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."

Comments

Straight from the penguin's mouth...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Linux is dying.

Obligatory +5 funny comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but does he run lin...never mind.

Debian would satisfy him today

[leandrod]

I've never run Debian, because as far as I'm concerned, the whole and only point of a distribution is to make it easy to install (so that I can then get to the part I care about, namely the kernel), so Debian or one of the "compile everything by hand" ones simply weren't interesting to me.

Thanks God he's not into distribution creation. His complaint simply makes no sense nowadays, nor has it made sense for quite some years now.

And by the way, it is kind of contradictory with his stance on Gnome.

Missing one vital component...

[goldspider]

"The point is that Ubuntu has emerged as a very viable distro for new users. It has polish, it has corporate backing, it has a fantastic user community, and it is now one of the most widely used distros."

Now all it needs is a name that people can pronounce.

Yes, I'm serious.

Lacking an advertising budget, startups need a catchy name to propogate. Yahoo. Firefox. Google. Do you think those would have been as prolific and successful if they had a name like "Xivbqop"? Word-of-mouth only works with catchy, marketable names.

Perhaps Ubuntu would enjoy even more success with a name that doesn't sound like some kind of disgusting exotic seafood.

The Politics of Hypocrisy

[twitter]

Linus's famed aversion to politics shows here. He needs to be more open minded. I think he realizes that the free software crowd is more on his side than the commercial crowd, but he's uncritically accepted a lot of bullshit from them.

Linux took a lot more pragmatic approach to what used to be called "Free Software" (and is still called that by some), and moved it from being a fringe and sometimes pretty extreme ideology to be something that was just "technically better".

And I'll certainly take some of the credit for that personally. I dislike the frothing-at-the-mouth ideology (to me, ideology should be something personal, not something you push on other people)

This view shows that he has not thought enough about the issues. Linux views people who have a different view as "pushing". If I were to use the same mindset, I'd say he was pushing a commercial agenda that threatens real software freedom. Because many more people look up to and will listen to Linus, whatever he advocates gets much more "push" than anything I say. If he paid more attention, he would "froth" more than me because he has much more of his life and energy invested in free software than a regular user like me ever will. A few questions down he hopes hardware vendors who don't cooperate, "die a painful death." People who go with "technically better" at the expense of their freedom soon have neither.

His aversion to politics has cost him - and that's the sign of a real idealog. Debian is not hard to use, even for a non technical user like myself. I'd say it was easier than Fedora in all things but adding non free software. Debian derivatives are easier still. Mepis, Ubuntu, Xandros and others come with all the non-free toys you could ask for. Mepis and Ubuntu have excellent compatibilty with the rest of the Debian tree, so you don't lose much more than a little stability and trust for the non free inclusions. My use of Debian has exposed me to the real beauty and stability of free software and I'm glad I made the jump from Red Hat years ago.

The thing that he should realize is that technical excellence happens when you have software freedom. In a world of bad patent laws and "trusted computing", there will be no new Linux kernels, or non you can run on commodity hardware. Future students in Linus's position will be thwarted if we don't guard the freedom that made his work possible.

Re:The Politics of Hypocrisy

[twitter]

You are a perfect example of the, insulting, divisive and hypocritical bullshit M$ puts out:

"Debian is the one true distribution" and "freedom, any way you want it as long as it's my way" is just quasi-religious static that is neither useful nor particularly fun to deal with.

That's a strawman which mostly reflects M$'s bad behavior. Those are words and phrases you repeat that have nothing to do with me. I advocate freedom and point out the problems created by those who would like to take your freedom away. People who value freedom made Debian, which you can take or leave. The only software group in the world that really acts like your strawman, or Linus' frothing at the mouth advocate, is M$.

Linus may have avoided Debian because of bullshit about how hard and "extreme" it is. This has nothing to do with technical excellence, user experience or anything else important. That would be an example of him not thinking things through well enough because he claims those important things guide his decisions. That he would even use language like "frothing" shows that he's fallen for M$ propaganda.

It's more troubling still if he does not understand the relationship between freedom and technical excellence.

More people are coming around to the RMS view of the world because he was right. Prominent examples are Shuttleworth and Lessig. There's a fundamental truth to the four software freedom that cuts through FUD and bullshit. That truth is not extreme, and it certainly does not froth at the mouth. You can have and distribute my work, so long as you don't use it to deprive others of the freedoms others have given me. If your code does not offer me that freedom, I don't want it. These days, there is very little non free code that anyone actually needs and that is because people have realized the value of freedom.