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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."
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.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
STFU, you don't know a damn thing about the politics & semantics of FOSS & Linux & Linus Torvalds...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It's too bad this Linus guy's direction becomes set in stone and we're stuck with a very rigid product that can't be modified to suit our individual needs.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
They choose the OS to run the apps they want on the hardware they want.
So Linus seems to still be completely accurate in his opinion.
" 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."
No.
Torvalds never said anything about what anyone 'should' view operating systems. He talked about how he views them, and talked about how he appreciated how people use it in new ways. What's wrong with you people?
another idiot reporter confusing a quote about the kernel
"The truth of the matter is Linux was originally developed to abandon the idea that beauty and "hand-holding" was necessary to create a great operating system and it became somewhat of a counter-culture."
There is a difference between great (as in good) and great (as in popular). The two are not always synonymous. The world is full of examples where the best, or good choice wasn't alway the popular choice due to a number of circumstances. Linux needs to find a way to be both if it wants to become dominant.
Please remember, Linus is primarily a kernel maintainer. He's responsible for the under-the-line stuff that makes it such a great server OS.
But the user experience is largely the purvue of the Distros, their window managers, application suites, etc. And Linus is right, these are a disaster.
But saying he's divorced is silly, its never been his area of expertise or the area where he works.
Test your net with Netalyzr
-1 Troll
He spoke for Linus. That is fine Linux is FOSS so anyone can take a copy of the source and make it into anything they want as long as they keep the GPL.
Ubuntu is different from Openfiler is different from DSL, which is different from RHEL... Yet they are all Linux.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Linus writes/maintains the kernel last I checked. It's not the kernel that makes an OS easy to use, as the Mach Kernel isn't drastically different from an API standpoint, but OSX is much easier to use.
If we think Linux is hard to use, why not blame the people who write the higher level utilities rather than the kernel itself?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
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.
My understanding of Linus' comment was that the operating system (Linux) should be invisible--he didn not say that distributions shouldn't have a UI.
In other words, Ubuntu, for example, is trying to make Linux appealing to an average person. They aren't, therefore, going to distribute the Os without a UI. The operating system in Ubuntu should be (and mostly is) invisible, and the user is interacting with Gnome or KDE or XFCE or whatever.
Ubuntu, then, I would say, is not departing from Linus' philosophy--they give you several choices of user interfaces through which you can do what you want with your computer, while the OS does the work invisibly.
What am I missing here. Computer World MUST know more about this than me.
Linux is just the kernel, right? GNU/Linux would be an operating system.
Ubuntu is an Operating System, that uses the Linux Kernel.
So is Gentoo, RedHat, CentOS, Mandrake, etc...
Is Linux From Scratch easy to use? I would say "not really"
How about Ubuntu? (Ubuntu, in the live disc, was able to recognize and use the wifi card and odd screen resolution on my laptop, so it very much gets my vote for "easy to use")
Does Linus speak for Red Hat, Novel, and SuSe? I wouldn't think so, unless he has invested enough in those companies to have a large enough share of the stocks.
Of course Linus speaks for Linux, since he is in charge of which patches get accepted into the stock kernel.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
(Do I really need to add the
tag?)Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Dear CNET Kernel!=OS
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Of course Torvalds speaks for Linux - the kernel. That's all he controls, with his trademark on "Linux" and his undisputed control of what is released in the kernel. So when he speaks, he speaks for that with authority.
He doesn't speak for any distro, never did, never claimed to. But that's part of the problem with calling, say, Ubuntu "Linux". Most of Ubuntu, or Red Hat, or aN4rCHi$tOS, or any other distro, is not the kernel. It's a lot of other software that's compatible with a Linux kernel it relies on. Most of which is usually GNU software, with its own spokespeople - who often disagree fundamentally with Torvalds. The people running those distro projects speak for them. And therefore they speak for what people call "Linux" more than Torvalds does.
And when they don't speak for someone who disagrees, that person is free to make their own "Linux" and speak for it.
I know the corporate mass media can't understand that kind of community ownership and independence. But Slashdotters should be able to tell the difference.
--
make install -not war
Linus is divorced now?!
Maybe he'll finally make an honest woman out of my sister.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
The idea that Torvalds is a rebel leading in the fight for freedom against the powers that be never really had any solid grounding. Linus never really cared about freedom and has said before that you should use the best tool for the job whether proprietary or not, and He sees nothing wrong with digital rights management. He's a good developer but he really only speaks for the kernel. Besides no one could possibly speak for all linux users because no matter how much everyone tries to call it a single community there are vast differences in what everyone wants(which is why there are nearly as many distros as there are users)
The author seems to not be making a distinction between the Linux kernel (which Linus obviously can and should speak for) and the GNU/Linux distributions. While Linus' influence on the way major distributions package the OS may be minimal, he has a direct impact on the guts of them as long as he remains head of the kernel. He has direct control over how and when major changes (eg. udev, KVM, sysfs, ABI changes, etc.) get implemented into the 2.6 kernel which has a direct impact on the distributions. Personally I've disagreed with some of his opinions and I'm definitely not alone (eg. Con Kolivas), but to see his opinion doesn't matter for Linux is completely naïve and short sighted.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Seems like what Torvald is saying is that the OS should be distinct from the interface - GUI or otherwise. That makes good sense in principle, but whether that's a practical marketing goal or not is questionable.
