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Linus on SCO, and the Desktop Being 10 Years Away
An anonymous reader writes "In this interview from last week's Linux.conf.au in Australia, Linus Torvalds talks about how the SCO lawsuit 'riled' him and led him to spend a week writing an application to archive his email, and how he think Linux will take 5 to 10 years to become mainstream on the desktop."
Can someone clarify his view for me? I don't follow Linux very closely, but am genuinely curious what Linus' real thoughts on the future of Linux for the desktop are.
:)
He says in both articles that there have been a bunch of really good developments in making Linux user-friendly, but it'll be a while before Joe User feels comfortable sitting down in front of a Linux box. The earlier story but kind of a spin on it - it sounds like they took what Linus said a little bit too far. He didn't really say that 2004 would be the "year of Linux on the desktop"; he said that "This year there will be a lot of desktop users." That's it. Even if you did RTFA, it's still kinda confusing. That's the media for you.
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
"Linus had once noted that he had never been in a dunk tank before, and noted that, without that experience, his life was not complete. He need wait no longer; at Linux.Conf.Au the lucky high bidder got to put Linus into the tank. Here's the photos:"
http://lwn.net/Articles/66665/
There seems to be a lot of different interpretations of Linus' views of the future of Linux floating around. There was a recent post on /. entitled "Linus says 2004 is the year of the Linux Desktop" or something like that. That seems to be a bit of a conflict with this article. Can someone clarify his view for me?
I'll try. The confusion is actually inherent in the contemporary meaning of the word "desktop". Sometimes this means "just any computer for a non-techie", sometimes "a machine for a home user". Even in this interview Linus has said "it's doing pretty well, especially in companies that can support it already. Linux is ready as a desktop in a corporate environment on machines that are supposed to be nothing more than, say, a locked-in word processing station - but that requires a corporate support. Linux is not ready as a desktop for someone who just bought himself a new PC and want to use it for the same word processing at home, with no corporate support available. Please note that this is not my view, I'm just giving you my understanding on what Linus has said (damn, this sounds like a part of "Monty Python's Life Of Brian").
Hey, maybe he had a job to do and existing tools weren't adequate. Or maybe he didn't know about them. Or (likely) it was just something cool to do. In any case, its always refreshing to read a Linus interview; he's got his head on straight and doesn't get full of himself. It puts things into the "real world" perspective. I like the part about how he bought a digital picture frame for his kids pics and found out later that it was running Linux!
C|N>K
Well technically, no. He did write a new OS. He wrote it in Minix, and wrote it to be compatible with Minix. And he did write Linux because he saw that Minix was lacking in a few areas. But Linus did create everything from scratch.
If you haven't yet, read Just For Fun, it's a great semi-autobiography.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
I agree, and I think that many of the Gnome people agree also since it has lately been copying OS X more than Windows.
It would be a help to actually read the damn article. What Linux actually talked about was "they've subpoenaed me for a lot of emails, and I spent literally a week writing a tool to index all my emails, so that when they give a better criteria for me, what they really want, I can actually produce it."
No mention of archive or an archive type app there....
I've noticed recently that the SCO lawsuit has made some waves in UK papers, where previously you'd be hard pushed to find a mention of Linux whenever a computer-related article is published (Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft!).
The BBC have picked up on the story now.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
The hot key to switch between apps is command-tab. I never use it though. Expose is much faster.
OT, but it should be said.
Command-Backquote (that would be the console key for you FPS junkies, ~ for the rest of us) cycles between an application's open windows.
Mixed with Cmd-Tab it separates applications so that you can switch windows without switching apps. It hurts to know one of these shortcuts and not the other, as Windows users are used to Alt-Tab letting them go to any open window on any open app, Cmd-Tab only changes between open apps.
Anyone who doesn't use a Mac wouldn't appreciate this; simply put it means you don't end up in an Alt-Tab program list 3 rows long, searching for the one window you want.
P.S. Expose rocks.
