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Linus Holds Forth On the Future of Linux
colinmc151 writes "As part of Geekcruises' Linux Lunacy cruise to Alaska, Linus Torvalds was interviewed and answered questions about where he sees the future of Linux with a particular eye towards developers. Great stuff."
Clearly most people who use Linux on the desktop tend to be pretty technical, right now. The nice thing is that is changing. It's changing mainly inside companies that just decided, "Hey, our secretaries are actually better off using Linux, because we don't want them playing solitaire.
So much for all those ideals of freedom.
I thought no one used Forth anymore. Now Linus tells us it is the future of Linux?
Seriously though, is it just me, or is the title phrased in a peculiar manner?
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Someone should tell desperate, single women about this.
There might be an explosion as the matter of women and anti-matter of geeks annihilate each other. What a way to go out with a bang, though!
Besides, Linus could use some groupies. It'll make Gates jealous at the very least.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Is that where a huge luxury liner sails through beautiful waters and near exotic locations and not a single person is on deck because they'd a) be away from their computer and b) have to stand in the sun?
Hi all,
/usr/bin/perl
Recently, I've been thinking a lot about where Linux development should
head now that 2.6 is out. Specifically, I've been thinking about how we
ought to make some cultural changes as well as technical changes. Now I'm
not *entirely* sure what directions we should head in as we move towards
3.0, but I'd like to point out a few areas that need to be addressed as well
as propose some possible solutions. Nothing is set in stone yet, but these
are definitely issues we need to work on.
First off, I don't like a lot of the elitism that does on among Linux
hackers. Just because you can tell what the following script does without
executing it, doesn't mean that you're some kind of god.
#!
@k = unpack "a"x5,'x_,d@';@o = unpack "a"x19,'Q8>tUxLm\@`Y%N@cIq]';
while ($i19){print chr((ord($o[$i])-ord($k[$i++%5])+91)%91+32);}
Learning to hack Un*x is an impressive accomplishment, but it's closer kin
to solving a Rubik's cube than scaling Everest. If you think using Un*x
makes you some kind of super genius who should be feared by mere mortals and
end users, either get over it or start using *BSD. *BSD users (and
developers) are all complete jackasses, so you'll fit right in.
Secondly, I'd like to address the issue of cleanliness. Quite frankly, the
standards of personal hygiene practiced by many members of this community
are simply unacceptable. As you all know, I am a fairly clean cut,
well-kempt person (I know, I have a bit of a gut, but compared to Maddog,
Nick Petreley or ESR, I'm a modern Adonis.), and in the Linux community that
is something of an anomaly. Virtually all users of Linux (and all other
forms of Un*x) are unkempt, longhaired, beast-bearded dirty GNU hippies, and
I am sick and tired of having to deal with them.
The person I have the greatest problem with is that (in)famous communist
RMS. Now, RMS may have been responsible for GNU, the GPL, GCC and many
other contributions to the computing community, but his stance, as well as
stench, displayed in his essays and actions, nauseates me. I mean, with
that filth-ridden beard of his, where does he have room to demand that
people refer to Linux as GNU / Linux? When he is as clean-shaven as I, he
may claim that right, but until then, he should go back to playing his
little flute and dropping acid like there's no tomorrow. Honestly, if he
doesn't shut his mouth and go back to reading Marx, I'm going to shut it for
him. I am sorry to sound so harsh, but a little hygiene every once in a
while is a Good Thing(TM). Makes me wish I'd gone with a closed source
license back in the day.
Next in line of dirty scuzz-balls I have to deal with, and probably the
worst thorn in my side, is Alan Cox, the primary coder of my kernel's TCP/IP
stack (ha, what a joke!) and all around dirty GNU hippy. Alan views
toothpaste the same way a vampire views garlic. The man's wife (who I spent
a few years with at the University of Helsinki) often calls me crying in the
middle of the night to complain of the rank, unbearable stench the man
exudes after sex. On several occasions at trade shows, exhibitions and beer
bashes, I have nearly fainted from the torrent of rotten odor that pours
from every inch of his toxic person. Along with the typical GNU hygiene
(mis)habits he practices, he also bitches and whines about... well,
everything. He lies a lot too; evidence for this can be seen in the fact he
almost always wears cheap black sunglasses when talking to people he knows
are better than him (such as myself).
