Slashdot Mirror
Linus Torvalds Speaks Out on Future of Linux
SlinkySausage writes "Linus Torvalds has laid out his plans for the future of Linux, including the 3.0 kernel [there probably won't be one], problems with the Linux release cycles and which distro he personally runs on his home PC. '"Compile everything by hand" ones simply weren't interesting to me,' Torvalds says."
If stability means it's dying. As I see it, the current Linux kernel does all that it needs to, and does it quite well. There is no need to upgrade it, because to do so would be an upgrade for upgrade's sake. Anyone in IT will tell you that to upgrade simply for the sake of upgrading is stupid, and will lead to a multitude of problems. The only reason that the Linux kernel would need a version 3.x is because of a fundamentally new hardware technology. Currently, software is driving hardware development; games are written requiring advanced graphics cards. In the 90's, hardware drove software development; chip makers like Intel put out a new processor, and then software was written to take advantage of the advancements of the new chip.
Even advancements in multi-core technology would not require a 3.x series kernel (unless I'm mistaken in my belief that the 2.6.x series supports multi-core CPU's), simply because once you cam make a dual-core CPU functional with the kernel, expanding that functionality to 4, 8, or even 64 cores is simply an expanding of the current code. And even if the current kernel does not support multi-core CPU's, that would be more of a 2.8.x series, rather than an entirely new kernel version.
Anybody want my mod points?
As a Gentoo user since 1.4, I have to say that the common image is incorrect, though I know it's the common Gentoo joke.
I generally don't "compile by hand," I generally "emerge -atv (packageName)" to install or "emerge -atuvDN world" to update. Nor am I a ricer with my CFLAGS settings. It just plain works smoother than the other distributions I've used. Harp all you want to about "waiting for compiles," but I'm out doing other things while that happens. It's not as if you have to sit and watch the compiler activity scroll past. It's the computer's time being used, not mine.
Back when I was on RedHat, I'd see "package X" that wasn't part of the official distribution. So I'd find an rpm and try to install it. Then I'd find that I needed another library, and go searching for that rpm. Sometimes then things would work. But sometimes I'd find that some package was looking for things in SuSE layout instead of RedHat, or I was grabbing an rpm from somewhere that didn't play well with RedHat for some other reason. There was a non-trivial set of packages that I never could get installed and running.
On Gentoo I've had far fewer problems getting things to run. In fact, I've only had 1 intractable problem compiling from source, and that's been Doomsday, which isn't released for amd64. I've had a few transient problems with source-based packages that have soon gotten fixed. But by and large, my biggest problems have been related to binary-only packages.
Oh, and there's nothing about the usually-disruptive "upgrade to the next release." My system is just up-to-date. A few times a year they issue a new profile, but that's generally about as disruptive as upgrading any other package. The only really disruptive upgrades have been things like udev, gcc and xorg, but even with those it's better to take them one-at-a-time and cope, instead of the usual "practically everything has undergone significant changes" of a distribution upgrade.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.