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Linux For Losers According To De Raadt
elohim writes "Theo has some scathing comments about Linux in his new interview with Forbes Magazine. From the article: 'It's terrible...Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, "This is garbage and we should fix it."'"
"Linux For Losers According To De Raadt"
Nowhere in that article does he say "Linux is for losers" or use that label. The headline of the story rhetorically asks that question, way to generate flamebait, Forbes & Slashdot editors!
Now I'm going to get a coffee and enjoy the comments which will probably not differ much from "Theo is teh ghey! L12nux r00lzzzzzz!!!"
Trolling is a art,
You mean for once I am not a loser? I never thought I'd see the day when running Windows was... cool.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
From the article:
Torvalds, via e-mail, says De Raadt is "difficult" and declined to comment further.
I must say, Linus really comes across as a classy, quality person. It takes mature restraint to deal with "difficult" people like Theo, and Linus does so with class.
-5 Flamebait
Theo De Raadt Abrasive and Opinionated! Film at 11
The funny thing is he has never run Linux. Quoting this interview:
Theo de Raadt: I don't know. I have never run Linux.
#!/
I'd be angry too. About how the Forbes article portrayed me as a raving lunatic out for blood, after giving what was probably a thoughtful interview.
All the article consisted of was trotting Theo out for choice quotes about how Linux sucks, and a tiny bit of BSD history. Only 2 out of the 16 paragraphs even started to cover *why* Theo thinks the way he does. The rest is tabloid-style trash-talk and what seems to be an ADD-inspired history lesson. There's nothing approaching a coherent argument.
I'm giving Theo the benefit of the doubt on this one- he probably gave a fleshed-out argument then Forbes eviscerated it. Even if that's not the case, they should have written a better article. This is awfully shitty journalism.
In a NewsForge interview a couple of days ago de Raadt was asked about technical comparisons between Linux and BSD and replied, "I don't know. I have never run Linux."
? tid=152&tid=8&tid=2
http://os.newsforge.com/os/05/06/09/2132233.shtml
Suddenly, he's an expert on how bad Linux is?
Theo is openbsd's greatest strength (a fanatical security coder) and their worst handicap (a PR nightmare)
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Dan's Resume
Remember folks, UNIX was fragmented and dying before Linux became mainstream. BSD and GNU were nothing but obscure academic projects. The popularity of Linux brought UNIX to a whole new generation of users, and BSD has benefited from the uprising as much as anyone. Even the big boys, like Solaris and AIX, are trying to be more like Linux.
And the whole quality thing is a myth. Linus approaches the kernel with the approach of an engineer, and the rest of Linux mirrors this approach. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to work. Theo thinks of himself as an artist, and his arrogance does as much to hurt BSD as it does to help it.
1. /usr/local. Everything that you add afterwards goes in there. It's just extra to type. And is apache config in /usr/local/apache/conf or /usr/local/etc/apache/conf ?
/usr/local is exactly where additional software, not included in the base OS, should be installed. More typing?? For what? /usr/local should be in your path and manually going to this directory should be rare.
Maybe a more experience sys admin can chime in here, but
There are many reasons why one might _not_ want to use BSD, but this is the silliest yet!
And that's about as much sense as this conversation makes.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Ah, grasshopper... take a bath. Data hygiene is a good thing.
/usr/local, you can re-install the OS(e.g. partition corruption, junior admin fubar'ing, etc) without having to re-install your apps.
/usr/local , /opt is a good thing.
Funny, the default mixing of apps and OS in linux distros is what I dis-like the most about linux.
Keeping added apps seperate from the OS highlights the beauty of *nix over windows. With everything you installed after the OS in
Trust me, I've been there. Windows admin hoses OS, I re-install OS and I'm done. The needed apps are already in place & configured.
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
Lok Technologies, a San Jose, Calif.-based maker of networking gear, started out using Linux in its equipment but switched to OpenBSD four years ago after company founder Simon Lok, who holds a doctorate in computer science, took a close look at the Linux source code.
"You know what I found? Right in the kernel, in the heart of the operating system, I found a developer's comment that said, 'Does this belong here?' "Lok says. "What kind of confidence does that inspire? Right then I knew it was time to switch."
So this guy switched from Linux to BSD not because he saw some poorly implemented code, but because of a comment?
