup?" asked one of the soldiers. "A hefty dash of salt and pepper! You can't have a good stone soup without salt and pepper, after all."
Timidly, one of the villagers said, "Well, I think might be able to find some salt and pepper that have you might have, if I can share in your stone soup!"
The soldiers quickly nodded and assured the villager that there would be plenty of stone soup to go around, with such a large cauldron of soup on the boil.
By now, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come to the square or were watching the events of the village square attentively from their windows. As the soldiers fastidiously stirred and sniffed at the "broth," they licked their lips in anticipation. The hunger of the villagers began to abate their initial skepticism.
"Ah," one of the soldiers said rather loudly, "I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage is hard to beat."
"Oh, yes," added another soldier, "Cabbage really adds flavor to stone soup."
After a few moments, a villager approached hesitantly, holding a cabbage he'd retrieved from its hiding place, and added it to the pot.
Another villager came up and inspected the pot and said, "You know, I have some carrots. That would really add flavor and color to this soup, too!" He ran off to his home to fetch the colorful vegetable.
"Yes, yes, this will be a fine soup," said the third soldier; "but a pinch of some parsley would really make it a soup fit for a king!"
Up jumped a villager, crying, "What luck! I've just remembered where some has been left!" And off she ran, returning with an apron full of parsley and with a turnip, too.
As the kettle boiled on, the memory of the village improved. In short time, barley, salted beef and rich cream had found their way into the great pot. A grand keg of beer was rolled into the square as the entire village sat down to a great feast. They all ate and danced and sang well into the night, refreshed by the feast and delighting in their newfound friends.
In the morning, the three soldiers awoke to find the entire village standing before them. At their feet lay a satchel filled wit
Linus, you are my freaking hero.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Furthermore, you will notice that I acknowledged that if someone insulted by name, I would laugh it off because it is a rather trite topic to discuss. Of course, you didn't notice this because you're just a Linus fanboy who wants to attack anyone who says anything counter to what you believe - how very MS of you.
Thanks for your comment! It showed that you have no ability to think logically but instead adhere to everything you believe, whether it is appropriate to the situation or not. Good luck next time!
"the British-produced Sinclair QL, a then state-of-the-art machine he bought while a computer science student at the University of Helsinki. The QL, one of the world's first 32-bit boxes, provided Torvalds with his motivation for writing Linux"
I thought the QL was 16-bit, not 32-bit...
The Tlog - a technology blog
I saw a CA license plate with "LINUX" on it a few months ago. It was on some kind of red sports car IIRC. Since "Linux" is trademarked by Linus, does that mean it was his car, or is the state of California in violation? Or can I get "COCA COLA" or "IBM" or "MICROSOFT"on my plates?
I understand you're emotionally charged by this blasphemy, but a quick double check of your grammar would have allowed you to make your point without opening yourself up for ridicule.
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I probably will be), but isn't the mantra, the essence, the core value of the free software movement that the software is the property and responsibility of everyone?
Why should I spend my precious free time fixing your source code so you can be considered the pioneer? The point is that it doesn't matter where the original code came from. It's been redeveloped and reworked so many times since then that its nearly irrelevant.
-KSYou are right Coward, I am wrong.
Somebody wired him to a lie detector and made him a lot of embarassing questions.
The fact that Linus seems to lead an `every-day' sort of "boring" life (his word, not mine) just makes him that much more likeable, imho.
We couldn't have asked for a better hero.
do() || do_not();
This is probably why Linux hasn't split into a million different versions like the comercial NIXes. We've all agreed, basically, that Linus is *IT* for Linux and we're all going for the same goal. Yes?
Just reading about his diplomacy with Stallman/GNU is a work of someone who is a brillant organizer.And that, my Linux friends, is a genius in itself.
There is no spoon or sig.
"Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc,.."
Now any sysadmin that hasn't bothered to read the manual far enough to know what ext3, jfs, reiserfs and xfs are, to name a few, can't possibly have read enough to know how to implement Samba, BIND, and NFS successfully. And to claim that Linux doesn't support SMP, (and that Win98 and WinNT is a preferable SMP alternative!) is shockingly ignorant.
The true cost of this ignorance will likely be a continued incarceration with the likes of VB. I'd hate to pay that price!
Using RMS values in ac circuit calculations are actually quite easy. I hardly think it sucks, as it is what your computer was built upon.
An interview with Linus Torvalds?!?
EXCLUSIVE!!
An interview with Linus Torvalds where they discuss SCO?!?
UNHEAD OF!
Comment: Yes I realise the username 'fuckfuck101' makes me sound intelligent, no you cannot buy it from me.
Actually, I read he was named for Linus Pauling, the chemist. Whether that's better or worse depends on how you did in chemistry class with Pauling's textbook.
Hey, we're baiting Linux zealots here! Take your Mac baiting to some other thread!
"The creator of the Linux operating system..."
If RMS reads that, he's gonna have a coronary.
Maybe Stallman should change his name to GNU/Linus!
The interviewer seems to hold a grudge against Stallman for refusing the interview and completely misstates the GNU/Linux discussion. He actually writes:
But this is bullocks. Linux is just a kernel. Completely unusuable without things like ls and bash for example. And all those components are GNU components. Even the compiler to produce that kernel is GNU. The list goes on. Using Linux for the entire package is just as wrong as using just GNU.