1) most of them don't care what OS they're running as long as it works
/. geek's skills are with women. As soon as a dialog box pops up that he doesn't recognize, he immediately calls me. He doesn't even read it, he just calls me and asks "What do I do". You get the picture.
;-)
This is absolutely key here. My Father is a perfect example of this. His skills with a PC are about what the average
Anyhow, over the past year, I've slowly migrated his apps to OSS products. For example, I switched him over from IE and Outlook Express (gag!) to Mozilla for web and mail. Similarly, I uninstalled OFfice '97 and installed OOo 1.1. AIM to GAIM, etc. You get the picture.
Once he became comfortable with these new applications (he *loves* the mozilla pop-up blocking and moz mail spam filtering), it was a trivial matter to remove Win98 entirely and install a fresh copy of SuSE 8.2 Pro. I placed the same icons on the desktop, in the same locations, set the wallpaper to what is was in Windoze, and set the SuSE login manager to log him in automatically on bootup.
He was already so comfortable using Mozilla, OpenOffice, GAIM, etc. that when I swapped Win98 for SuSE, it took him about an hour before he even noticed that something was "different"!
Moral of the story? If my Father can use Linux, *anyone* can.
On a side note, it's better for me now too, because when he does encounter a problem, I can just SSH into his machine (I opened the SSH port on his router) and fix it. With Win98 we would go back and forth for ever on the phone "you see the little picture of the computer? that's called an icon. double click it now. no, with the other mouse button". You all know the drill.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Linus Torvalds Q&A
Kate Mackenzie
JANUARY 16, 2004
LINUX creator Linus Torvalds spoke to Australian IT during his visit to Adelaide this week for Linux.conf.au, his second after attending last year's conference in Perth.
So what made you come to Australia two years in a row?
It's summer here, and it's winter in California, but literally there are only two conferences I go to anymore, because I like the technical ones, and the Australian one, as far I can tell.. it's not organised in the commercial conference kind of sense, but that just means it's a lot more relaxed, the people just talk about tech they don't try to sell stuff, and these days in the US it's unheard of, you can't make money with this kind of conf, so I go to the Australiani one and I go to one in Canada (Ottowa Linux Symposium).
What do you get out of meeting up with people in real life that you don't get from communicating with them on the net?
I actually meet up with different people, mostly it's getting a sense for what people are saying and thinking.
And, I talk to developers here, but not so much - more of the time, I just talk to people who are writing code. The kind of people who come to conferences like this, they tend to be technical people, they tend to be somewhat involved with development, but they're not so much the people I work with all the time.
It means that it's fun. I'm making a bold prediction that we'll go out for beer every night - it's partly socialising, but also getting a better view of what people are thinking about, what people are worried about.
Has anything struck you so far?
So far no, there haven't been any huge issues which is always nice. But on the other hand, the huge issues - when people start fighting, screaming, that can be interesting - that's how you see where there's real problems - people standing on other side of the rooms and not being very polite... that hasn't happened yet, but the week is young.
Anything you're particuarly looking forward to? I'm mainly following the desktop stuff, so the GNOME meetings...
I remember you saying at last year's Linux.conf.au that you were quite focused on the desktop. How do you think it's gone in the past year?
What's kind of interesting is... literally in a year or so, it's been to concentrate almost entirely on server space and things like telephony, where you have big companies setting up rooms.
Within the last year, even six months, there are big copanies now interested in literally not just selling desktop Linux, but also using desktop Linux internally. I mean it's going to take, literally five to 10 years before "normal users" start seeing Linux desktop, but in the technical space it's doing pretty well, especially in companies that can support it already.
Okay, here's the difficult question. What do you think about this SCO business right now?
Right now I'm actually fairly calm, because they haven't made any huge outrageous claims in the past 12 days or so, so they've been quiet for a while. It hasn't been that bothersome, but every once in a while, when they make some new claim, it really riles me - I mean they've literally claimed copyright on files I can prove I wrote personally, and that's very irritating.
But at the same time, the fact that their claims, when you step back, are so clearly bogus and not worth worrying about, is - that makes me worry a lot less. They're clearly scraping the barrel and coming up empty handed.