A-Bomb
the OS isn't seen by them, they're looking at applications running on top of the OS. User interface isn't the same thing as OS.
Linus Torvalds and others have said time and time again that the operating system he and the tech people speak of is the kernel of a distribution that end-users really shouldn't care about. Ubuntu, OS X, Windows are just "distributions" of a mixture of applications on top of a kernel (i.e OS). End-users are shielded from all the applications' (Gnome, KDE, OO.o, FF) abstractions built on top of kernel. It is in this sense that Linus believes that users shouldn't care about the OS (read as kernel) because it is expected to "just work". I think this pretty much wraps up the debate here. Go home now, nothing to see here.
I think most people hate their computers a lot of the time - spyware, rootkits, viruses, crashing apps, etc.
Linux isn't taking shortcuts for usability, but rather building the desktop the right way, on a solid secure foundation without compromises. It's the long hard path, but when it gets there, I think it will win out in the end.
They are not a disaster. They surely could be better, but you can say that of any piece of software. But they are certainly not a disaster.
Is the failure to parse what Linus meant when he said 'OS' willful, or is it ignorance/stupidity?
I actually sort of hope it is ignorance or stupidity, because I see similar stuff all the time, and the idea that it is intentional is a lot more painful than someone not understanding.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Linux is a kernel, not an operating systems. Tack on GNU and you have some pretty good functionality. Add X or xorg and you get pretty pictures. Rip the fabric off your couch and you find a great deal of comfort has been sacrificed for functionality. You can also find $2.73 in loose change and some old peanuts. Ubuntu isn't Linux, it's the pretty fabric stretched across a framework of functionality. -Skip
Linus is right. Linux (The kernel) should be invisible to the end user. Gnome and KDE should be concerned about what the user sees.
--Pathway
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by moving to where you can't find them.
Unfortunately, the world has been corrupted by Microsoft's bizarre definition of an "Operating System." The following are applications, not part of the OS:
1. Freecell
2. The web-browser
3. Media player Player
4. e-mail client
Because MS has distributed these things with its operating system and, with a straight face, asked why the web browser wasn't part of the OS***, people now have a kitchen-sink view of the OS. I think Linus takes a minimalist view to the OS.
*** Many of the Windows/IE security issues can be traced back to the integration of IE into the operating system.
Perhaps the writer of TFA doesn't understand the s/w business in general or the Linux business in particular.
Linus (should) speak to his customers, the "technical people" who build the distros or some other product where they need to get down into the nuts and bolts of the O/S.
Each of these "technical people", the creators of Ubuntu, OpenSuse, or some product with embedded Linux needs to speak to their customers in turn. That's the beauty of Linux. Its a tool that can solve multiple problems without bothering the end user with the details of the underlying implementation.
Off-topic bit starts here:
That's why Google succeeds and Mic-Yah-ro-hoo-soft will fail. Microsoft expects all of its consumers to be immediately aware of the existence of the Microsoft brand name in all of their interactions with third party applications. Google, OTOH, does quite a bit of business with third parties, but in many cases, its difficult to tell unless you happen to watch the browser status bar when a Google domain name zips by, loading an ad. Most third party vendors don't want their market presence prefixed by a big, flashing banner Brought to You by Microsoft: and then their business name below that in small print.
Its the same with the Linux kernel.
Have gnu, will travel.
The command line by itself has a classical, austere beauty.
The author of TFA's assumption is that Linus is "The Big Cheese" (TM) of all things Linux, and as such has influence over everything carrying the name. The big thing the author doesn't get is that Linux isn't one entity- it's the sum of a bunch of smaller entities working together. The kernel is different from the boot loader (grub/lilo), which is different from the graphical server (X), which is different from the desktop manager (kde/gnome), which is different from all the other apps running on top. The people that package it all together into distributions make it a usable operating system- Ubuntu, Red Hat, Mandriva, etc.
Linus doesn't really have any direct control over the distributions themselves, at least in terms of what features or programs they choose to bundle with the kernel to make usable. As such, there are distros specialized for just about every possible use- as a general desktop, server, embedded, small footprint, low power, etc. The versatility comes as a result of how the kernel was designed, even if it wasn't specifically designed for versatility.
It's time the Linux community finally wakes up and decides which way it will turn -- towards its roots or towards the features that the general public really wants. Until then, we'll have the old guard spewing their ideals, while the momentum of the operating system carries it away from its very foundation.
There are distributions going both ways- simple and complex. Look to something like Ubuntu/Kubuntu for a more windows-esque desktop experience out of the box. Look to something like Slackware to get "towards it's roots." The biggest strength of linux is that it isn't pinholed into one specific use or expectation, as the author asserts it is/was/should be. He doesn't "get it."
Unix/Linux/BSD people wondered for years why the mainstream wouldn't adopt their OS, or open source for that matter. How would you expect a normal person to compile their own programs via command line input of a software they have to download at distribution sites? Heck, I have a masters in CS from a Top 10 compsci university in the US, and sometimes I wonder if i have all the library files I need to make the gcc work flawlessly. End-users dont have time for that. KDE and Gnome has been around much longer than MacOS X, and yet Mac's interface beats either of them hands them. Apple proved to us that given the right interface, people WILL embrace Unix. People are not anti-open source, but they're very much anti-command-line.