That is absolutely insane.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
As I understand it: stuff you contribute to BSDs can be pirated by msft, and others, and put into their binary code.
The code is not pirated. The BSD license allows for distribution and modification of the code w/o the restrictions that the GPL places on code (namely that you must keep the code open).
Is this the seafaring, raping, murdering pirate ?
Or the copyright infringement pirate ?
Or the license infringement pirate ?
You do realize that none of the above apply, right ?
If you contribute to a BSD under a BSD-style license then yes... others can use your code in their closed-source products.
Don't like it ? Don't release under that license.
As for the GPL.. crikey - which one ? which version ? There's too many of them out there already. You mean GPL 2.0, I take it - which doesn't stop a company from "pirating" your code by using it only internally on a webservice and just spitting out the results of the code. That's one of those things GPL 3.0 is supposed to address, I guess ? whatever
We all know the guy is a bit off. Why is it that the Linux community can't listen to criticism, tho?
You talk about usability. The Linux people come out with "just because it isn't like Microsoft doesn't mean it's wrong."
The excuses are rampant in the Linux world. Do I use Linux? Sure. When I can get it running. Even modern distros are kludgey and clunky. Half the time the GUI does nothing but provide useless and cryptic error messages. I have a Win2k print server. I have tried (easily) a dozen distros to get things working. One will see the network. One won't without downgrading Samba. One will, but can't access anything. One sees everything and accesses everything but can't print. Sound is the same way. Some have issues with setting resolutions on the video side, others have other problems.
There are too many distros all in it for themselves. Even the ones that use one of the main distros as their base. Debian, Red Hat, what have you, all are kludgey and unrefined.
I want Linux to work. Desperately want it to get out there and do good. But it isn't going to, especially if every response to criticism is not "okay, let me see if I can work on that" and continues to be "Its better than Crapple and Microshit!"
No one wants another Microsoft Windows, but some friggin' usability isn't going to hurt your cause, and you may even be able to swing it without giving up your anti-Microsoft rhetoric. You can be different and still be intuitive and intelligent.
Actually the worst part is that Theo is often right, which means you do have to actually listen to him rather than the easier just ignore him.
Reguardless of whether Theo is right or wrong he should not be such an asshat. Honestly have you ever dealt with the guy? If you don't see eye to eye with him he treats you like a giant turd. WTF? This is why it is good to have social skills and to know when to keep your mouth shut and when to open it. Theo from my experiance appears to have niether.
The title I submitted this with was "de Raadt Blasts Lunix in Forbes Interview"... Blame Zonk for the "Lunix For Losers" title.
"It's terrible," De Raadt says. "Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.'"
The bottom line is that it works better than commercial software. Anyone can look at the source code and see the comments, which are blunt about what needs fixing and how crappy the hardware is. Even commercial Linux rocks next to popular alternatives. For ease of installation, use, relative protection from mal and spyware, you can't beat a distribution like Mepis. Winners can step up to pure Debian, "losers" can fall all the way down to Caldera Open Linux and still do better than what 90% of the world uses.
There's also a difference in motivation. "Linux people do what they do because they hate Microsoft. We do what we do because we love Unix," De Raadt says. The irony, however, is that while noisy Linux fanatics make a great deal out of their hatred for Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), De Raadt says their beloved program is starting to look a lot like what Microsoft puts out. "They have the same rapid development cycle, which leads to crap," he says.
That's what Micrososoft would have everyone believe, and so Microsoft is worth hating. People use Linux for freedom and the superior performance it brings. Study after study show this. Why people like Dan Lyons don't get it is beyond me, except that he might be a Fanboy.
Let's look back at other nasty junk he's written:
Dan Lyons, you are a shill. I dare you to make the entire tapes of your interview with Theo available. Anything less is second hand BS and the kind of thing the web makes obsolete.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
"You know what I found? Right in the kernel, in the heart of the operating system, I found a developer's comment that said, 'Does this belong here?' "Lok says. "What kind of confidence does that inspire? Right then I knew it was time to switch."
Damn. Somebody remove that comment.
Banu
The exception to this is on OpenBSD, where Apache is run from a chroot environment by default, and so everything related to Apache is in /var/www, which adds to security.