Calling something Linux without acknowledging all the years Stallman has spend writing the tools that make a Unix kernel possible is wrong and hypocritical. And if Stallman didn't defend that, who would?
If I had a sig, I would put it here.
Great movie.
One of my best firends is female and a body builder and I say with no shame she could slap me to the ground and most guys I know. I am sure in fact she could slap you to the ground as you must have to be quite a small man to post as an A/C and feel the need to boast how he can slap around girls. Seccond why in the Hell would you make fun of someone because of their name? Its not like they in most cases chose it, and its not like it really says anything about them. Its also makes no sense for her to turn down a successful guy she also likes, because its going to make her full name sound silly, geez what does it matter any way, even if your name was Hairy Dick, its not like you ever use the two together except when siging things. Who care for crying out loud there are plenty of better things to make fun of people for besides irrelevent crap like names. I imagine you could find reasons to make fun of Linus or Tove that are much more creative and valid if you were the least bit intelligent.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
That wasn't a troll you moron. That was an obvious attempt at humor. Whether or not it was actually funny is left up to the reader and depends on his or her sense of humor.
However, you got trolled by it, and it wasn't even a troll. YHBT, you fucking moron, and so did many others. HAND.
You're both arguing over the Internet (and therefore both cowards), you fucking retards.
"And although Torvalds released the kernel of his operating system well before GNU produced a reliable one of its own, Stallman insists Torvalds' work should properly be called GNU/Linux, because early contributors adapted GNU components for Linux"
I couldn't image a more incorrect way to describe the GNU/Linux vs. Linux debate. could someone due a little research when writing an article? All the author would ahve to do is read ONE webpage on www.fsf.org to see how biased and wrong this is.
I doubt Linus would agree with that statement. Unles the FSF has recently changed its stance I don't believe they have ever under any circumstances asked that a piece of software written by, or overseen by Linus be called "GNU/Linux".
There are tons of minix type clone operating systems on the net free for download as open source. So why does this guy get so much credit for his unix type os ? Because he got the ball rolling. How much of his original code is still in the kernel? Probably none. He doesn't do any coding anymore from what I understand ,just sits back and manages what goes into the kernel from opensource developers that get zilcho credit.
.
What Linux Torvalds did by starting minix was NOT spectacular. What is spectacular is how many software developers have donated time and energy to the GROUP EFFORT of updating his minix into something usable.
So should he be given all the credit on the backs of others ? Why doesn't he defer credit by asking the media to interview other developers that have done more coding than Mr. Torvalds ?
My main point is that the KERNEL should be renamed to suggest the real engine of this project and that is programmers of the World donation's to this kernel
How about EARTH kernel ?
Now, where did I put my Camomille tea?
Go back to doing what you do best......buying someone elses software and bloating it until it doesn't work any longer.
Here's my favorite quote from the article:
"We need to step back and take a look at the open source business model, which doesn't provide [private enterprises like ours] with inherent protections," SCO chief executive Darl McBride charged in August.
News flash, Darl. You need to spend more time looking at your own business model, and not everyone else's.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
While I agree with what you've said, I doubt it will make any progress in the minds of most people. GNU, etc., isn't the concern of most people. How many people even know the names Kerrighan, Ritchie, Stallman, etc. I'm sure I don't know the names of most of the pioneers and major players. Perhaps it's the mentality that we're so used to from using proprietary software. The contributors to proprietary software are never recognized. Windows is Microsoft or Bill Gates. However, that's fair because those people got paid to do it. Most people are still in the corporate mentality where individuals don't really matter. Anyone really know who wrote the Windows 2000 kernel?
EvilCON - Made Famous by
This is not much of an interview. It reads more like a mix of a biography chapter and tabloid junk.
"Torvalds opted for a version of the GPL that forbade anyone from making money selling modified versions of Linux."
erm what? Redhat, SUSE anyone? What?
I believe that both Mr Torvalds and Mr Stallman are great leaders. The former's strength lies in keeping quite and speaking sparingly while the latter is more outspoken and definitely more controversial. But both are necessary, I believe, to get the message across. The new software development paradigm is now firmly established and will flourish in the following years. The SCO case (i.e. SCO's blunder) should send out a shockwave to the industry players: change your ways or face decline. Courts dispense justice, not gold.
The future is open. The future is free.
How can you be sure that your only female friend could beat me in a fight? Your thin statement that because I am posting anonymously means that I must not be a good fighter is quite a stretch. Please note also that just because your friend has muscle mass, does not mean she can fight. You should find a female friend who is a boxer and then restate your argument. As for the bit about you implying that I am not intelligent - you are welcome to your opinion. Enjoy it.
"The thing is, at least to me personally, Microsoft just isn't relevant to what I do. That might sound strange, since they are clearly the dominant player in the market that Linux is in, but the thing is: I'm not in the ''market.'' I'm interested in Linux because of the technology, and Linux wasn't started as any kind of rebellion against the ''evil Microsoft empire.'' Quite the reverse, in fact: from a technology angle, Microsoft really has been one of the least interesting companies. So I've never seen it as a ''Linus versus Bill'' thing. I just can't see myself in the position of the nemesis, since I just don't care enough. To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy something, don't you? Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." -Linus
I like the way he talks trash in a very subtle way. And then not so subtle, in reference to SCO:
"They are smoking crack."
No problem with that. The "GNU/Linux hood ornament" would simply have both RMS and Linus in it. Simple!