Another good example is mobile devices. Palm and Microsoft had YEARS of experience on how to refine their mobile experience. They have barely made incremental UI changes since their first release. Apple managed to put Unix in a handheld and make it so easy to use that it doesn't even come with a manual.
While I respect Torvalds to a great degree, he shouldn't engage in his form/functionality debate. He's the expert at making the OS internals flawless. Let other experts figure out how to turn his masterpiece into a usable design. Please don't try to mix filesystems designers with graphic designers.
And on a final unrelated note, to counter Torvald's argument that HFS is crap, we've been reading for nearly a year that Apple is ready to adapt ZFS. Once MacOS defaults to ZFS, it'll trounce any existing form of ext3. He really should be comparing the merits of ext3 against ZFS, the future, not the past. Otherwise we might as well discuss the Minix one too =)
No.
"An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources."
That's like saying a car is a machine with 4 wheels, cruise control and A/C because mercedes-benz uses those, so that becomes the definition of all cars. I have quite a few Linux servers without a GUI - is Linux no longer an OS?
It is not Linus' fault that people think Operating System = GUI = window manager = kernel. This said, it is probably not CNET's fault that they think so as well, even though you would expect some better technical knowledge from them...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Typical CNET logic: Proclaim Linus' preference that beauty and intuition would take a backseat to functionality - and the problem that they have with this - wait for it - that the design and usability factor (sic) are more important, therefore Win and OS X are better for people than Linux, and from this - or as if it is in support - we arrive at Linus possibly no longer speaking for Linux.
..."
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
I didn't RTFA and I'm not going to RTFA. Whenever I hear logic like this, it makes me reach for my revolver.
And while I'm in the mood, don't get me started on how CNET isn't really complaining about Linux, it's GNU part - you know, the part that seems to be always denied by not using the proper name, GNU/Linux, but always gets trundled out as a defense mechanism.
I hate the smell of bad logic. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
And for anyone tempted to not get it - this post isn't flamebait. It's a retaliation against the slagging my intelligence was just given.
Maybe I'd be in a better mood if the summary went, "An anonymous reader laughed his fucking ass off when he saw this crap, and thought - correctly - that any of us in a bad mood might find fun in slagging CNET. Here's their latest proof that journalist with IQs below 50 can get a job at CNET - because they know their market:
Yeah. That's the ticket.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Parent is correct, and not just an FSF shotgun reply about using Linux as a name for the OS.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Torvalds created the movement (intentionally or not), exactly because he was doing something DIFFERENT. An alternative to the mainstream. If linux becomes mainstream, then who will be the rebel?
Remember, the world is changed by rebels, not the folks in the mainstream.
... please do not feed the troll?
Look, the idea is doomed to die once fulfilled (XP vs Vista, anyone? MS just in dead end). If Linus still sees obvious ways to improve his code and sees ways to improve for other ppls code, this becomes good driving force for innovation. Everyone benefit from this, when men like Linus want to scratch their itch.
"Linus speaking for Linux" argument only can be in some half-blocked mind. Linus doesn't think in terms of Linux - he's the creator of Linux, he'd to think above this level and this is good, it's the process of improvement. I think further years will unleash us more and more in OS design and hardware design. It's just getting better and better. And Linus not agreeing with current design for me is why I love technical progress, because sooner or later we have something better!
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
I don't think Mr. Torvalds is so much making statements regarding the importance on the various parts of the deliverable's "gestalt" as he is that an OS should be an independent layer. I think it's been demonstrated that a properly abstracted stack (hw, kernel, supporting o/s binaries, IPC, display manager, windows manager, desktop manager, etc) is a more sustainable model than a monolithic one over the long run. I'll leave it as a reader exercise to decide which OS's have done it right and which have learned a painful lesson by taking the opposite route.
Ease of use is what makes me really love Linux.
.rc files? I liked FVWM over the alternatives and considering the state of Linux at the time my desktop was pretty slick, but it was by no means easy to use. I learned a heck of a lot on that system. When Gnome came out I ran gnome, on Redhat (and later Caldera Linux - don't laugh, at the time Caldera Linux was pretty good, and Caldera had not morphed into SCO and become spawn of Satan yet) - and thought KDE sucked wind (at the time it did).
Note I did not say ease of configuration: I have run Linux off and on since it had to be installed from a 7-floppy image, and that was back in 1992 or 1992, downloading them using kermit (OUCH!) over a 1200 baud modem. It was HARD to use then - hardware support was lacking, etc.
When the slackware CD distribution came out I ran that - I could get a very basic desktop running, but 8-bit only. By that time VLB was all the rage. and I had the infamous Diamond Stealth 32 VLB card. The ET4000 server would not run with this card because of some proprietary extensions to it, so I learned enough x86 assembly (I had come over to the PC from the C= and Amiga computers and programmed assembly on those) to write a utility which would probe the card's registers with various values, respond to keystrokes, and log the results. I finally figured out what needed to be set and I patched the X server to work - and had 24-bit color in X! I should have submitted that code and utility to the project but at the time I didn't know I could contribute to OSS projects.
Anyway, it was a pain in the ass to configure. Once it was configured, it was a pain in the ass to use. I had to view images from the command line? Launch GUI programs from the command line? If I wanted a menu, I had to edit a slew of poorly-documented
Then, I went from a job which was 100% windows to one that was 150% windows - as in I worked in Windows at work for about 50-60 hours a week, then I had to do more work at home, on Windows (yes, I was a sucker working unpaid overtime for a dot-com, and got NOTHING from my stock options!). I had to dump Linux - but on the bright side my hardware worked! Well, I was on SMP systems (at home!) by then, so everything worked, well, except my Soundblaster Live! card because of the race condition Creative folks FINALLY admitted to only a few years ago when multi-core chips hit the market and SMP became mainstream.