I personally prefer having interfaces named after the driver, because it makes it easier to identify a particular interface. On Linux, you have to read the dmesg output (or similar) to know whihc eth0 and eth1 are. With *BSD, I can tell that rl0 is the cheap RealTek card I bought to connect to the cable modem, while fxp0 is the Intel card that connects to the Internal network. I previously had to tweak something on a Linux gateway which sat between 4 networks, and I had no idea whether it was eth0, eth1, eth2, or eth3 that connected to the outside world. Of course, as others have mentioned, it is possible to change the names to more sensible ones.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Bravado is never being wrong, even when you'd say someone else was if it were anyone else but you. It's never bothering to be introspective, to question yourself or your actions.
Confidence is knowing you'll get there eventually, even if you aren't there yet. You're allowed to ask questions along the way like "Should this be here?".
I would much rather rely on software that is like the latter, than I would the former.
Besides, I bet Simon Lok maintains a few hundred windows machines too, but since he can't read those comments at all...
This would be like Bill Gates saying linux is for losers.
Let's face it, Raadt is pissed off that linux has supassed OpenBSD in terms of userbase. A little resentment? I think so.
If the developer isn't confident about even *where* some part of the code should be, and code from that confused developer actually made it into the kernel despite that confusion, why should a user have confidence in it?
A specific feature may be implemented in many ways. If there are several equivelent or nearly-equivelent ways, it makes sense to question your implementation decision. It does not necessarily imply the developer was unsure if "it" really belonged in that particular location; it is far more likely that the developer was unsure if there wasn't a better way of doing it that he was overlooking.
Sometimes writing code, something just doesn't feel right, even if you know your implementation is just fine. You have the feeling there's a better way. Usually, when you come back to it later, the better way is apperant. Often, the better way is simply cleaner code, not a better algorithm.
Comments like that are markers that welcome improvement, not an indication of lack of developer confidence.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
If this were a windows fanboy thread, you'd have 20 dozen MCSE bootcamp graduates screaming that you should spend the next 6 months using regmon to figure out which keys are for the app, which aren't. You're also supposed to sacrifice a chicken or something during the folly.
Give me txt file configs any day of the week.
If Linux just "happens to run", how come it knocks out OpenBSD when it comes to performance? I very much doubt that Linux would win tests like these if "many parts" of its code were low quality and badly designed.
Granted, the test linked to above is soon two years old, and De Raadt refers to style of coding or general code quality rather than raw performance -- which other prominent people also have commented (in a perhaps more balanced way), but the fact that Linux runs is not merely a coincidence, as De Raadt seems to insinuate.
He blames Linux marketshare on the BSD lawsuit. I'm sorry, but in this case, he sounds foolish. The way BSD was developed and promoted a decade ago had far more to do with Linux' acceptance than the BSD lawsuit.
At the time, *very* few businesses used Linux. Well under 1%, probably more like 1% of 1% of 1%. At any rate, if you wanted to use a free *nix OS, you had three choices besides Linux:
1) Paying a commercial BSD license fee (BSDi). This was a bit expensive for an individual, and even the commercial version didn't have drivers for a lot of the better hardware (like reasonably new Dell servers).
2) Writing your own device drivers for anything unsupported.
3) Sending a BSD vendor equipment so they could write your driver.
I wish I could remember which prject was which for #2 and #3. Whichever group was #2, when I asked on the net about a SCSI driver for our server (a friend and I were starting a business on the side), I was flamed by a core BSD developer for not just writing a driver. HELLO! I need to run a business, not write drivers!
I tried really hard to make BSD work on our hardware. I finally gave up and tried Linux at another friend's suggestion. It just worked.
Linux caught on with individuals, then with startups and small projects in larger companies, and only in the past 3-4 years has started to matter in the corporate marketplace at large.
The BSD community chased people away (that's not an indictment of the community, it's just the effect of how things were handled).
There's an old adage that says, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." Even if that were still true (it's generally not), when you start beating them in the head with the mousetrap, don't complain when tehy don't buy it.
I'm not sure if Theo is merely ignorant of history, or is simply choosing to ignore it. Either way, he's in trouble. Those who ignore or forget the lessons of history are doomed to what? Repeat it. Theo's helping screw up BSD's chances all over again.