Oh wait.
I'm suddendly getting a mental image of a hood ornament consisting mostly of a giant beard flapping in the wind, with two dim and indistinguishable faces somewhere inside it, one with blue eyes. Need to reconsider this....
Um, can we have a GNU/SCO hood ornament instead? Richard and Darl up there side by side -- I'd probably never need to honk again!
Stallman declined to be interviewed unless this article used his nomenclature throughout.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
What kind of stupid name is "Dark Ox"?!!!!
I got the Wired magazine in the mail yesterday and shot a load of hot cum all over the cover. No joke.
Who would have guessed that a post entitled "Penus Torvalds" would have such an extended thread?! My hats off to all of you who have kept this thread alive. To inifinity... and beyond!!!
Although your article about Linus Torvalds did a nice job of giving readers a good idea of the kind of person he is, I wonder why you felt it necessary to devote a paragraph to bashing Richard Stallman, with the only connection to Mr. Torvalds being his non-response to questions regarding Mr. Stallman. Moreover, I was disappointed by the fairly gross inaccuracies in your bashing. As you acknowledge, Richard Stallman is a forefather of the Free Software movement. He leads a philosophical school of thought that many consider to be fanatical, and he is not shy about defending his principles. This you also acknowledge.
What you completely misrepresent, however, is his contribution to the operating system you refer to as "Linux." He, and others working with him (not Mr. Torvalds) developed many essential components still used in most of the free Unix-like operating systems used today, including all variants based on Linux. These components include compilers and assemblers (essential for application development), text editors, various essential utilities, and many, many more applications. These people have, however, failed so far in producing the most essential piece in a working Unix subsitute: a viable replacement for the Unix kernel. This is what Mr. Torvalds did, and that is what Linux is: a kernel.
Thus, the 6 million lines of code in the Linux kernel form only a small part of a complete Linux-based operating system. There are many other components, and a large number of them are GNU software without which the operating system would be useless. For this Mr. Stallman would like you to call the complete operating system a GNU/Linux system. Frankly, I don't think this is too much to ask. Also, please note that no one demands that you call "Torvalds' work" GNU/Linux. They simply ask that you not use the umbrella term "Linux" to refer to everything working with the Linux kernel (the only part which is Mr. Torvald's work).
You write, "Torvalds released the kernel of his operating system well before GNU produced a reliable one of its own," as if there is some kind of competition which GNU software writers lost, and about which they are now whining. In reality, Mr. Torvalds did not write his own operating system; he wrote a kernel that worked with the operating system GNU was already developing, and today we use both together.
Many disagree with Mr. Stallman's ideals, and find him to be a generally unlikable character, and you may be one of them. But to deny his significant contributions to Linux-based operating systems out of ignorance or spite is simply unacceptable journalism.
Anyone really know who wrote the Windows 2000 kernel?
We all know it was IBM! nuff said
we wouldn't have that problem!
Torvalds' father was a card-carrying Communist who spent a year studying in Moscow when his son was about 5.
...in which Torvalds admits he abides by a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to patent issues: "I do not look up any patents on principle because (a) it's a horrible waste of time and (b) I don't want to know," he wrote to fellow Linux hackers.
With the US legal system, it's always hard to tell what the hell is going to happen," Torvalds says. "So I can't just dismiss the lawsuit as the complete crapola I think it is."
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Look, even MS will not use VB on its' internals. Think of it as a gartner report, if that helps.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You're my hero!
Everyone who writes code for the kernel does so to improve the kernel, not satisfy their ego. The ego seekers quickly get bored or disgusted and move on. Slashdot should have a similar system if you ask me.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Torvalds opted for a version of the GPL that forbade anyone from making money selling modified versions of Linux.
1. It makes no sense to talk of choosing versions of the GPL. There are versions, but only two, and the difference has nothing to do with making money.
2. It must be news to Red Hat and everybody else that it is forbidden to amke money from selling modified versions.
Makes me wonder how much of the rest of the interview is bogus.
Infuriate left and right
Maybe so. But she's still a fucking ugly dumbass who married a geek with a stupid name. So fuck you, and fuck "Tove" as well.
You know, I honestly doubt whoever wrote this has even seen Linus' wife. In truth, she does not appear in many photographs, so I had not seen her either. I always imagined her as a svelte ninja goddess.
Curious, I did a little Google research, and my personal conclusion is that there do not appear to be any glamour photos made of Tove (whereas there are many carefully grommed Linus images) and many of the pictures of her are bad. I don't think she is ugly, but some of the pictures are badly taken, on bad hair days, or somesuch.
Then again, you can judge for yourself, eh?.
Personally, I think she looks just fine. And if she makes Linus happy, that is all that matters, right? That makes her beautiful to me.
for those of us who admire him ( & i'm sure there's a lot of Us of there) we can really learn a lot from him..
We like Linux not only beause what we can do with Linux, but because we like Linus. Its' that simple. If we didn't.. we would have forked the code.
Besides all the technical achievements, look & compare why people mention Linus much more than Stallman.
Cuz Linus is a much nicer person. Shouldn't we all aspire to try & be a little like him? ( as in pleasant?)
Simple enough?
Does Linus use teeth whitener?
Torvalds' father was a card-carrying Communist who spent a year studying in Moscow when his son was about 5.
