Is Linus Torvalds Speaking for Linux Anymore?

An anonymous reader writes to tell us CNET is currently running a story asking 'Is Linus Torvalds even speaking for Linux anymore?' It examines both Torvalds' recent public statements on other operating systems and his current approach towards Linux. The author wonders if his utopian view of how an operating system should be viewed and used is just too alien from what the majority of users are really looking for. "if it were up to Torvalds, beauty and intuition would take a backseat to functionality. But when you look at distributions like Ubuntu or OpenSuse, it looks like no one is paying attention. 'An OS should never have been something that people (in general) really care about: it should be completely invisible and nobody should give a flying [expletive] about it except the technical people.' Sure, that statement makes some sense, but in the grand scheme of things, it's the design and usability factor that makes the operating system much easier to use. And while both Mac OS X and Windows have their issues, for the average person, it makes more sense to use those than Linux."

Comments

FUD alert

[Captain Splendid]

One of the replies in the comment thread of TFA sums up the response we'll see in this thread rather well IMO:

No, the truth of the matter is that Linux was originally developed because some kid in Finland wanted a better Unix clone on the 386 than Minix could provide. The "counter-culture" happened because he wasn't alone in that desire and so people joined in on Linux. Linux quickly gained popularity because at the time BSD was embroiled in a legal battle with AT&T and the FSF/GNU were completely unable to get their Hurd kernel out the door.

No one person in the open source community speaks for the entire community - most everyone speaks for themselves. There are a few people who can speak for individual projects (such as Linus and the Kernel) but no one can speak on behalf of everything. A few people have claimed that they speak for everyone, but they're just being deluded (and I say this on behalf of everyone in the open source community :-).

More CNET FUD if you ask me. Although I'd probably do the same thing in their position. After all, their business is closely tied to the PC and, to a lesser extent, the Windows OS, so for every bit of ground gained by Linux, they can either risk losing relevance or have to expend time and money keeping up.

I don't think this is a real argument

[riley]

I don't think the term "Operating System" mean the same things to all people.

Linus was talking about the things that truly are invisible to the average user: the API, the filesystem, etc. Not the user interface. When you are speaking about operating systems with someone who has written one, it must be realized that all the terminology is not the same. Ubuntu is a distribution of linux, with a lot of work put into the UI. That is a good thing, but it is not the same thing as talking about device drivers.

OS X is, at that level, a BSD operating system, with a really good UI and a sort of half-assed filesystem (no flames, I use OS X boxes, and they work well, but the filesystem is really from an earlier era).

There is nothing that keeps the functionality of the low level OS from the elegance of a well crafted UI.