Well, between then and 2005, Linux went and growed up big and strong - I guess Tux drank milk or took steroids or something. Bleeding-edge chipsets still didn't work well, USB was a little flaky, SATA was weak, but less-than-bleeding-edge hardware worked better, more reliably than Windows. On top of that, KDE was usable. No, not just usable - damn good. The best desktop environment I've ever used - and this includes both CDE (hated it, but it was easy to use!) and SGI's Indigo Magic (loved it! At the time, mid-90s, it was fantastic).
I dual booted Windows for a while. I used Windows about half the time, and Linux half the time. Then, KDE was updated (to 3.1 I think) - what a difference. On a dual Celeron with 1GB RAM, compared to Windows XP, performance was excellent. It was fast and responsive. I could open a SINGLE file browser and have multiple Windows - File Manager-like split views, Explorer-like tabbed views, multiple tree controls, PLUS I could seamlessly access FTP, SMB/CIFS, and SSH/Fish shares and drag and drop between them all! Not only that, with the customizable views, thumbnail views which were USABLE, and the various application preview plugins, Linux became more user-friendly than the Macintosh, more capable out of the box than Windows, and was actually supporting hardware pretty well.
Then, SuSE upgraded to the 2.6 kernel. This made all the difference in the world. Not only was the desktop more capable and easy to use than Windows, OS X, or $foo, most current hardware out of the box worked - better than Windows. USB became more reliable than Windows,
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
At the very least give arguments to their thesis:
Not to mention the constant mixup of Linux, GNU/Linux, X and Desktop Environments.
How many fallacies can you put in one article?
Linus IS one of the major voices for Linux. He IS NOT a major voice on the KDE or GNOME or any other major Desktop Environment, although he has repeatedly stated that he likes where KDE is going, nor he has a leading role in any distribution.
Whoever doesn't understand that the greatest strength of Open Source Software is having a million voices, has clearly been living underground for the past 10 years.Linux is bigger than Linus, and he's perfectly willing to admit that. FOSS is bigger than Linus Torvalds, or Richard Stallman, or any of the other luminaries whose names we hear bandied about from time to time. It's bigger than any of us, and that's the way it should be.
Linus never claimed to be the standard-bearer of a new era of computing. He never claimed to be the successor to Richard Stallman (or to Bill Gates, for that matter). He never claimed to be the chief architect of an open source operating system. He's a kernel developer. And a damn good one, too -- but at the end of the day, that's all he is, and all he claims to be. And he's fine with that.
And he knows that the job of a good piece of software is to get its job done without calling attention to itself. Linux does that admirably. It is unfortunately a lesson that Microsoft will never learn.
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Linus is heading the Linux kernel development and he's doing a pretty good job at that. He does not, and has never, "spoken for" the Linux community as a whole.
Sorry, but it's not FUD. FUD is short for "fear, uncertainty and doubt". None of the three is being spread by CNET in this case.
Come on guys, English is not my first language. Try and keep it consistent for people like me. Call it "CNET is writing rubbish", or something more vigorous.
You don't want a computer, you want a secretary. And a very intelligent one, too.
I don't think Linus is out of touch at all. The Linux Kernel, which IS Linux, does exactly what it is supposed to do. It provides a functional interface between applications and the hardware of a computer.
:)
I think a lot of people confuse Linux with what runs on top of it- like the GNU utilities, shells (like BASH) and desktop environments. This statement sums it up, I think: Ubuntu is NOT an operating system.
Technically Vista isn't either (and no, I don't mean that as a joke). It's a GUI to a Microsoft kernel OS. Unlike Linux- since it isn't open source, nobody can write a better one. Fortunately with Linux- people can.
But no worries! Just quote Linus and you are guaranteed to end up on slashdot.
why not blame the people who write the higher level utilities rather than the kernel itself?
As soon as I saw it was CNet, I knew immediately it was going to be one of Don Reisinger's completely clueless articles. The guy is orders of magnitude worse than even Dvorak.
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
"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."
Sorry that you're confused on the issue CNet and ScuttleMonkey - lemme explain it to you.
See, Linux is a kernel. Want beauty? Install a nice gui on top of the kernel to give you beauty. Want intuition (and can't find it in the kernel source code)? Then install tools on top of the kernel that give you that intuition.
The engine of a car isn't supposed to give the car beauty or intuition. It is supposed to give function. The controls of the car should be intuitive, and the exterior/interior of a car might be beautiful, but very, very little effort should be made in making the engine either.
Mayhaps CNet and ScuttleMonkey need to figure out what it is Linux has been doing all these years. He isn't the lead guy for xorg, nor Firefox, nor whatever else it is they're confused about.
People rarely interact directly with the operating system; they interact with shells and applications. The Ubuntu GUI isn't the operating system, nor is it PART of the operating system -- it's an application that lets you manage the operating system and run other applications. That may be the stuff that most users associate with the term "operating system", but that doesn't make it true. I'm certain that when Linus speaks about Linux, he's not referring to anything except the core OS itself. The minute you install a GUI on Linus, you're no longer interacting with "linux", but with whatever GUI you've installed.