;-) Could I tell a real card from a fake? Are they photo ID? Can I get into a bar with it? Do I get discounts at selected establishments? Or does it just get me more dates with socialist hippy chicks? Opportunistic libertarians want to know!
I hear this phrase used commonly, and I've often wondered what these alleged "cards" look like.
"He was just trying to show that Linux is, in fact, just a human being."
As opposed to what? a set of conjoined twins? Someone with Parkinson's Disease?
I've never really understood the "<insert celebrity name here>'s my god" mentality. Yeah, Brent Spiner might have done a good job acting the part of Lt. Commander Data, or Mick Jagger might do a great job performing live, but other than seeing "stars" that are full of themselves, I don't see the reason for the groupieness.
David Andrews is friends with one of my friends' fathers, they invited me along to dinner once with them while he was in town. He's a cool guy to chat with, but he didn't come across as someone full of himself or looking to be instantly recognized everywhere. At another point, I met Newt Gingrich in a Denny's in Tempe, AZ, where he went to get a quiet meal apparently while taking a break from some convention that he was speaking at. He probably went to Denny's, of all places, to avoid getting into some dumb debate with lawyer-yuppies who tend to hang around the more expensive restaurants. The room wasn't noticeably affected by his presence.
Actors, Musicians, Politicians, and the like are just people. The only real difference is that they've done something or been somewhere at the right time to make news. I think that people who go out of their way to remain in the news even when they've done nothing to merit it are the most pathetic types out there. This is why Torvalds is cool. Because he doesn't come across as attempting to live to make headlines, actions of his that actually have ramifications make news.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'd give her a back injury.......
Actually, Andrew Tanenbaum was the one who wrote Minix.
Trolls, please note CmdrTaco's recent journal article- there are problems with the Slashdot system and not enough moderator points being dished out. From now on until this problem is fixed - every day is Troll Tuesday!!!
Ah, then you would prefer the original "Freax", of course.
(As an aside, do you think Earth the planet did the coding? Which planet are you on, actually?)
It's not about code, it's about people. Linus is a role model, a figure, a picture people can put in their minds when they think of linux (and a damn good one too). People need something to look up to, someone who can lead them. True democracy fails when the number of people get so large precisely because people spend too much time looking for (arguing over?) direction and not enough time going in it.
It doesn't matter anymore who's code is in it on the public side of things. But to his credit, Linus does not take advantage of pretty much anyone.
Chris, I have nothing against Mr. Stallman. I've never met him nor spoke to him, though I watched the documentary "Revolutionary OS" and found him rather engaging. He seems a man of principle, even if I believe he's too much of a purist for his own good, and for the good of the cause.
While I appreciate your taking the time to write so thoughtful a note, I respectfully disagree with your core point. It's an issue I've thought a lot about. The kernel is hardly only a small part of an OS. To me what you and Mr. Stallman are asking--that we in the media call Linux instead GNU/Linux--is akin to suggesting that beef stew would more accurately be called beef, carrot and potato stew. Sure, carrots and potatoes are absolutely essential, but boiled down to its essence its beef.
For the record, I did a lot of research on this point, and didn't non-chalantly decide to use Linux as opposed to GNU/Linux. I made a decision--and halfway through the piece acknowledge that some would prefer GNU/Linux.
By the by, I never said Mr. Torvalds wrote his own operating system, as your letter suggests. Of course it was a world full of programmers who did that.
Thanks for taking the time to write,
Gary Rivlin
Or better yet, why not READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE.
Linus is given credit, but he never takes it willingly and certainly not "on the backs of others".
What, did every anti-linux troll on the planet come out for this article?
are a fucking idiot then. Caveat Emptor, bitch.
a crapload of linus code is in there...
just because you certianly dont have the IQ or brain power to do 1/10th os what linus has done makes you pan it...
hell Gates cant code himself out of a paper bag (and never could gates sucked at programming!) yet he get's credit for what?? writing checks and using mobster techniques....
http://www.yle.fi/linna98/photos/photo46_i.jpg
if that is what you get for CREATING linux, I'll stick to Windows!
Elliott Smith Tribute CD available now on Double D Records! Visit www.doubledrecords.com to order.
...the collective respect of his cohorts."
What a tenuous basis for power.
Why, that's almost like suggesting that government could derive its powers from the consent of the governed.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
He is the blonde dude, not the blue halloween penguin.
Dipshit, the default read on slashdot has the domain in [] after the link. We can see where it goes. Also, try hovering over it. WE CAN SEE WHERE IT GOES. Man you are stupid
YHBT
Idiot.
Keep in mind that GNU existed quite a while before Linux, but it had virtually no user community because there was no kernel to go with it.
***Bzzzt*** Thanks for playing! GNU had a large and very active user community years before Linus came along. Our company had as-identical-as-possible GNU setups on SunOS, Xenix, and SCO-Unix (for servers), and OS/2 (EMX) and MS-DOS (DJGPP) (for clients and developers). Others were running GNU environments on a wide variety of platforms (AIX, HP-uchhhs, etc., etc.).
I think you're mostly right about the current status of Linus vs. RMS, but your ignorance of the history of their respective projects is appalling. GNU was out there in the real world doing real work for years while Linux languished as a not-ready-for-prime-time toy. (My first Linux boot was 0.12, but I didn't use it for anything serious until well into the 0.99 series.)