Theo does not take that path. He's a zealot... but he's not just a zealot. He's a clear-eyed, effective zealot who manages a solid project that produces the result he intends: a highly secure OS. If you'll recall from that other interview:Here we have a NetBSD guy saying, essentially, "I don't agree with Theo's approach, but it does work better than ours and we may all need to adopt it one day."
CZ is saying that Theo may be forging the path that many will need to follow before long. Theo was a security fanatic a long time ago, and I think events have proven that he made a good call on that. Events have yet to say if his abrasive approach to documentation will turn out to be a good call. CZ clearly recognizes that Theo may be ahead of the curve again, although it's too soon to say.
It seems to me that there exists a diversity of approaches to driving open-source and free software forward. At one extreme is Good Cop Linus, at the other is Bad Cop Theo, and everyone else is arrayed somewhere in the middle. A company being asked to provide documentation hears "It's in your best interest to get broad support from Linux" and on the other "Give me the goods or support for this device will be dropped." This is an effective combination, and the two together work better than either alone.
Theo is abrasive, yes... but the collective endeavor of free and open software needs someone abrasive, just as much as it needs a benevolent dictator.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Hehe. This guy is obviously a great coder. Too bad he's such a total dickhead.
This article really highlights Theo's personality problems, and may shed some light on why NetBSD summarily kicked him out on the street. Here's the first email he got from the core developers after he complained that they shut down his CVS access:
Over the past year and a half, we have received a considerable number of complaints about the fact that you seem to harass and abuse both users and developers of NetBSD. At various times, some of us have suggested (with varying levels of severity) that you cease this behaviour, but this has been ineffective. Indeed, you have given us scant reason to believe that your behaviour is ever going to change for the better.
Your abusive actions have seriously impaired the success of the NetBSD project in several ways. Your actions have driven away developers or potential developers, and have alienated many users. They have also squandered much of the good will that various people have directed at the project.
Finally, it is clear that for the project to be a success, we must promote a positive environment for both users and developers. If we continue to allow you, an official representative of the NetBSD project, to behave in this manner, we create the perception that we approve of your behaviour. That perception is damaging to the project and cannot be allowed to persist.
Because of these things, we believe that it would be in the best interest of the NetBSD project if you were to resign all official association with the project. We request that you resign from the NetBSD core team, resign as the maintainer of the NetBSD SPARC port, and post a message to the "netbsd-users", "current-users", and "port-sparc" mailing lists announcing your resignation. If you choose not to post such an announcement within one day (by 9:00AM, 12/21/94), we will be forced to inform the public about your removal from the organization ourselves.
We regret having to do this, because you have done a significant amount of very good work for the project. In spite of that, we can no longer condone your behaviour. We wish for this parting to be as painless as possible; we have disabled your accounts on the NetBSD development machines and have removed you from the "core" and "port-masters" mailing lists, but have left your subscriptions to other NetBSD mailing lists untouched. We have no objection to your further participation in NetBSD, as long as you participate in a mature manner and make clear the fact that you no longer officially represent the NetBSD Project.
Of course, now no one can kick him out of OpenBSD, so I guess he's found the one role that'll work for him. Luckily, it's irrelevant during the 364 days this year when some idiot at Forbes didn't decide to upchuck a completely assinine, one-sided bullshit flame from a proven asshole, and then call it a news story.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Theo is a paranoid, perfectionist, peckerhead. I say this in the most kind, loving manner possible, as I've got half a dozen OBSD boxes running on the internet right now, along with many more FreeBSD boxen and a few SuSe Linux machines that I'm learning to love.
BSD and Linux are different animals - on the development side BSD is like an American funeral home lawn - not a blade out of place, while Linux is more of an English garden, with all sorts of wild experiments happening.
I prefer BSD for server work because I like the discipline that exists in both development and maintenance, but I love the steady flow of GPL software that comes from Linux into the FreeBSD ports tree.
Both have an ecological niche to fill
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
What stands out in my mind: better documentation, cleaner code, more structured filesystem layout, less distribution fragmentation, more informative kernel/log/error messages, "base" OS seperated from packages better.
BSD gets some things first, Linux gets other things first. IMHO, more often than not, when the BSD stuff comes out later, its generally because it was done the "right way" rather than the "quick and dirty way" and then re-written with an incompatible interface 3 months later :D
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
This article has really made me see the light. It is full of unwaivering logic and factual critique of the Linux OS. I am now switching to OpenBSD. In fact, I will now be switching the entire Datacenter to run OpenBSD, and find a picture of De Rat to use as my desktop background.
