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Nexus One First Phone Linus Torvalds "Doesn't Hate"
SpuriousLogic writes "Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux kernel, has an absolute disdain for mobile phones. All of the ones he has purchased in the past, the man writes on his personal blog, ended up being 'mostly used for playing Galaga and Solitaire on long flights' even though they were naturally all phones run on open source operating systems. Things have changed now, he adds, now that he has caved and bought Google's Nexus One a couple of days ago."
I am supposed to care about his opinion of smart phones why? I mean I will be happy to listen to anything he has to say about the Linux Kernel. I would pay to hear him talk about the early days of Linux development, but his thoughts on smart phones? What could possibly make me care?
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Citation Needed
Considering I don't know of anyone who would ever call x86 anything 'big iron', I find it hard to believe a guy who started writing a kernel for himself at home on a 386 PC would say something like that.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
SUpposed you got a mail from bill gates asking for a phone from your company because your phone factory has made a phone running windows mobile on it. What would you do?
The point is that famous people generally don't ask... they get sent stuff unsolicited a fair bit. At the Oscars, when you hear of someone's $100,000 necklace from Saks Fifth Avenue, do you really think the celebrity went out and spent their own money on that necklace? Hell no... that's Saks renting it (perhaps gifting it for smaller items) and getting free promotion. Saks is hoping all the non-famous rich people who watch the Oscars go out and buy the necklace.
In Linus' case, however, perhaps he's critical enough about phones that it's actually a risk to send him one. If he writes a bad review, the company who manufactures it and sent it to him has just shot itself in the foot.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Except as soon as anyone finds out that he accepted money for expressing his opinion, people will value his opinion a whole hell of a lot less.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The lesson is: Even people famous for endless tinkering still like a simple, clean user experience once in a while.
Design your software with this in mind.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Most "in dash" GPs's are inferior than a $99.00 pocket cheapie.
Why? well the Updates for in dash units are typically so outlandish that nobody buys them A buddy of mine has a BMW 525i that it will cost him $399.00 for the map data update discs, he bought a pocket garmin unit he stuck to the windshield.. I buy a new $99.00 garmin yearly and that not only gives me a new map data set, but new hardware to boot!
Plus I get POI data. press one button and it will tell me that the next two exits have gas stations and restaurants..
Nope, it's dumb to spend a couple grand on an in dash unit and then pay out the butt yearly for updates.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"Doesn't hate."
Dammned with faint praise...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Or perhaps, unlike celebrities the masses drool over, Linus's endorsement, let alone mere use, isn't worth that much. Frankly, I don't care what phone, dental floss, bike, or anything else he uses.
Your point is well taken, though. If you want to give away free samples, giving them to notorious critics of mostly everything is probably not a good idea.
You ever stop and think that a person who developed the core of an OS and gave it away isn't in it for the money?
I think if more people behaved like Linus this would be a more pleasant world to live in.
The iphone is multi-tasking for those built in apps that are allowed to. Even as a developer I am perfectly fine with this
as I know it keeps craplications from installing service listeners, ram chewers and other junk to my device. In use and in development
I have never seen the need for it on a phone device. All applications are required to save and have the ability to resume
when restarted so I really don't see the big deal about it. As a end user it just plain works and keeps the devices fairly junk
free which keeps the end users happy.
Got Code?
Actually, the "doesn't hate" line doesn't appear anywhere in Linus' words. His actual statement about the Nexus One is not "faint" at all.
From Linus' own blog (TFA):
"But I have to admit, the Nexus One is a winner. I wasn't enthusiastic about buying a phone on the internet sight unseen, but the day it was reported that it finally had the pinch-to-zoom thing enabled, I decided to take the plunge. I've wanted to have a GPS unit for my car anyway, and I thought that google navigation might finally make a phone useful. And it does. What a difference! I no longer feel like I'm dragging a phone with me "just in case" I would need to get in touch with somebody - now I'm having a useful (and admittedly pretty good-looking) gadget instead."
That doesn't sound anything like "damning with faint praise" now, does it?
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's a lot easier than stuffing rolls of coins and wads of cash up your rectum. More hygienic too.
That's more of a long-term strategy.
Anyone who works in a technical or managerial capacity for a very large corporation will find themselves quite fired for that
Ain't my fault that people sign contracts they shouldn't. I've worked in IT for a couple of reasonably large companies, in one case as the sole IT support, and am now working for a university. One of the first questions I'm asked is always "would you be willing to be on call 24 hours a day," and my answer is always "No. I'll work my butt off for you during the day, and if there's an emergency and I'm reachable I'll come help, but I'm not going to put my life on hold while I work here." Some companies weren't willing to hire me, some respected the fact that I was going to state up front what I was and wasn't willing to do. Sounds to me like you don't hate your cell-phone, you hate your job, or at least the contract you signed.
Actually, Stallman would find Linux on nexus one to be a fairly reasonable description, since it contains no GNU code.
This is because unlike on the average GNU/Linux system where there is more GNU code than code from any other single project, so the name GNU would be applicable, except that would be misleading, since it would not really be using the GNU operating system, since that would use Hurd. So GNU/Linux is the next best name.
For Android, more code on the system comes from the Android project than from any other system. Further unlike GNU android by default uses the Linux kernel[1], so saying Android/Linux is just a bit redundant.
[1] At the moment AFAIK no other kernel is possible, but porting Android to say a BSD based kernel is still quite possible.
Linus wrote a kernel not a GUI.
Oh, and I think you meant "ease of use".
Other than that, great post!
Chris DiBona and other people have stated that it's a fork.
Its a fork only to the degree that anyone who developers a device driver is forking the kernel - which is to say its not. Its a "fork" in the most general of layman's expressions. Technically its not a fork at all. A fork is a divergent source tree. This is not a divergent source tree. This is the official source tree plus a driver. That's a huge difference.
If you want to call it a "fork", fine, but technically that's not accurate. With this definition of fork, every distribution and every device which runs Linux, has a "fork".