I'll freely grant that Linus is more convivial and photogenic than RMS, and his relaxed attitude towards life is a boon to the entire community, and I'd rather have him as a dinner guest anyday, but that doesn't mean I think people should rewrite history.
I used work for a fortune 1000 company and I too tried to install Linux in place of win2k. I also am an accomplished VB programmer and well as Access, however I have not had your success with getting it to run faster than C.
I had heard great things about Linux and I decidedd that I would install and optimize it to run our enterprise web application (previously on win2k/access). I used PostgreSql in place of Access and Apache instead of IIS.
Everthing worked ok in development, the usual reboots every day or so, as is common with Linux. Then we switched the new application to production and all hell broke loose.
We did the switch a 2am so as not to inconvience our user base. When we switched over the cpu jumped to 100% and the linux box started swapping like mad. We started poking around, unwilling to believe that Linux was THIS shitty, but yes it was.
Then the linux box started smoking and halon came on and two of our MCSE's, who had been cleaning up some wireing in the server room, were overcome by the smoke and lack of oxygen, passing out.
We pulled the two MCSE's to safety and they are going to be alright. But in the end I lost my job and now nobody will even interview me. My name is ruined in the corporate IT world for my dangerous and unorthodox views. How can I tell them that I have learned my lesson, I WILL NEVER USE OPEN SORES AGAIN!
anyone who gets to work at home doing the stuff they love is my GOD.
No, it was Digital Equipment Corp. Windows NT is based on VMS. Digital was bought by Compaq which was in turn bought by HP. David Cutler, the chief architect of VMS, was hired by Microsoft to help develop NT.
BTW, WNT is to VMS what IBM is to HAL.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Loved the article.
Linus is a pretty ordinary guy, in my opinion, from reading the article. An "O.K. Joe" so to speak.
Individuals with a goal, dream, vision, or what have you, whether earth shattering or not, are what makes things happen, give it the "spark" so to speak.
History is packed with some well known, some not so well known individuals that were the "spark" for new things.
I am certain that Linus will be ranked among those that are better known, in the history books in years to come. Not because of his "giant intellect" or his "high lofty goals", but just because he gave a "spark" that others then fanned, poured fuel on, etc. so that it now benefits millions.
Yeah, some inaccuracies in the article and some wording that might cause some gripes. But overall, I enjoyed it.
Hats off to Linus and every one of you that has contributed to Linux, GNU and other free and open source projects.
Regards,
Very newbie Linux user
I love Linus. Laid back, chill, subtly brilliant. Feeding his kids Cheerios. Happy, seemingly.
Too bad more religious zealots in the Linux community can't be more like him.
jack's bicycle is music to my ears
I don't see the relevance. Bash and ls are a small part of a Linux distribution. It's an important part, but so is Gnome/KDE. Bash might be usefull, but there are other non-GNU alternatives out there.
"Even the compiler to produce that kernel is GNU.", what does that have to do with anyghing? Gnome, Evolution, Mozilla are also usually compiled with gcc. By your logic they should be named GNU/Gnome and GNU/Mozilla...
Doesn`t sound like it`s something for the weak minded, this linux thingy.
Doolittle :
Bomb no.20 : To explode of course.
*shakes head*
GNU screwed up the maintenance of gcc so badly that someone had to fork the project to fix it. Eventually the fork became accepted as the official gcc. Similarly, a Red Hat employee is the chief maintainer of of glibc.
GNU is just an umbrella organization where it's convenient to have the copyrights held.
Frankly, I prefer busybox to many of the GNU commandline utilities. I despise info for it's emacsisms and wish they would just maintain man pages.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Well, here's a pic of Mrs. Melinda Gates w/ hubby and Kofi Annan. Not bad, but not particularly attractive, either.
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
Let's do some math. 30,000,000 invested with an anual return of 5-10% is 1,500,000 to 3,000,000 dollars a year, every year for as long as you live. You can live fairly well on 100-300K per month. He could have retired, lived off that money, and worked on Linux whenever he wanted.
:) (Go ahead, mod me down now...)
What did he do? Bought a house an a few cars, since he can always depend on his work as an engineer to support himself. What an idiot. No wonder he gave linux away.
OK, she isn't a supermodel. But like the postcard from The Body Shop I have up on my refrigerator says, neither are all but 8 women on Planet Earth.
:P
She's not fat nor is she skinny. She's neither breathtakingly beautiful nor hideously ugly. She's just an ordinary looking woman. The article makes a big deal that Linus is also a very ordinary looking guy.
I really don't see why this makes any difference whatsoever with anything having to do with Linux.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I know that maybe it's RMS own "fault" (based on the journalist report of his almost dogmatic attitude about the "GNU/Linux" stuff).. BUT i really missed the oportunity to see both great leaders -or at least visionaries if you want to argue- on Wired cover.. i think RMS deserve it... just picture it:
RMS and Tordavls on Wired Magazine with a cover that say "Leaders of the Free World".
If Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, et al are the most powerful tech companies in the entire Universe ... well it's no wonder that SETI hasn't turned up anything then is it. ;-)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
I saw Linus staring up at me from the cover of Wired at the newstand this morning with "Leader of the Free World" written across his face.