/* "Specialization is for insects." -Heinlein */
Im not sure what your point is... as I said: "Operating System's influence on this is rather limited" I didnt say that it was completely irrelivant what OS the GUI was running on... how the GUI looks and performs is based on how the Base window system is coded (ie: X11) however you can add layers to this (ie: GTK+, or DirectX) which allow even more possibilities.
Your TCP/IP example proves this....
HTTP, XMPP, SSH are all based on TCP, TCP is based on IP... so no matter how "unreliable" IP may be, its reliability can be improved depening on the layers added themselves, or how many layers are added, at the expense of certain things like Performance. such as StarDock WindowBlinds can achieve many many things that Windows Interface unto itself cannot, however at the expense of performance.
Linus owns the trademark, he ultimately decides on the changes, so yeah, I'd say he does speak for Linux (the kernel). If people are going to confuse what is and isn't Linux, then yeah, of course you're going to arrive in areas that Linus doesn't speak for. Ultimately he doesn't speak for Linux (when used as the term for the desktop), or it's usability, but I don't think he claims to.
If people have an incorrect idea of what Linux is (and I can't blame them, it's easier to say "I run Linux." than "I run Linux with an Ubuntu distribution and a KDE desktop") then it's not really his fault. It's kinda like saying "Does Bill Gates speak for desktop PC's anymore?", as much as Bill would probably like to, the responsibility isn't his.
I accept I know nothing. Insulting my ignorance is wasted on me.
Oh yes, the BIG weakness of Linus is holding to his "utopian view" of what an OS should be. LOL
Now this is the FIRST time I have heard someone attacking him for that, usually what bothers most people is that he is too "practical". If he tended tward "utopian" solutions, we would not have a monolithic Linux kernal.
But we should ignore this article as it seems the author (and scuttle monkey?) can't tell the difference between KDE/GNOME and the OS. (and don't tell them about all the GNU utilities... their heads might explode.)
Oh yes, he wants a computer. One as in the USS Enterprise NCC-1701, or maybe even one as in the Heart of Gold.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
"An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources."
In what way does that not describe Microsoft Office, or sed, or even fsck?
User Interface is a superset of Graphical User Interface...
Deleted
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Whoever said that "beauty and intuition" were incompatible with "functionality"?
It is better to have functionality and intuitive beauty as well. Viz: Apple.
The important thing is to climb out of the Microsoft swamp of mediocrity. Every time someone goes the extra mile, cares about quality*, we get closer to returning to a civilised state. Personally I'm glad Linus is willing to spare his brains and intuition to improve things for everyone.
* - Also see Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
you had me at #!
Resources there refers to _physical_ resources. The interface would be the API. Microsoft Office is the perfect example of an application that takes advantage of an operating systems ability to manage resources (memory, disk, etc) and provide an interface (API) for the application to (indirectly) access those resources.
There are many things I think should be improved, from the kernel on upwards, but if I can't back that with code of the necessary quality and with arguments of the necessary strength, my opinion isn't worth a half-rotted electron. But as pathetic and limited as my presence is, I am of heroic stature, of legendary skill and might, compared to the dross thar calls itself CNET.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Linux could use a figurehead like OpenBSD has - then we'd really get some respect.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Q: Is linus Torvalds speaking for Linux anymore? A: Mu.
On the one hand, your car should come with an engine and four wheels
but on the other hand is a glove...
no, seriously.. on the other hand
You should be able to rebuild the engine without having to change the wheels or seats
and if you want different wheels, go for it...
Not knowing you can change the seats or wheels is just fucking stupid... right?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Deleted
Well, im not the one who used TCP Vs IP as an example to disagree with OS Vs GUI...
As far as I understand... it goes something like this...
IP "I got some shit!!!"
TCP "you got some shit? I know what to do with that shit!!!"
HTTP "this shit makes sense, thanx TCP"
TCP "No problem HTTP, but IP deserves most of the credit, thank IP"
IP "Your Welcome"
meanwhile NIC sulks in the corner who deserves all of the credit for the entire conversation.
This is slashdot. People here know about operating systems. You do not. Here's a book to get you started though.
http://codex.cs.yale.edu/avi/os-book/os7/
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
gives a flying fsck what a writer (not of code or anything particularly useful) at CNet why?
Some of the time. Not everything he says is gospel.
However, the guy is very talented. 'git', what can I say, it's nearly brilliant - I love it.
So when Linus speaks I listen, I don't necessarily agree, but I do listen.
There's also Mark Shuttleworth, for my particular poison, or the Firefox boyos or RMS.
In fact, RMS is very good example, sometimes he talks a load of crap, sometimes he doesn't.
But anyone who says these guys are irrelevant are just looking for a soundbite.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
"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." [Torvalds said]
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.
This quickly summarizes the fundamental misunderstanding of the article's author. He is confusing an OS with the total package of OS, windowing environment, application bundle, installer, and more. Linux is just the kernel. As I understand it, the GNU/Linux OS is the kernel plus the GNU toolkit. There is neither windowing nor applications - and hence no user friendliness - in the GNU/Linux OS, because the GNU/Linux OS is below all that. It is down at the level that only technical people give a crap about it. And at that level, Linux really is significantly more beautiful than OS X or Windows. It is above that level where there is still much room to improve. (which is not to discount the significant advances that Ubuntu and others have made - just that there is still more to be done to reach the intuitiveness and automagic of OS X or Windows)
Why you ask? Because although Torvalds has his own belief about what Linux is and should be going forward, the vast majority of its users disagree. Let's face it -- 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.
