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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."
How come nobody ever asks Linus what he thinks about Mac OS X ?
The open source developers will be amongst the last to see their (volunteer) jobs exported to India and China!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
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.
A very interesting read. However, I was surprised to find no comments at all concerning OSX, wrt the future of linux on the desktop. I mean, if anything in the last two years has obviated the need for linux on the desktop, this is it.
It sounds like getting onto the desktop is important to him. He talks about the problems affecting kernel space - poor support from latop hardware mfrs being a big one... but really the kernel is NOT what's holding up the success of linux on the desktop. We need easier setup and a useable interface.
An interesting read, but as ever i never seem to get an understanding of how Linux is going to convert the other 99% to microsoft.
Torvalds might be saviour to the linux community, but thats where it stops. Frankly, The OS either needs some drastic marketting plans or a couple of well placed PR people if it ever wants to make some headway. Bill Gates & Microsoft didn't get rich of the quality of their programming.
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.
He pretty much dodged that question. He made a vague reference to locking down pcs and how linux is much better at it ? Sorry but you can do that on windows as well.
Folks have said this before but it bears repeat, oss shouldnt be trying to clone windows, it should be trying to innovate something new...but hey what do i know
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
Apparently people think it's allright when you have a bias for superior technology, or for example, a bias that the earth is round rather than flat. But when it comes to a bias in favor of free (as in freedom, not beer) then all of a sudden it becomes so taboo - not even Linus wants to have that bias. I think that is such a shame, hasn't history shown that it's a worthy and rational bias by now?
Just my opinion.
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.
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();
One of the questions in the interview is:
Q: (Something about somebody rendering an image in space using Linux on an IBM laptop.)?
I believe this is the image: Reach for the stars
Apple's acquisition of NeXT wasn't as much of buying a whole new company, but a reunification of a split company.
For thousands of years there were many many people who believed that you shouldn't have to pay for things that you want. The fact that such people continue to exist, must necessarily constitute a historical proof that such beliefs are indeed worthy and rational. (Note that free as in "speech" is usually accompanied by free as in "beer", blurring the distinction by the simple observation that neither product makes any money for its developer. Look at RedHat, for example, which makes no money at all from its software, but nevertheless is able to keep itself from bankrupcy by holding hands of those few who are not able to install it themselves.)
I think one of the big issues that is holding back Linux for desktop users is the fact the OS still does not completely support automatic configuration of hardware, especially hot-docked devices through the USB and IEEE-1394 ports. This is something that Windows has done pretty well, especially with Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP Home/Professional.
I'm hoping that Linux will incorporate the Open Source equivalent of the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) which has been used since Windows 98.
Intermezzo sounds like it wants to be the end all be all of every feature you could ever want in a filesystem. Hence I think it won't work.
GFS is by Sistina (the people behind LVM and Device Mapper in Linux, but not ELVM) and uses SCSI3 locks as it's locking mechanism (the locking mechanism defined at the bottom of the SCSI layer, in version 3 of the standard).
Sistina did it GPL'ed thru the beta, and then took it propriatary after the beta. Thus OpenGFS was spawned. I haven't seen much out of that. Never used it really.
Kirby
I think the biggest single thing that has happened on the (garbled) have been a lot of good library frameworks. Qt in particular I think made a huge difference.
OpenOffice is still, in my opinion, a complete disaster. And part of the reason is that it's not using any of these frameworks that were signed for different applications. It built its own framework. I am told people are trying to fix it.
Qt guys should focus on porting openoffice using the QT framework. Openoffice is great, but a QT port would be totally awesome. Even linus thiks so
Woah, can you imagine how the OpenOffice developers must feel after reading that?
If I was working on some huge Linux project and Linus said it was a disaster, I'd feel pretty bad. I probably wouldn't stop building it or anything, but it'd be a downer.
I would warn severly against the thought that HP is actually supporting Linux in some way. This is the same company that made a full committment to JUST WINDOWS and JUST ITANIUM for its whole future. HP is a WINDOWS ONLY shop... check the record. All of this talk about Linux, though there have been some skunkworks Linux projects on the inside, is really just an HP marketing opp... do not believe ANYTHING that HP says until they actully DELIVER!! HP is a large VERY PRO MICROSOFT company... let's see the goods before listening to their oh so lovely words.
If Microsoft asks HP to stop all Linux development tomorrow, trust me... HP will stop ALL OF IT. They are 0wn3d. Their record speaks for itself.
My personal experience with HP/Compaq HW, even on the server side, is that it is somewhat problematic. If they can't get the servers to work right, do you really think they are seriously working on getting the laptop to work right?
I'm from Missourri on this one... SHOW ME HP... prove me wrong! I really, really want to be wrong.