He looked stoned.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Dipshit, the default read on slashdot has the domain in [] after the link. We can see where it goes. Also, try hovering over it. WE CAN SEE WHERE IT GOES. Man you are stupid
Actually, I have seen some pretty clever goatse links that defeat the [] domain feature. Sure this feature cut down on the goatse links, but some poeple have linked to personal websites that redirect to goatse. I have actually seen some links to commercial sites that somehow redirect to goatse. I have not figured out how they did that; it was pretty clever.
That was all backwards too. I'm sure my idea is still represented there.
Isn't it a scream, that negroes look like apes and white folks look like Kournikova?
I don't think there will be any offers for the Williams Apes to pose in Penthouse. Gag me with a spoon.
It boggles my mind that he did this. There's probably no one who has done more to harm the "Free Software" side of the debate than RMS himself. I think he needs psychiatric help.
(This 24 hours after I wrote a nasty letter to Forbes about how unfair they were to the FSF)
yes. my typo.
I meant minux type.
If you want to see real independent programmer that deserves all the attention try -
skyos operating system
More impressive than Linux's beginnings. Andrew skezelzny.
Never heard of it.
Linux's original 10,000 lines of code are gone. I am anti-Bill myself .
.
.
Get a grip though.
Do you want to see a one man show OS ?
sykos operating system
Amazing os
try finding atheos os too
Both amazing achievments.
Beware of the RMS borg! it sucks up all paying technology jobs and replaces them with a wasteland of open source written by hobbyist college students for free.
Beware of the RMS borg!.
Hm. Not quite. That would be the mother "puolisonsa" of Tove Torvalds, I guess. Of course I don't speak Finnish. She's a bit younger
He works from home as a fellow for the Open Source Development Lab, a corporate-funded consortium created to foster improvements to Linux...
All he needs now is a few more cats. The whole article doesn't seem to mention cats at all.
People dislike saying GNU/Linux because it's awkward and ungainly. The shorter, simpler term Linux sounds much better. I think RMS should just get over it. Linux is going nowhere without the GNU, whatever happens with the name, so Stallman's baby is safe. On top of that, the GNU license specifically grants it's users to call their derivitive products anything they want. For RMS to whine when they do does not reflect well upon him.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
Exactly right. When I'm talking about g n u slash linux with my friends or people who I'm working with I just call it linux, because try saying g n u slash linux 10 times over and not losing people or just irratating them.
Simple fact of the matter is that people choose the easy way out in conversation and its far easier to say linux than g n u slash linux.
-1, repeating the same joke as the person you're responsing to because you didn't get it.
Hahahaha, That's rich! Like anybody that reads slashdot is picky about members of the opposite sex? (you mean there's 2?)
That's not Tove, that is Tove's mother, ie Linus' mother-in-law.
Sig.i>
It's great to see the man has been able to cash in on his technical ability without loosing his vision and ethics. Cashing in his stock was a good "option"!
:)
I still thought he drove a beaten up sedan and still lived a shed
He seems to have employed a stylist, the last time I saw him he was wearing glasses and had the real geek thing happening - a spring chicken!
Well done Linus!
If you think the guy gets too much credit, then perhaps you should put your efforts behind something else. If you've been using Linux for more than a few years, and you follow the kernel mailing list (or at least read "Kernel Traffic") then perhaps you would understand why Linus makes the perfect frontman for Linux development.
The public desires a front man, a face to associate phenomena with. It is this that propels Linus into the public eye, and I'm sure that the greater share of his fellow kernel hackers are more than pleased that it is not them who has to be singled out for scrutiny and has to represent the conmmunity as a whole. Linus is definately not an "attention seeker".
There are many persons involved in Free Software that do not get the public recognition that you seem to think that they desire, but the vast majority of them could care less what people that they do not know and who do not understand thier work think of them. To them, the only recognition that matters is that which comes from thier peers in thier chosen field.
The kernel hackers don't really seem to be the attention seeking types, and I'm sure that if you were to suggest to them that they were somehow being slighted by Linus in regards to "credit", I'm sure they would either point out thier credits in the source code, the documentation, and the changelogs. That code belongs to them, and anyone who is so concerned about such things as "credit" will probably look at the copyright files in order to learn who wrote what.
If you pressed the issue, I'm sure they would tell you to fuck off and quit trying to stir up trouble where there is none.
Read, L
OK, she isn't a supermodel. But like the postcard from The Body Shop I have up on my refrigerator says, neither are all but 8 women on Planet Earth.
She's not fat nor is she skinny. She's neither breathtakingly beautiful nor hideously ugly. She's just an ordinary looking woman. The article makes a big deal that Linus is also a very ordinary looking guy.
I really don't see why this makes any difference whatsoever with anything having to do with Linux. :P
Oh, it has nothing to do with Linux, and you are right. My take on it was that they are actually a fairly well-matched couple. Perhaps things running smoothly in the Torvalds castle has an effect on Linux, but that is about it.
I was mainly responding to the idiot that said she was ugly. I think it is irrelevant if she is to anyone but Linus, and besides as I said inner beauty is far more important than the physical. She obviously has some inner beauty in that she supports Linus and he seems very happy in their relationship (going by the pictures, as I have not read any words from Tove, it seems she is as well).
I also thought it was too bad that journalists do not have more pictures of the Torvalds family, and as I pointed out, what photos there are are just snapshots rather than portraits (whereas Linus has been the subject of innumerable portraits). Then again, I remember the first Linus picture I saw in Wired back in 1994 was a shirtless Linus drinking a beer in his dorm room; yes, very ordinary-looking.