The author did manage to use the correct term for Ubuntu and OpenSuse - "distribution." But then he seems to miss the fact that the two different terms, OS and distribution, imply that they are two different things. A distribution is not the OS. The OS is one of the core components of a distribution, but all that extra stuff (installer, application bundle, package manager, windowing system) is not part of the OS itself.
I guess his confusion springs from the fact that Apple and Microsoft both misleadingly refer to their entire distribution as an OS. But, then, who cares? The public has never understood (nor needed to understand) the distinction in the past, corporations don't benefit from making the distinction clear, and Linux is still quietly marching the world toward the inevitable point where OSs become a commodity good. And Ubuntu and friends are doing the same for distributions - though that part is going to take longer.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Circumcision is child abuse.
Yeah. I have a friend who had questions about why her computer wasn't working. I asked what operating system she used and she said, "I think its called yahoo. Thats what I see when it starts up."
I have to disagree with CNET ... they are not talking about the OS, they are talking about the UI, and in that sense they actually prove Torvalds' point. They're not talking about what happens when you copy a file, say, but about how it looks and feels - which has nothing to do with how well the OS actually performed the desired operation.
Ever since the suits discovered Linux, the question has been both ways. Can Linux do anything that doesn't involve cloning a corporate bloat piece? Can there be any other application besides Web 2.0? Can anyone still write software without going through a committee?
Wot can't tell the difference between a Kernel, a Filesystem and a Userspace Graphical Shell?
Why are they allowed to create artificial controversies, based on their flagrant ignorance?
Wot's got that submission to the frontpage, over the pearls of insight and observation wot I submitted?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
> "Beauty" and "Intution" are not in Linus's hands
They are! Except that Linus is not talking about applications. If you look at the quotes in the article you'll see that he is talking about the superiority of the Linux programming environment, not anything an average Joe is thinking about. As a programmer, I certainly agree that he is right; Linux is a far better development platform than Windows and MacOS. No, I'm not talking about KDE; I'm talking about the OS interface, the UNIX way, the filesystem API, and all that.
Done right, functionality *IS* beauty and intuition. That I can chain a bunch of simple things together *EASILY* with shell scripts is beautiful and intuitive. Quite the opposite with that thing that was born of redmond. That many linux desktops are chasing windoze metaphors (and this is EXACTLY WHY Ubuntu and OpenSuse have problems) instead of doing it better and integrated with "the unix way" is a travesty.
Things like this (This isn't linux, just something that runs on it, mind you) are very cool and the types of things that linux desktops *should* be doing rather than trying to behave like windows, IMNSHO: Renaming Files in Bulk with Rox-Filer (you can select in the gui using regular expressions and such...nifty). See? *THAT* is pretty innovative.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
This article is misleading and makes it seem there is a problem where there is none. It acts like Linus is responsible for the graphical user interfaces. Linus is doing what he does well which is develop the kernel. Kernel development generally a seperate area from graphical user interfaces that the average user sees and requires a different mindset from UI design. User interface development is handled by higher level application developers, so I dont know why Linus would be particularly concerned with it unless he is also interested in the GUI aspects. Linus is concerned with providing a high quality, flexible and technically superior kernel and excellent programming interfaces to it, but these arent things the normal user sees. The area of end user UI design tends to be a seperate area from kernel design. I do think that more focus is needed on useability and that is something that is of concern to user interface designers. There are also useability issues regarding the kernel, but these involve making sure drivers work okay, the system is stable, and hardware gets utilised, etc. Ideally however the operating system should be useable to experts and average users for the like, we should not sacrifice configurability, expert friendliness, flexibility and high level of control and customisability for average user friendliness and it is not necessary to do so. The system can be average and expert friendly at the same time. For instance everything can be done on both the CLI and GUI, a user should have a choice between directly writing configuration files or using a GUI to do so, and software should come with reasonable defaults and whenever possible work out of the box, but the user should be free if they choose to customise it to as much extant as possible. Useability in a GUI as well has less to do with the number of option than the placement and layout of the options which is much more important. In fact, removing options should not be done and we should not be minimilastic about the options presented to the user, but put lesser used options in "advanced" screens where they can be accessed if needed by more advanced users.
[non-expletive] [non-expletive] asshole [non-expletive]. [non-expletive] , fuck [non-expletive] [non-expletive] shit.
[non-expletive] [non-expletive] .
[non-expletive]
Yes, As long as you have no more questions.
Case in point: Windows ME. Did it run all your fancy Windows apps? Yes. Would you stay the hell away from it anyway? Yes. The kernel won't sell Linux, but if it wasn't solid you'd never even get to start your sales pitch.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Killing Grendel, killing Grendel's mother, killing the dragon but getting killed in the process...
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Linus who? Why does it matter what one guy thinks? I suppose being the Creator gives you the power to administer blessings for a while but should that go on forever?