So it's irritating but I can live with it. I'm just hoping it's going to finally come to a head soon, because it's just dragging on - it's been dragging on for something like eight months, and it's getting pretty tiresome.
It doesn't seem to be having much negative impact though on the use of Linux, that must be encouraging?
I don't see any customers anyway, but apparently... customers aren't reacting very much, especially not much anymore. But it has for example forced me to - they've subpoe
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Which is why you need Tweak UI and tick the box for "Use Windows 2000-style search dialogs."
=)
But...
At my medium-sized company, our IT department is always understaffed. Our titles mean little and we end up wearing many hats. My official title is Database Admin (MS SQL Server), but since I'm a former field support tech, I end up helping our techs troubleshoot problems they can't (won't?) resolve. We run Windows 2000 and XP on all of our desktops (except mine, of course). Our techs are pretty much MS only, because they have never bothered to learn Linux. Same for my boss, the Director.
I've been pushing Linux since we were a two-man show (the Director and me!). My boss has always been interested in Linux, but he can't seem to gather the courage to leave his Windows comfort zone.
Our field support techs just think I'm a crazy zealot for pushing Linux, and I think they actually see Linux as a threat to their existance, since they are not willing to put in the time to learn it. I think they waste a ridiculous amount of time rebuilding rotted Windows installs, running MS update-reboot-reboot, removing spyware/malware, cleaning viruses, etc, etc.
When I try to explain to them that Linux would make their life easier, they just look at me like I'm nuts.
We have actually managed to get some Linux in the door on our backend servers, running www, DNS, and mail, but because I'm the only Linux guy, support of those servers generally falls on me. Our Network Admin has some BSD experience from his former ISP job, so he helps out some in this area, but I still end up doing a lot of it. Fortunately the Linux servers are very reliable, and don't require huge amounts of attention.
I'd love see all of our desktop installs replaced with Linux, but at the same time, in our current situation, I am the only one who would know anything about supporting them. I have enough on my plate already, and I can't really encourage Linux on the desktop without help.
Recently, after the MS-Blaster fiasco, I started a pilot project with one of our users running a Linux desktop, with our Director's blessing. Our company is actually in a better position for migration than many, because we run our mission critical Windows-only apps on Citrix metaframe servers. It has proved to be favorable, but going forward with complete rollout means a) Forcing our techs to learn Linux (unlikely), or b) Firing our techs and hiring Linux techs (not going to happen).
At this point all I can hope for is to push for a requirement that all future techs that we hire have Linux experience. At the rate we are growing, it will probably take 10 years before we have enough Linux expertise in-house to support a company-wide Linux rollout, so Linus is probably right on the money.
Your mother isn't YOUR grandmother. I think that's an important distinction to make here as it determines her age and therefore her generation.
Really?
Exactly how do you know the original poster's age?
Okay, you might still want to also be able to launch it from the command line, or some script. Well, app bundles let you do this: $ open /Applications/Omniweb.app. Yes, in current implementations this requires giving the .app's full path. But if you really wanted, nothing would be simpler than to implement a special PATH for .apps, that open would consult. The reason it's not been done, I venture, is that nobody ever felt the need.
You might bring in MANPATH (etc.). Again I would argue its utter irrelevance in the GUI, where help is done by giving each app a help menu. The GUI gives users more hooks than just a command prompt, so we use that.
You must never have "installed" a Mac Mozilla build. Downloading it gives you one double-clickable object Mozilla.app, which you can drag and drop and double click anywhere AT ALL. No hard coded symlink, no "registration" with the start menu, no rpm database, no registry, no special launcher, no nothing.The file manager (Finder) is the launcher. That way (and I don't see another...) "installs" become simple drag & drops, and GUI applictions are automatically relocatable wherever the user wants, through the GUI. Browsing to Mozilla.app is no pain because it is where you chose to put it. Two Mozilla builds can coexist just fine. How am I supposed to be impressed by a symlink that needs updating as soon as I move anything?
Ugly how? They work.