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Torvalds on Where Linux is Headed in 2008
Stony Stevenson writes "In an interview at the ITNews site, Linus Torvalds lays out his current excitement about the future of Linux. Torvalds is looking forward to hardware elements like solid-state drives, expects progress in graphics and wireless networking, and says the operating system is strong in virtualisation despite his personal lack of interest in the area. 'When you buy an OS from Microsoft, not only you can't fix it, but it has had years of being skewed by one single entity's sense of the market. It doesn't matter how competent Microsoft — or any individual company — is, it's going to reflect that fact. In contrast, look at where Linux is used. Everything from cellphones and other small embedded computers that people wouldn't even think of as computers, to the bulk of the biggest machines on the supercomputer Top-500 list. That is flexibility.'"
I for one welcomme our ubiquituos open-sores overloads!
Will code for new sig.
So 2008 is finally the year of Linux on the desktop?
No mention in TFA of this. Could this be the breakthrough?
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Its very important that kernel developers have their priorities right,
commenting on unnecessary things takes steam out of any initiatives
Not really much to the interview.. It can be summed up with 1 Q&A
Interviewer: Where is Linux going.
Linus: Its going where it wants to.
and didn't care much about the politics or market share of Linux... just in writing goog code; and preferring GPL2 to GPL3? So why should we care to read his views on topics that do not interest him?
The EEE PC from Asus shows the extents to which vested interests will go in ensuring drivers for display, ACPI, wifi etc. will be DRM-ridden binaries... and Linus hasn't had much to say about these things.
Maybe if he cared about the future of Linux so much, he would try and make as much of it GPL3 as he could?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
If games made for Windows worked 1% faster in Linux, we'd have a generation of kids who would only know windows as the OS used in businesses.
The day I see in a game forum "Use Linux, n00b." as the usual reply to "OMG! Low fps! Getting pwned! HALP!" will set the ten year count to Linux victory over Windows.
I agree with much of what was said. However, from my perspective. I believe that a very strong emphasis in laying a robust foundation for gaming should be at the top of everyone's list to see more Linux market penetration...
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Dear Linus is talking like people would want flexibility, power and truth. In reality things are more close to the opposite. /.
Actually, most people want to be lied and to be told how to think. Flexibility is many times the opposite of easy-to-use.
Marketing will still decide how the products will look like, no matter how cumbersome/stupid it would be to use it.
Yes, I personally like Linux, but I wouldn't get pompous about taking over the OS market. Ever. It sounds weak even in a clearly Linux-biased community like
Oh well, nvm, where is that ol tar'n'feather? Go get them, boys!!!
Linus attacking Microsoft Windows? It sounds a bit desperate. So, why will Linux's wireless support be better in 2008? Did something in the industry change? My wireless card from 2004 still doesn't work properly, I don't think support for it is going to be better in '08. Or is there a reason for those forward looking statements?
Can someone summarize Linus' earlier claims on Linux? He must have been asked where he saw Linux in 2005, 2006 and 2007. While there must be some "right on" predictions, I am sure there are some predictions that could be seen as way off course. I slashdotter is eager to know.
I really don't think Linux is going anywhere in 2008. What did they say this year?? Year of Desktop or something right.. but I didn't see any momentum at any place. I gave up the last Suse installed PC I had. I didn't see anyone in my office switched to Linux.. or any of my clients. Linux is so stupid. I don't know how those geeks feel, but I am sure they are the most useless idiots on the face of earth. Sure.. they have nothing else to do other than wrestling with Linux. No wonder why they are the most unproductive people on earth. Linux has no future for sure. See.. how many distros ?? How many incompatibilities with hardware ??? how many kernal updates every week ??? Linux sure got some momentum on academia. Well... to be frank.. its not because they really like. Only because they want to escapre from paying volume-licenses. Furthremore, there are linux idiots who worship linux OS, who monopolize linux-OS in their domain. Overall.. I think Linux community should give up their efforts and must try to learn some lessons from M$ and either help Windows to be better OR do something like Windows for FREE. Afterall.. true power of linux can not be executed without being a linux-geek.. who knows all the command line commands and some degree of linux kernal modding... that's pathetic.
2008 is seeing the birth of laptop computers below $300: XO, Asus EEE, and I guess some new will appear soon.
Vista alone is almost more expensive than the hardware !
Microsoft was a good alternative when computers did cost $1500, but now the price is just too heavy.
But they really can't win when the hardware is cheap.
If they keep remaining in the high performance market (which seems their belief, see DirectX 10), they'll lose their market share in 2 years, along with Dell !
Linux will make the desktop when it 'just works', no hassle, no issues. And by just works - I mean all programs installed, not just the OS (once running... the installers seem to have gone far enough down the 'just works' route for my tastes... and they still have (most of) the fall back 'custom' selection)
Sadly, the call for 'flexibility' - which probably is its greatest strength, is also its greatest weakness. Things should "just work(TM)". In my experience, they don't... and getting better doesn't cut the mustard in todays world.