In the green corner weighing...maybe 45 pounds, its Linus and his team of loyal zealot fans
In the red corner weighing....maybe 10% market share, it's MacOS and it's loyal zealot fans
Who will win in the fight of the decade? Who's bugs will triumph. You too can gamble your future by becoming intimately familiar with one of these Operating Systems and ignoring the other (plus the other mainstream elephant in the kitchen!!!). Tickets are selling fast. Price is your loyal zealothood and your soul. Hurry in today!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This is great. I really think so. Don't add the parenthetical comments next time though. Just go for it!
There is no reason to implement it as part of the kernel. The Direct Rendering Infrastructure present in Linux and BSD kernels allow efficient access to the graphics card hardware from privileged userspace applications.
It's compatibility with Word and Excel most of the corporate world are worried about. It's Photoshop and After Effects for the design people.
Not only is the OS invisible, it really provides no value, and is a non-factor. The only value is in its capability to run applications, as are game consoles and their ability to run games. Users wouldn't install Windows even if it were free, just as they don't install Linux eventhough IT IS free.
I don't think I've ever read a summary or an article as vacuous and devoid of substance as this. I keep re-reading sentences and paragraphs trying to figure out what it is he's actually trying to say. It comes out as more of a loosely-related, grammatically correct anagram than an argument.
This guy is not a troll. He's riddled himself with so many bad subtexts and assumptions that he's not even wrong.
Electron is way too busy running around to even ask for credit.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
The beauty of what you just described is simple. Computers have gotten nearly to the point where further technological increases are mostly necessary for e-peen bragging rather than actual needs. There is nothing, gaming, or actual serious work related that any of my 2.0 ghz rigs cannot do. Hell, with Linux, even my old 1200 mhz thunderbird is OVERKILL. Short of compile time and other time intensive tasks, extra cycles is just wasted electrical charge.
There was a fellow by the name of R. Buckminster Fuller, mentioned and predicted that technology would become invisible, as would successful businesses. We are seeing the beginning of that. He also predicted the death of the Industrial Age. We are seeing that also. He died in 1983, before he could see his predictions come true. To truly enter the "information" age, we will need to each understand that collectives are doomed to fail the majority of their members, because collectives are still collective groups of individuals... suppressed individuals, to be sure, but still such. In the so called information age, each is responsible for him or herself. Dr. Fuller called it the "coming age of integrity."
I am waiting to see.
A note here, I came accross Dr. Fuller's work, speeches and predictions (not to mention private patents) long after his death, and long after I made my own predictions about technology to similar effects (sadly I discovered that while I had come to those conclusions, others had beaten me there.) I do, however, believe that technology will require invisibility to become ubiquitous, and through ubiquity it will become less visible, but by the same principle, a lot of the work done by the user, should be given over to the hardware (driver installs, syncing, communication, etc) and by the same token, the user should, if willing, have FULL control over the features in question. This way, hard core geeks, nerds and their ilk can still control their hardware fully, while those less inclined can still get the intended use of the device without requiring skills beyond average, or even none at all.
Take the telephone. Invisible to the naked eye? No, but through ubiquity and ease of use, the back end is invisible, and telephone grids are pretty much uninterrupted at this point. Nobody gets dropped calls on land lines anymore, and everyone has some form of land line phone in their home. Cell phones are heading that way also. Common protocol in human mating (read: dating) is to get a phone number or give one. We take this for granted, yet only 100 years ago, phones didn't even exist, and people sent letters via couriers. Couriers got robbed, misplaced, had accidents, opened the mail, were intercepted by governments for espionage/surveillance purposes, or many other things. Nowadays, even in Zimbabwe, or Sri Lanka, you can pick up the phone and call someone. So while I may think of invisibility in different terms than Linus, or Dr. Fuller, I do agree that as machines have become more ubiquitous, and the Open Firmware groups are getting more work done, sooner or later, driver installs will be a thing of the past.
OSS has been a fantastic stepping stone towards this goal.
One can only ask this question. Have the governments of the world and their confiscatory policies of taxation and prohibition, and policy of granted monopolies been a "driving force" behind the improvements in technology, or has this technology (open source, etc) been able to flourish "DESPITE" the abuses and roadblocks imposed by governing forces? In other words, do we owe the government that we can talk on the phone, or to intelligent and inventive individuals who came up with the phone? Do we owe governments the ability to go into space, or have they stood in the path of multitudes of individuals outside of their own overpriced programs who might have reached outer space with purposes and endeavors OTHER than oppression and war? There are more questions, but I don't have the desire to write a novel here on slashdot.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
So long as the operating system uses and supports open interfaces in a real and effective way, it doesn't matter a damn whether the kernel is Darwin, FreeBSD, Linux, BeOS, NT, or Minix. It doesn't matter whether the kernel is a microkernel, a monolithic kernel, or some unholy blend of the two. The UNIX fanil of operating systems makes the OS technology itself irrelevant, to the point that there are ISPs selling hosted virtual Linux systems that are actually FreeBSD Jails running the Linux emulator... and they work.
The fungible UNIX operating system is so important that even Microsoft has played with being in the UNIX world, even after they bailed from Xenix, when they bought Softway Systems and for a while were releasing Interix for any modern Windows. That's why it doesn't matter, so long as you write your code to be portable on UNIX (and that doesn't necessarily mean "write for POSIX", you have to pay attention to what portability really means) it doesn't matter what OS your customers use to a rather large extent. The OS itself is just an implementation detail, like the screen resolution or nameserver.
Given the choice, I'd pick Torvalds over RMS any day.