And then we come to ESR. I won't reiterate the sewer-dweller like cleansing
habits he practices as well, but I would like to focus on his general
lifestyle. I like to refer to ESR as AGB or "Arrogant Gas Baron." The man'
s flatulence is legendary. I honestly believe that given a meal of refried
I would be happy to say anything bad about software patents if I could just ... formulate a sentence that makes sense.
;-)
Linus Torvalds
There you go. Don't tell anyone you got it from me
"psychology is so important. It made a huge difference to call it [the newest Linux kernel] 2.60 Test 1. Because we started getting a lot of bug reports from people who would never touch 2.5.79 with a ten-foot pole. Even though it was the same code. Especially on the desktop that's the only way to test it. Because desktops are just so varied that you literally have to get it tested by the user base."
I suddenly understand why 2.6 has been in the works all this time, it's brilliant. I'd think analysis like this would lend developers into more and more X.X changes instead of X.X.X.XX.X... going that deep into releases just isn't practical, especially when you're needing people to help out.
I went into science a long time ago thinking it'd be so great because it wouldn't involve people's silly perceptions and personal idiosynchrocies but I've come to find the opposite, and I've come to find that it's not always bad to have technical people be "human" after all. If that makes any sense.
In other news, I still don't know how to correctly pronounce Linux.
spacefem.com
Sub Captain: "Captain to ops." .50 cal on deck....'
Ops: "Ops here."
Captain: "I need a solution. Target bearing 323. Speed 16 knots. Distance: 5600 meters"
Ops: "Aye Aye. Solution ready."
Captain: "Tropedo room."
TR: "Aye."
Captain: "Ready and load tubes 1,3,5."
TR: "Aye. Tubes loaded and ready."
Captain: "Fire 1,3,5. Call run times!"
Fire Control: "Fish away."
Sonar: "Explosions, sir!"
Captain: "Excellent."
Sonar: "Sir, something disturbing."
Captain: "What?"
Sonar: "Strange screams of anguish."
Captain: "Huh? Don't let your emotions rule you son."
Sonar: "No sir. Just things like: 'I can't swim.' 'Where's my inhaler?' 'What? No backups?' 'Save the Anime DVDs!' 'There ain't no women and children here, save Linus first!' 'Leave RMS behind. He's old and bitter. Tis a better fate.' 'You have been, and always will be, my friend.'
Captain: 'Surface!'
Number One: 'Will we take on survivors?'
Captain: 'Prepare the
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
In his book "Just for fun" he wrote about his opinion on the microkernel architecture and mach. I don't have the book at the moment so I can't give you the actual quote, but I think a word-to-word direct translation from Finnish to English would be pretty close to "it is from ass" :)
Two things:
1-How many OSS developers are Indian or Chinese?
2-How is an OSS developer going to be "exported" from his country?
BTW Taco! Fix your site. Mozilla 1.4 posting is broken. IE and Konq work fine.
Linus: I don't care. I used to be a lot more worried about it. A long time ago I used to be worried about companies having their own (garbled) about doing this stuff.
Are we sure that Linus wasn't saying gollum?
Whoops!
I mean... er... uhh... Cursed Yellow Face!! It burnses us! We hateses it! Yessss preciouss... We hateses it!!
I mean.. how often do coders actually go outside? Huh?
do() || do_not();
We've still got RMS :)
A lot of people want to polish it for 2.6 [dollars] And the thing is, we don't want it polished. We want it solid as a rock. And it is okay to be scruffy-looking like a rock too. But it has to be solid.
Linus Torvalds, talking about his penis.
...and I'm your man.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone