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Torvalds Switches to a Mac
renai42 writes "Linux creator Linus Torvalds said this afternoon that he's now running an Apple Macintosh as his main desktop, mainly for work reasons, although partly simply because he's a self-described "technology whore" and got the machine for free." And yes, he is running Linux on it ;)
Cost of hardware (he got it for free) and cost o software (he writes his own).
Hey, I'd take it too, given that kind of deal!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
But seriously, let's not turn this into the E! network for geeks. I really personally don't care what hardware platform Linus uses or whether he buys his underwear from thinkgeek.com just so long as he continues doing a smashing job maintaining kernel development.
"[...] the man who has single-handedly revolutionised the use of Unix on the x86 platform"
Oh, I thought there were several people involved in Linux? Didn't know Linus created it "single-handedly".
Thanks for pointing that out to me, ZDNet!
> b) Apple hardware is desired over your Average Joe's box from Dell or HP.
Rather, free hardware is desired over your average hardware you pay for.
The thing about Apple is that they put just as much effort into their hardware as their software. If you buy a Mac and ditch OSX in favor of Linux, they have still made a sale of exactly the same value. If a bunch of Linux users started buying Macs to run Linux because Linus does (even though he got his for free!) I'm pretty sure they'd be happy with that.
There's one HUGE important point to all this, and it has nothing to do with fashion, nothing to do with conspiracy, nothing to do with elitism.
It completely prevents the merging of kernel patches that malfunction on non-x86 platforms.
Sure, these would get ironed out eventually, but if someone were to inadvertently do something x86-specific, it would immediately break on Linus's computer. That's a pretty darn good guarantee that the kernel is going to remain architecture-independent all the time, rather than only after cross-platform QA has been recently performed.
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From what i remember, Mr. Tanenbaum did not say that linux is dead but rather that monolithic kernels are dead on which the then linux kernel was based. that was not completely wrong, he also provided some references to support his arguments. what Mr. Torvalds maintained through out was that he was not designing an academic operating system but a practical one and hence efficiency and other considerations were more important to him for his OS. IMHO Tanenbaum was not wrong in saying that a kernel so badly designed wouldn't have been accepted by him if Torvalds were his student(though that should not in any way discredit the effort put into creating linux). finally it was summarised that(IIRC): 1)Tanenbaum is looking from aesthetics point of view, and is correct in what he said about OS theory, a living example is his own minix 2)Torvalds has practical concerns to look into when he was making linux, so adv of monolithic kernel looked more important at that time than microkernel architecture. it cannot be said that (who)Torvalds finally won the battle as not every thing successful is necessarily well designed - microsoft windows and x86 architecture are good examples. in addition i think linux is not completely monolithic anymore and has become a lot more modular to the Mr. Tanenbaum's liking.