Although the analogy's not perfect, Torvalds is the Steve Jobs of the OSS world, whilst RMS is Ballmer.
(And please don't view this as 100% of a flame. RMS's contributions to the Open Source world have been vast. However, I don't think he's particularly good as a spokesman or to be "at the helm" of Open-Source development. He's also a bit too stubborn on his ideologies, as shown with the GPLv3 debacle.)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
YOU FORGOT ABOUT ELECTRONS! THEY're doing the work! No Networking without ELECTRONS! Copper cables are just the ominous tubes, they're running through... Oh, and don't forget photons either! More and more tubes are made of optical conductors. Although they give their data to electrons at either end, so electrons should get the flowers...
EOF
I, for one, am insulted that they think emacs should be invisible! Invisible operating systems my foot!
I'm assuming that this was a visit to MySpace, right?
1. Linux!=Ubuntu
2. This new-fangled commenting system: Why is there no 'Reply' link right below the story- I had to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. I'm getting way too old for this.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
In other words, you fundamentally agree with Richard Stallman, but it's necessary to state that you don't, because all good slash kiddies know that he's a bad, baad, man.
Anyway, yeah, this story is a poster-child for the importance of distinguishing between the kernel and the whole system (which we traditionally call "the distro").
If you actually read the article, by the way, it doesn't take long to discover that the author has some severe reading comprehension problems:
Here Torvalds is talking about the experience of programmers working on third-party applications, but the author seems to think he's talking about the ease-of-use for end users, which are completely different worlds.So unless the point of this is to get the slashmob to help smarten up a dumb-bunny, there isn't any point at all in this story.
I do not understand why the poster of this sees Linus' behaviour as a problem. Afterall, when we talk about "Linux" we talk about a lot more than the kernel. Let Linus keep his head in the technical details... let him go for functionality. It'll get us a better kernel and improve whatever is above it. Let the Gnome and KDE people worry about the users.
hm, why was this technical-illiterate crap approved on slashdot? Should we discuss all illiterate crap-articles that can be found over the web?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Newsflash! Quarks on strike for more pay, recognition. Film at 11!
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
When I read "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" the message I get is "it's not what's under the hood that the user should have to care about". It doesn't matter whether OS X runs on top of Darwin or Linux or NT to most people. And really it doesn't. The net benefits to most people of all the things that NTFS does or that HFS does or that XFS does over and above "storing files" is just about zero. Spotlight doesn't need HFS, it doesn't need extended file attributes, it could have been implemented without any of that stuff. NTFS extended attributes are almost never used. ACLs, cylinder groups, superblocks, extents, catalogs, the user cares not about these things. They just want the file system to store their files and not lose them.
Same with everything else that the author is accusing Linus of focussing on at the expense of the stuff that the author things is important. It sounds to me like Linus is saying the same thing as he is, and he's just misunderstood it.
I'ts always been clear that Linus speaks for Linus.
"Linux" means different things to different people.. from the "It's just a kernel" crowd (who are correct)
to the "Linux is a killer-app-market-force" crowd (also true).
Linus has always been very up-front that he speaks for himself, and himself alone, and that anyone who disagrees is free to go do whatever they want with the software he wrote.
User experiences are different; I don't follow the general crowd by using and swearing with windows while not knowing how to turn the damn thing on. Currently I am seeing a lot of progress from MacOS 9 to os X, I've got the latest Macbook PRO now and it's still the same, Change the d
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I think that comparisons between the ext3 and ZFS aren't meaningful right now. Ext3 is simple, in use and proven reliable. ZFS is available and may be reliable, but requires effort to tame it. Further, ZFS drags people into the world of wishful thinking, the same kind of twilight zone as discussion about Virtualisation. I say this because both disc access speed and virtualisation are bandwidth limited, so doing clever things with your data and core operating systems (respectively) are going to be hampered by this limit. More so when you consider that Apple sell workstations, and office/domestic computers which will not have the multi-processing and multi-disc arrays which overcome these bandwidth choke-points.
BTW what's the memory usage like in ZFS? Is it at all suitable for workstation, office or home use? The implementation in FreeBSD and its ensuing discussion -- citing Sun's own documentation -- points out that ZFS grows unbounded in proportion to its workload (http://kerneltrap.org/FreeBSD/ZFS_Stability). I can't see Apple actually deploying it until we have a base configuration of your AppleTV, Time Capsule or even MacBook with 6 GiB of RAM.
Per the original post:
"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."
A: Linux is, has always been, and as long as LT has a say, a kernel. Not a gui, not a file system, not a productivity suite.
WTF does Ubuntu or OpenSUSE have to do with the kernel?
Does the author mean the Windowing systems? The uninformed should NEVER be allowed to propogate nonsense to a broad audience.
There is no beauty and intuition in a kernel. It's about operational modes, interupts, rings, and hard core technical implementations.
Once again Slashdot gives a forum to the exercise of raw stupidity disguised as news....
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
The other day, I posted a complaint on my blog about how Adobe Premiere Elements on my work Windows box decided it doesn't have to use the same windowm manager defaults as everybody else.
My Windows-only friend was so stumped about what I was talking about that he offered me advice about how to resize the window.
It's not purposeful FUD--it's just ignorance that the two are seperable.
This article is like asking your architect why you front lawn looks like shit! He doesn't know and he doesn't care...go ask the landscaper!
Somewhere in a dark place you will find:
www.m1