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16 Interviews With Linux Kernel Hackers
DeviceGuru writes "The Linux Foundation has published a series of video interviews from the annual Linux Kernel Summit held Sept. 15-16 in Portland, Oregon. In the videos, 16 developers — including Linux creator Linus Torvalds — discuss their kernel development activities. Other kernel hackers interviewed include Rafael Wysocki, Chris Mason, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Mathieu Desnoyers, Paul Mackerras, John Linville, Stephen Rothwell, Kristen Accardi, Dirk Hohndel, Dave Jones, David Miller, Len Brown, Jon Corbet, Frank Eigler, and Ted Tso. A detailed report on the Summit can be found at LWN. Lots of interesting insights into the status and future of Linux!"
1. No fecking media support! I get XMMS inform me on first attempt at playing an MP3 that it won't because of licensing conflict. Wtf? Codecs for avi's and DVDs were a simular story; all had to be downloaded via yum (bloody excellent tool!). Seriously; not good, but fixed in the end.
Licensing restrictions.
2. Why the hell do I have to install a new kernel? Why? I've never had to on Windows - why is Linux different? Is it so buggy? I installed with a factory version something ending 054. Now I have something ending 122 I believe. I did it ok, but that's not the point I'm making; were there really 68 cock-ups so great in the kernel build from release-time until that now they had to re-release 68 times? I'm guessing probablly not, but still.
This one I can't answer. You normally don't need to upgrade kernels unless there is a driver that's supported in newer kernels that you need, or a serious bug/security fix. I rarely upgrade my kernels, and then only to support new hardware.
And by the way, you are occasionally upgrading the Windows kernel, even though it doesn't come right out and say it.
3. Point 2 also breaks my nvidia drivers. I don't want to re-compile new drivers everytime there's a new 'patch'. For the love of god, why?!
You've never had to upgrade video drivers after patching Windows? Not usually on the smaller patches, but going from SP1 to SP2 or even going from 2000 to XP can cause that problem. Upgrading the kernel is a major update to the OS.
4. X-Windows. What a mess. Why do I have to tell it my x & y refresh rates for my monitor? Windows just 'knows'. Many more things here I feel that X-Windows should just 'know' - the number of buttons on my USB mouse for-instance. If Windows can do it, there's no reason why Linux can't. Also, X-Windows 'feels' slower than Windows. I'm sure there's good reasons for this, but I don't care; Windows is snappier.
For the timing, that's really odd, unless you have an ancient monitor. You shouldn't have to do that any more. For the speed, X-Windows is known to be fairly large and bloated, but I've never felt it's any slower than XP on the same machine. And, depending on the WM you use, it can be faster.
5. Lack of decent file-browser. The best I've come across is Nautilus in a mode that resembles Windows Explorer. It'll do for now, but as far as I'm aware, offers no context-sensitive menus for applications (like the Winamp "Play in Winamp" right-click menu on folders.
You didn't mention what WM you were using, but KDE's file browser is quite decent and has context links set up (as long as the distribution you tried has them set up).
Actually, I think that's largely it. In all, Linux has, and is continuing to be great fun to play with. So many cool tools - yum being one of them. I'll stick to Linux @ home; it can only get better, but I'd be interested to know what people think of the above points - any suggestions maybe? I want this to work after all...
There's a learning curve for Linux, that's certainly true. But I've been much happier with my Linux systems than Windows; as I was saying to someone else the other day, once I get it set up, a Linux system runs forever. If there are security updates I'll do those (and unless it's in the kernel, you don't even have to reboot), or if I get new hardware that's not supported in the current kernel, I'll update, but otherwise it's fine without my intervention.
My experience with Windows, on the other hand, is that I have to do some constant maintenance to it, usually just rebooting (usually after annoying dialog boxes that keep coming back) but sometimes more, such as recently when my laptop's hard drive started thrashing for no discernible reason under XP (ccleaner fixed the problem, whatever it was). In another example, someone the other day was suggesting I download each SP
Guys, the fact that he mentions XMMS, a program defunct for years now, suggests he's trolling.
"My Linux Annoyances as a Hardended Windows user"
Um, one of them would appear to be in possession of such,
This troll should be modded funny IMHO. That might cause casual /. lurkers wonder what it is that is funny in the post. Someone might do some research, god forbid.
This is it, I have had enough, I can read about 100 times faster than I can make sense of rambeling audio. Whichever marketing-droid thinks unprepared semi-monologues can substitute for well thought out papers needs to fail his MBA, and be drummed out of the community in ignominy.
... 5 seconds
The only place for this is good lectures, think Hawking, Richard_Feynman and short bio bits, eg I am Linus, this is Tove and thats the dog
The recent Obama campaign shows that audio-visual clips can be very good, with expensive speach writers, tele-prompters and good producers, this takes lots of preparaton and money but all pointing a cam at an un-prepared speaker results in is sad junk.
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