Linus's Baby Comes of Age

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Posted by Zonk on Tuesday October 4, 2005 @10:52AM from the so-this-is-growing-up dept.

just_another_sean writes "Torvalds' Baby Comes of Age - BusinessWeek Online is running a story on how Linux has matured over the years. They have some positive things to say about it, and back up their statements with some examples and stats." From the article: "Hardware companies are selling more than $1 billion in servers to run Linux every quarter, while sales of servers running proprietary software continue to fall. And now, slowly but surely, Linux is making inroads on the desktop as well. According to IBM, 10 million desktops ran Linux in 2004 -- a 40% jump from a year ago. That progress has been an important foot in the door for all open-source companies. Marc Fleury, chief executive of open-source middleware company JBoss, describes the Linux operating system pioneered by Torvalds as the older brother who fought the tough battles and was able to get the curfew extended and the keys to the car, so that life was a lot easier for the rest of the open-source world. "

15 of 183 comments (clear)

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2005-10-04 10:55 · Score: 4, Funny

Comment removed based on user account deletion
But remember folks... by Noryungi · 2005-10-04 10:58 · Score: 3, Funny

As seen on Slashdot: the GPL hinders the development of Linux.

(Yes, this is funny. Laugh.)

So, on one hand we have ZDNet telling us the GPL is bad, bad, bad. On the other hand, we have BusinessWeek telling us Linux is going places. Oh, and Steve Ballmer says the GPL is for communist bearded hippies. Go figure. I guess somebody did not get the memo or something.

--
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Actually... by Spy+der+Mann · 2005-10-04 11:03 · Score: 5, Funny

For a second there, I thought Linus had a kid...

Actually, he's married and has three kids, all girls. Yes, fellow slashdotters, our favorite geek hero has trascended beyond the realms of our known universe: He COULD get a girlfriend! :-o

\o/ \o/ All nerds bow to Linus the Great! \o/ \o/
1. Re:Actually... by Stradenko · 2005-10-04 11:07 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Yeah, I initially thought those sick f*cks at businessweek were talking about Patricia...nine years old? coming of age? sick bastards.
2. Re:Actually... by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2005-10-04 11:10 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  our favorite geek hero has trascended beyond the realms of our known universe
  
  I think what you mean is that Linus fork()ed and got 3 new processes going...
  
  --
  "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
3. Re:Actually... by paranode · 2005-10-04 11:26 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  He COULD get a girlfriend!
  
  True but he replaced Girlfriend 4.0 with Wife 1.0 and the upgrade is not reversible. Please do be careful with this decision.
  
  Documentation to follow:
  
  Last year a friend of mine upgraded from Girlfriend 4.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it's a memory hog leaving few system resources for other applications. He is also now noticing the Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child-processes which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomenon was included in the product documentation, though other users have informed me that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application. Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself so that it is always launched at system initialization where it can monitor all other system activity. Some applications such as PokerNite 10.3 , Bachelor Party 2.5, and Pubnite 7.0 are no longer able to run on the system at all, causing the system to lockup when launched (even though the apps worked fine before). Wife 1.0 provides no installation options. Thus, the installation of undesired plug-ins such as Mother-in-law 55.8 and the Brother-in-law Beta is unavoidable. Also, system performance seems to diminish with each passing day. Some features my friend would like to see in the upcoming Wife 2.0: * A "don't remind me again" button. * Minimize button. * Ability to delete the "headache" file * An install feature that provides an option to uninstall 2.0 version without loss loss of other system resources. * An option to run the network driver in "promiscuous mode" allowing the the system's Hardware Probe feature to be much more useful/effective. I myself wish I had decided to avoid all of the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend 3.0 Even here, however, I have found many problems. Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 4.0 on top of girlfriend 3.0. You must uninstall Girlfriend 3.0 first, otherwise the two versions of Girlfriend will have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port. Other users have told me that this is a long-standing problem that I should have been aware of. Guess that explains what happened to versions 1 and 2. To make matters worse, the uninstall program for Girlfriend 3.0 doesn't work very well, leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system. Another identified problem is that all versions of Girlfriend have annoying little messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0! VIRUS ALERT All users should be aware that Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Once that happens, Mistress 1.1 won't install and you will get an "insufficient resources" error message. To avoid the aforementioned bug, try installing Mistress 1.1 on a different system and " never" run any file transfer applications(such as Laplink) between the two systems. FYI: Don't even think about a shared directory!!!!!!!!!
4. Re:Actually... by valintin · 2005-10-04 11:31 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  For a second there... I actually thought one of his daughters was old enough to start sending in patches.
5. Re:Actually... by pablodiazgutierrez · 2005-10-04 13:01 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Actually, he's married and has three kids, all girls.
  He prefers calling them his genetic back-ups.
  
  --
  
  To do list for Windows
6. Re:Actually... by CastrTroy · 2005-10-04 13:06 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Yeah, but those backups are like mp3s, in the respect that they are quite lossy. Maybe with 3 backups, there is enough parity to assemble the original.
  
  --
  
  Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
7. Re:Actually... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-04 17:33 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  From the Wikipedia article:
  
  Linus is married to Tove Torvalds. She is a six-time Finnish national Karate champion, whom he first met in fall 1993.
  
  So his children are the unholy union of a geek demigod and a woman who could beat a Navy SEAL to death with little to no effort. Wow....
Re:What distro does Linus run? by Reducer2001 · 2005-10-04 11:24 · Score: 2, Funny

I heard he's a closet Win 3.11 user.

--
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
Re:What distro does Linus run? by EvilMal · 2005-10-04 11:41 · Score: 2, Funny

Linux From Scratch, of course!
Re:Actually it's Stallman's baby by Teckla · 2005-10-04 12:48 · Score: 2, Funny

Sure, Linux would be nowhere without Gnu, but Gnu would be nowhere without Linux. Can't we just call it a happy symbiosis instead of trying to say it's one or the other's baby?

This just in: GigsVT (208848) confirms BSD is dead.
All at the same time? by ClosedSource · 2005-10-04 14:54 · Score: 3, Funny

IBM spokesperson: There were 10 million desktops running Linux in 2004.

Business week: All at the same time?

IBM spokesperson: Well, no. We were going to take 5 million PCs out of stock and load Linux on them before installing Windows, but then we decided to load Linux on a single PC and move it from desktop to desktop. It was much cheaper.
Re:What distro does Linus run? by M.+Baranczak · 2005-10-04 17:59 · Score: 2, Funny

If people are really going to choose 1 distro over the other, because Linus uses it, then they are pretty dumb users.

I think that was the whole point. There are a lot of dumb users out there, in case you haven't noticed.