Thank you Forbes magazine, once again you proved to mold and shape the direction of my life.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
which was quoted on another discussion of this article elsewhere on the Net:
"On December 20 [1994], Theo de Raadt was asked to resign from the NetBSD Project by the remaining members of 'core'. This was a very difficult decision to make, and resulted from Theo's long history of rudeness towards and abuse of users and developers of NetBSD. We believe that there is no place for that type of behaviour from representatives of the NetBSD Project, and that, overall, it has been damaging to the project.
This decision was difficult to make because Theo has a long history of positive contributions to the project. He was the principal caretaker of NetBSD's SPARC support, and has written too much code to mention.
We are certainly willing to accept (and would very much like to see) future contributions from Theo, but we believe that it is inappropriate for him to be an "official" representative of the project any longer."
I'd say that pretty well takes care of that. Theo is apparently an asshole. That he prostitutes himself to Daniel Lyons, a know anti-OSS/Linux FUD merchant, seems to make it clear that this rant is to be ignored by anybody with a brain, whether you like the BSDs or not.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
OpenSSH flaws are pretty much entirely in the portable version, which is done by a seperate team of people that add the so-called portability goop - things like PAM support are not in the OpenBSD version.
OpenSSL is done by other people under an apache-like license and OpenSSH is done by OpenBSD under a modern BSD license. If you want another SSL make your own, if you want another SSH use lsh.
And your true free comment is something that doesn't belong here, take it to a GNU discussion - BSD users don't care.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
I made myself a bet before I ever clicked on the article. I thought "wow, sounds like a Lyons piece" then I clicked on it:
Is Linux For Losers?
By Dan Lyons
So the Linux is for Losers part is from Dan Lyons. That's no surprise. He's still smarting from the thorough debunking PJ of Groklaw did. Speaking of which, I'd advise checking over there to see if PJ has made any comment on this story.
Lyons has to know he could get some flamebait out of Theo (not to difficult, but try comparing this interview to the one Theo gave to NewsForge).
This is just a troll for hits. Nothing more, nothing less. Lyons has just been studying up on how to rile people up. Please ignore him.
I mean look: Lyons chose that headline, Lyons chose to interview Theo, Lyons helped Theo look bad (not hard, given Theo's reputation).
This is nothing more than a cynical bid to sell ads on Forbes. Just like when Dvorak said that Maureen O'Gara should've gotten a medal for increasing readership when she stalked PJ of Groklaw, this is flamebait from an idiot meant to rile you into mindlessly clicking a Forbes story and generating ad revenue.
Lyons is laughing at you all the way to the bank. Have the last laugh; blackhole Forbes and their advertisers in your DNS and tell others to do the same.
OpenBSD was pretty obscure, despite everyone using openssh. As Theo has been more and more provocative, openbsd has gotten more and more publicity. The number of people using OpenBSD is WAY up in the last few years. Believe it or not, any publicity really is good publicity, and alot of people use products based on the product, not the person who made it, so people find out about openbsd because of this stuff, and then ignore this stuff and use openbsd because its good.
you couldn't be more wrong. just subscribe to the freebsd-questions list and you will see 100's oh helpful answers to questions ever day from install problems to ports problems. by contrast many times i have asked questions on various linux channels and i was given the retort "we don't spoon feed". i have also found freebsd's install to be far suprior to any linux distro, it has a simple yet freindly ncurses menu system. it's handbook is also a major help, being kept well up to date and with relivant accurate information. i found openbsd to be the hardest of the 3 bsd's to use and install, and it's hardware support IS limited. i will also say that the user community is no where near as helpful, and often very painful. but on the whole it is still a worthy OS with many merits. but give freebsd another go i doubt it will disapoint
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
A friend of mine just said to me (who happens to be a big FreeBSD user) - "think of him as a bsd manifestation of rms."
This is why the Debian camp and the FreeBSD camp turns me off of their distributions/OSs - the pig headed stuck up attitude of its leaders tends to cause friction with everyone else including people on the same side as them.
Point in case, from my experience, every Debian developer I've run across seems to be trained in the art of insulting and harassing RedHat users.
Now, thats just my experience, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who may have seen that.
Brielle