The Bible: Historically verifiable fact from an observers point of view
I misread "One of the things I personally am really interested in is the move over to SSD" as "to BSD " and nearly lost my coffee all over my laptop....
Oh arse
Because of Vista Linux is bound to at least increase more than usual. I'm a XP-user and I'll probably continue to be for a while, but I've barely touched Vista and I abselutely hate it. I've Been trying out Ubuntu, and when I can't use XP anymore I'll switch for sure. (And besides, I've kinda fallen in love with Fluxbox. Tabs! :)
Stop trolling retard
...it comes as a business platform, not an operating system. The difference is: the OS has to do its job flawlessly in the best possible way in order to minimize the amount of work (read: time, money) required, while the business platform is something that resembles an OS but also comes with a load of business services built around it in order to generate a flow of money.
The problem with the business platform is that it was built for the sole purpose of selling services, therefore when it eventually works and there's less demand for services (data recovery, repairs, etc.) it must be tagged as obsolete and replaced by something newer and shinier but still defective in order to generate again a strong demand for services.
This is the exact reason why Microsoft stopped developing XP the moment it started being a decent OS, pushing instead the adoption of that Vista crap, and also explains why anybody who cares for his/her data or systems should consider Linux, BSD and other operating systems built to work with no strings attached.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Because the zip doesn't contain the source, which was exactly the point. Would moderators please RTFA of that case?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I recall since early 90's, every reporter said that desktops were dead and that it was the year of laptops. And yet, desktops continue.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I am just a noob, but it sound like this Linus guy is what you people are calling a "real fanboy". In my country, is easier to trust critic. In such cases we do not even read TFA.
You can have a nearly identical operating system sitting on top of any of them. Choose your preferred kernel. I think Linus should keep his head on the kernel, in particular how he can improve it to bring it to the level where it can compete with the opensolaris kernel when Sun GPLv3's it. I'm sure he'll worry[1] about that when they actually do it.
[1] Where worry == rejoice.
Deleted
You keep thumping on the features. What about usability?
Here is one single little feature that I wish were fixed. I want to install VMWare on a Linux distro without having to need a compiler installed. I can do this on Windows, why not Linux?
For example I bought VMWare and I am forced to upgrade because my version is old, and something in the Linux headers has changed that needs a new patch to fix up. WTF... This is a prime reason why I have given up on Linux on the desktop. It just requires too much work even with VMWare.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, Debian GNU/kNetBSD, Debian GNU/HURD
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I'm gathering you don't use OOo, the Gimp, or VLC, or any number of other desktop linux programs. If you do, and you have, please accept my apologies, and give me (and the thousands of other N800 users) the link to the repo.
But yes, I did look at something running Windows Mobile. Then I asked myself "Why the hell would I want to do that?"
'When you buy an OS from Microsoft, not only you can't fix it, but it has had years of being skewed by one single entity's sense of the market. It doesn't matter how competent Microsoft -- or any individual company -- is, it's going to reflect that fact. In contrast, look at where Linux is used. Everything from cellphones and other small embedded computers that people wouldn't even think of as computers, to the bulk of the biggest machines on the supercomputer Top-500 list. That is flexibility.'
The above has been in use since 1999. It needs to be retired. "We're not Microsoft," alone isn't going to cut it for much longer. If Linux advocates keep trying to use that line to the exclusion of all else, they'll eventually find that it isn't Microsoft they'll be competing with...it's Apple. That is one battle that they can't hope to win. OSX is both UNIX based, and with close-to-mainstream user friendliness. Next to that, people have no incentive to use Linux at all.
One thing I find my computer quite often busy doing is swapping. With only 512MB of RAM, and many bloated programs running, it can't hold everything in RAM all at once. But worse, I find, is when a program is doing a lot of I/O output, which gets buffered in RAM more than it should. If the data being copied is a 40GB HD video file, the assumption that I might be reading the file back in soon (so it should be cached in RAM) just doesn't cut it. An SSD dedicated just for swapping might be faster (eliminates the seeks, but still uses I/O bus bandwidth). And it won't prevent existing pages from being swapped out, requiring them to be swapped back in again (usually a lot sooner than I would be reading those large files back in, which obviously cannot be read in whole).
But is SSD the answer for this (swapping)? If it were significantly cheaper than regular RAM, I might think so. For other uses (live copies of /usr, and such) it certainly could help. What I think is the answer for my case is to go overboard on RAM. My current estimate of normal RAM usage I need for my next computer build (in progress ... 1/3 of the parts already purchased) is 2GB. But what I plan to do in this case, however, is go with 8GB of RAM ... and not enable any swap space at all. Normally, the amount of swap space I would allocate is the lesser of 1: 2x the RAM ... and 2: the amount of data that can be transferred in one direction in 30 seconds. I'm switching to SATA so the latter figure will be larger. Still, the 8GB figure well exceeds the 2GB I expect to need for a while.