I guess it was probably stupid to reply to a troll about Tove being ugly, but I realized I had not seen any pictures of her as well, got curious, and went off on a tangent. It happens.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, anyway. Personally, I don't consider most supermodels all that great because that isnt my idea of physical beauty, nevermind my insistence on giving more weight to inner beauty.
Yes, I too.
By your logic they should be named GNU/Gnome
News flash, Gnome IS a GNU project.
"Verbing weirds language." -- Calvin
You shallow, shallow man.. You should know better than to judge people by appearance.
I realize you are probably trying to be funny but that my friend is a joke of very poor taste.
Been missing you, mate. Please consider coming back and bringing along the others if possible. /.'s a much drier place without you luminaries.
Where do you hang out these days?
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Trust a Windows user to give appearance precedence over functionality.
Actually, it's pronounced "Tova", a pretty name if you ask me. Or would you prefer Betty-Sue?
She drives an SUV, and one with an offensive bumper-sticker too. That makes her ugly inside.
Accomplishments aside he looks like a kid I used to fling boogers at in gradeschool. :-)
let me guess, you're married to cristie brinkly, pamela anderson and selma hyek. Total absolute troll bait, but I couldn't resist responding. that makes me equally trollish, but what do I care.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
my mistake, but if you see the above link by another reader, the actual wife of Linus looks like a younger, stockier bulldog. you know those bitches are from the same litter! man if i could afford a house in the hills, i wouldn't marry anything that looks like that. and while i have never banged any supermodels, every girl i have EVER went out with looks better than that mutt! flame all you want, i dont give a **** it's my opinion! i enjoy the tech stories on slashdot, not here for friends. since he was talking about his wife i was very interested in how she looks, and god bless Google Images! of course i am a shallow, horrible person - but I bet there are more like me!
Elliott Smith Tribute CD available now on Double D Records! Visit www.doubledrecords.com to order.
Maybe it's just the slash. I mean, having a slash in the name is pretty dumb. Not clever at all.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
Who originally wrote this. Thx k bye.
I bet you are one fugly bastard yerself, to make comments like that about another persons wife.
Glad you aren't here to make friends cause you sure haven't tonight.
i stated my opinion and qualified it as opinion, and i stand by what i said.
Elliott Smith Tribute CD available now on Double D Records! Visit www.doubledrecords.com to order.
Let's see... Bush is president and Microsoft is still a monopoly. I don't think IBM has anything to worry about.
I put this question to you: have you ever seen a musician who was any good on the street? I've seen a few. Very few, and mostly in Europe or high-traffic areas of New York.
There was this guy I met when I was vacationing in Krakow, Poland. He played a violin on the trolley while it was moving, and never noticably missed a note no matter how it started, stopped, braked or accelerated. Now maybe he wasn't a world class violinist, but I think he'd beat most of those too if the contest was on a moving trolley. Certainly impressed me...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
in the article
"We need to step back and take a look at the open source business model, which doesn't provide [private enterprises like ours] with inherent protections," SCO chief executive Darl McBride charged in August. To pursue its claim against IBM, whose programmers have been some of the most prolific contributors to Linux, SCO has hired David Boies, who represented the government against Microsoft and Gore against Bush before the US Supreme Court."
and lost both of those, sco's doomed.
"In a way, Torvalds is less a ruler (or a hood ornament, for that matter) than an ambassador, roaming his virtual world and exerting his influence to prevent technical fights from devolving into sectarian battles. Take the factions that want him to make toppling Microsoft a priority: Create a version of Linux as simple for novices to use as Windows, they reason, and you loosen Redmond's grip on the PC. "That's the kind of politics you see inside Oracle and Sun," Torvalds says. "Once you start thinking more about where you want to be than about making the best product, you're screwed."
yeah, I was planning on making an easy os, but I dropped the idea, torvalds shows how he is a great person and he's human, he isnt cheap or shallow, he actually thinks wisely, this is why he'll always be respected, once bill gates loses power it'll be "oh well" about him, people like torvalds end up being legacies and well known and liked.
I like his outlook on things.
Yes, porting a *BSD libc to Linux is certainly a non-trivial task, and yes, it has never been done.
Also, like you say, the libc5 used on GNU/Linux systems was a fork of glibc. After a few years, the Linux hackers realised that FSF were doing a better job, so distros all moved back to glibc. GLibc was still using version number 2 though, so it got the alias "libc6".
It's funny. People love pointing out that a fork of GCC did well, but no-one points out that a Linux-hacker fork of GLibc flunked.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
It says, quote "a version of the GPL". Regardless of what actually happened, the writer is wrong, there is no such version of the GPL.
Infuriate left and right
Yup. Especially in embedded scenarios. Cuz what use would my linux based DSL router be without ls? or my dad's linux based PVR without bash?
Obvious examples aside, does Linux owe its adoption to GNU in its early stages? of course. But why should that negate the use of all the BSD, X11, etc utilities that are now available?
"Time has shown a strong correlation between a company's stock price and the vigor with which that company has embraced Linux. Oracle, IBM, and Intel - three of the system's earliest corporate proponents - have mostly held their value on Wall Street over the past couple years. Sun, which was late and halfhearted in adopting Linux, has watched its stock plummet." This has the be one of the stupidest things I have ever read... I feel my IQ drop every time I try to understand how you arrive at such a conclusion. eeeh.