Suppose with that 2GB of RAM I deploy 6GB of swap space. That gives me a total of 8GB of space for dirty pages (not counting I/O output buffers which have a destination elsewhere). But during the course of normal use, dirty pages often get forced out to swap because of things like I/O output buffering, which also in turn slows down that I/O (more so if it's in the same disk as the swap space, due to head seek times). Now compare that to 8GB of RAM with no swap space at all. The capacity for keeping dirty pages is the same. But when heavy I/O starts to get pushy, there's no where else for those dirty pages to go (to make room to needlessly overbuffer the I/O). The end result should simply be that the I/O can do nothing more than be written where it belongs as fast as it can (and it can be faster since swapping isn't using up any I/O bus bandwidth nor tying up the disk heads into other locations in the case of non-SSD).
So what else is SSD good for? Maybe for /usr if the price is right. But if SSD is just RAM, bottled up through a SATA/SCSI/IDE/etc, how is that any better than RAM? Is 16GB (high end of what /usr needs for nearly everyone) of SSD cheaper than 16GB of RAM by enough to make it worthwhile? I suspect not, unless the SSD is just using cheap RAM.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Now why'd you have to do that? I was trying to make a point.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I fix computers all day. Don't know what Teh Lunis thinks is preventing people from fixing their computers... has he tried using Regedit, or a command propt? That's really useful. It's funny, because it's always the Lunix users who fail to use the features supplied with Windows, but are of course the first to claim Windows can't do something (which it can, of course).
But come on... claiming Windows prevents people from fixing problems? Lunis is a tool.
Windows Mobile...
Windows Embedded...
Windows Data Center Server...
Indeed, it is! It seems there are no Microsoft tail lights Teh Lunis will not chase!
Just a word of advice though, Lunis. Try catching up to Windows 95 before you try catching up to everything else Microsoft has done since then.
Since you're not paying the Microsoft License, you don't need to raise your prices accordingly.
Therefore your products can sell for LESS than those which require a Microsoft License, and you are more competitive on the marketplace.
e.g.: Asus eeePC, Everex
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
>Out of the 500 top supercomputers, 6 use Windows, and 426 use Linux...Windows doesn't scale quite as well.
Out of the entire desktop market, 95% uses Windows and a negligible percentage uses Linux. Apparently, Linux doesn't handle the midrange very well.
I'm sorry, what's your point again?
I am so damned tired of questions like "Will $nextyear be the year of Linux on the desktop?". Linux is already on the desktop. it has been for years. And I hate to say it, because I don't like hype, but Ubuntu really does deliver the goods for the best desktop system ever. Ubuntu can do 95% (or so) of what Microsoft can do on the desktop, and a lot that Microsoft can't.
What the Linux world is missing out on is the specialized applications, such as CAD, electronics design, chemistry, etc. It would be great to have native builds of these tools, and not to have to run them under emulation.
the problem has been solved, I run VmWare workstation on gutsy with no problems
the solution is here:#
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3558604
I just install VmWare Workstation as normal, when it fails at configuration I run the patch and it does the trick.
It's easy.
1. opensolaris has very few bright spots (as Linus said it, and he's correct), namely ZFS
2. opensolaris is not actively developed. At least compared to Linux. Linux had more commits for 2.6.24 in the merge window than opensolaris in _years_.
3. opensolaris is terribly obsolete. The code seems to be stuck a form written for compilers in the 80's.
4. They brag about their low number of bug reports, hiding the fact that a low number of users and almost no development justifies a low number of bug reports.
5. There is almost no hardware support. If you feel Linux should improve its hw support don't even think about solaris.
opensolaris attempts to compete with linux, not the other way around.
"Some apps are too heavy for the hardware, that's not linux's fault but rather the individual apps and the hardware. A program designed for a supercomputer with a terabyte of ram won't work very well on even a high end gaming pc."
In other words, the claim that Linux (or Windows, or some other OS) runs at all these different scales isn't really meaningful in the general case. If your cell phone was the size of a mainframe, it might be able to run enterprise applications by mere recompiling, but since it isn't - who cares?
I do believe Linux should receive more support for WiMAX, it's non-existent right now and it seems Nokia is doing a lot of the work with the Nokia PDA N900, I just hope they release drivers at least...
ghostbar page.
They're getting bigger and developing better language skills. Starve young trolls so they don't ever get a chance to grow into ones like this.
Except he's totally wrong. Some lame uninstallers require a reboot becuase they don't kill their parent process before uninstalling. So you have to reboot to finish the install, because you can't delete *open files* on Windows macnines. the pagefile has nothing to do with it.
This is really a problem with software that installs bullshit task-bar applets (Apple and Adobe, I am looking at you). The vast majority of Microsoft's own software does not require a reboot to install or uninstall. Even fairly major items like SQL Server, Excahnge, or Sharepoint can be installed or uninstalled without a reboot. The same goes for Office apps since 2000.
The reason many MS security patches require a reboot is beacuse they patch explorer, the kernel, or some other subystem (such as the Worksation service) which is always open. But even that has improved quite a bit lately; several of the last few rounds of MS patches have not required reboots on most of our servers.