Yeah, the author also has an anti-RMS bias, but this "Booga booga, SCO is gonna *get* you linux users" stuff is the absolute worst.
10 past midnight, and Geocities is bogged down.
1. Identify yourself as a FEMALE /.er
2. Provide a personal link.
3. Get your host seriously slashdotted.
4. ???
5. Uh... ???
What Linus' wife looks like has nothing to do
with with the technical or political issues
under discussion here. Why be an asshole and
gratuitously publicly insult someone you don't
even know?
"Once you start thinking more about where you want to be than about making the best product, you're screwed." - Linus
This is the reason we all stand behind Linux.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
you sir, are an idiot.
no please fuck off.
You know, Mr. Anderson, the first Matrix was thought to be perfect, but your primitive mind kept waking from a dream and eventualy crops were lost. Some even say we lacked a perfect programming language to describe the Matrix. In the Matrix, we have fascism and we have you. Fascism is our life. Fascism is our time. In Socialist America, freedom of speech is fascism and only done at the inconvenience of others by a majority. If you don't agree with our fascism, you have the privilege to get out of my world and take Nebuchadnezzar back into the sewers which your primitave race thrives.
As long as she (the woman) responds correctly to the command "5HUTUP 4ND m4K3 M3 a SAMWITCH BIAATCH!"
Yup. Especially in embedded scenarios. Cuz what use would my linux based DSL router be without ls? or my dad's linux based PVR without bash?
TiVo definitely has bash installed, and I'm willing to bet that at least some of its functionality relies on shell scripts. Once you're in the world of shell scripting, it's hard to avoid calling GNU textutils and fileutils.
Your DSL router, I don't know.
I'm more concerned with the tedium of his superhero cult status.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Yes, the toolchain is great - but it is the license that brings it altogether and stops anyone from embracing and extending the code in closed and very proprietary ways.
I'm clear that distributions may include BSD licensed software, Artistic licensed software as well as MPL and others. However, that the key elements are preserved under the GPL is STallman's stroke of genius.
See my journal, I write things there
Wanting that GNU software receives the credit it deserves.
Who would have said he would be such an unreasonable idiot.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
This is great comedy. Please, if I'd have been drinking milk I would have laughed it out my nose.
sine puella vita suget
Isn't FUnix even better?
I gave up reading the article before the end of the first page. I don't care how he looks, or what his kids had for breakfast. More substance less fluff. Isn't Wired supposed to be for nurds, or is it just for dentists's waiting rooms?
You are probably a troll, but for the benifit of other readers, here is a link to clarify the matter:
http://www.fsf.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html
"WNT is to VMS what IBM is to HAL"
;-)
Hey, a nice one.
What's the word, is this just coincidence or was it intended? If it was (at least originally) an inside joke, is "New Technology" then just the politically correct backronym -- and has MS actually confirmed this popular interpretation is what "NT" stands for?
(I mean, "Based on Windows New Technology Technology" doesn't sound too smart out loud... I've tried
Whatever, got a chuckle out of it regardless!
If you mean "Freax", it was the original name Linus had for his rendering of Minix; he was uncomfortable with naming it after himself. Fortunately (IMO) a friend convinced him that "Linux" would be better, when it was time to open it up for the world.
As far as I know, the letters came first and then "Windows New Technology" was the "backronym" as you put it. It was an inside joke.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
As people listen more to Linus Torvalds and the Open Source movement, they learn to identify with practical considerations that are not necessarily true (not all "Open Source" software is better than its proprietary counterparts) and they ignore or eschew software freedom. Paying attention to software freedom and how copyright law really works are two big reasons why the GNU GPL (the most popular license used amongst both Free Software and Open Source movements) can withstand the attacks from those who want to make non-free derivatives. If the SCO case goes to court and things go as so many Slashdotters seem to expect, it will be a victory of substance for the people and ideas Torvalds (and many Slashdotters) don't pay much heed to.
The attention the Linux kernel and the Open Source Initiative have brought to the GPL are appreciated, but they are not the people (or organization) that pay attention to social and ethical problems we computer users need to understand and fight against.
Digital Citizen
Interesting! Thanks.
No, it was Digital Equipment Corp. Windows NT is based on VMS. Digital was bought by Compaq which was in turn bought by HP. David Cutler, the chief architect of VMS, was hired by Microsoft to help develop NT.
BTW, WNT is to VMS what IBM is to HAL.
This is true in that, according to Microsoft History, they hired away DEC's development team for VMS and asked them to make NT for them, starting with the lead developer and then telling him he had full control over who was in his team and what they were doing so long as he comes out with a new OS. But perhaps the other poster was referring to the OS2 debacle.
Microsoft was working with IBM on OS/2 wen they started working on NT. They ended up abruptly ditching the project and then attacking OS/2 in the marketplace. A lot of the OS/2 technology that was developed in the joint project between Microsoft and IBM ended up in Windows NT and IIRC the Win95 line as well (and of course by extension of NT, it is in 2000 and XP).
It was similar to the Monterrey project SCO is whining about, except that in this case MS was being quite a bit nastier. I think SCo was trying to make the comparison between OS/2 vs NT and UNIX vs Linux. At any rate apparently Microsoft felt their half was their property and they could use it, and as far as I know IBM chose to fight them in the marketplace instead of in court. The rest, as they say, is history.