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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."
Hell. Now even Linus is slave to the Google panopticon.
Hope you like your new, NSA hotline, Mr. Torvalds!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
How can a Finnish man hate mobile phones?! Aren't they like the national bird there, or something?
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
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?
here
I don't share much in common with Linus except maybe the phone, but I got my N1 exactly because of how evolved android had become, how beefy the hardware specs were (I was building PCs with roughly the same specs 8 years ago), and because I preferred a phone not marketed to me with a direct tie-in with a carrier. Overtly unlocked? Yes, please. Granted, it's not for everyone, but it is my first smartphone and I'm glad I waited.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
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
... most of my phones haven't had an OS that you could play Galaga or Solitaire on. Or really do much more than make a phone call.
Is it possible that the reason he hates phones is that he keeps buying computers masquerading as phones, rather than phones?
Also... he comments that he's always hated phones because they interrupt while he's trying to work or read. I don't know about anyone else, but if I don't want to be interrupted, I turn off the phone. The ringer, if it's a land-line, or the whole thing, if it's a cell. People can leave me a message and I'll listen to it later.
Basically, I can understand not liking the sound quality, or the microphone quality, or the weight, or the fact that it doesn't work anywhere you want to use it (all problems I've had in the past), but really... the things he's complaining about are issues with how he's using it, not with the phones. Maybe, like me, he's someone who just shouldn't have a cell phone, or should buy a small cheap one for emergency use, and not pay a monthly fee for it.
This phone shall be referred to as the "GNU/Nexus One with GNU/Linux".
Now excuse me, I have to comb my beard.
Richard
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Trolling is a art,
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.
Finally, an article summary that explainings who some obscure person is, rather than assuming we know everyone in the tech universe.
I expected Linus Torvalds to use something more geeky, e.g. N900 or one of OpenMoko devices, but in this case he has chosen user-friendliness instead of endless tinkering. Nexus One is probably one of the most user-friendly Linux-based devices to date (competing with WebOS devices in this respect), and it is very functional as well, so the choice seems obvious.
Linus appears to have less hysterical take on the Android Linux fork than most people:
I don't worry about out-of-tree development for odd devices too much. I wish we could merge android, but I also accept it likely being a few years away. We had similar out-of-tree issues with the SGI extreme scalability stuff, and it took quite a while before the standard kernel merged all of that.
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.
You know, when people are reaching back behind themselves whenever they need money... they're not digging around in their asses. They have this thing called a wallet and you put money in it. Then you put the wallet in your pocket. And thus you see people reaching back whenever they need some cash.
It's a lot easier than stuffing rolls of coins and wads of cash up your rectum. More hygienic too.
Well, it's not technically Linux these phones use, as it's now an incompatible Linux fork. So, I guess like the authors of this article, the company told Linus to go fork himself.
Well, what you're saying is not technically true either.
These phones absolutely do run the Linux kernel and anyone who says otherwise is misleading at best and trolling at worst. Period. Just because a single device driver was recently removed from the official source tree does not suddenly make the kernel any less Linux. To suggest that's the case is ignorance or stupidity.
The reality is, Android uses their own driver for power management. Their design stinks. They've refused to maintain it in the official source tree. The stinking, unmaintained driver was removed. Despite no longer being maintained in the official source tree, Google continues to maintain it in their own kernel tree - which is freely accessible to all. This was all previously covered here on /. Having said all that, it is extremely common for external drivers to be maintained outside of the official source tree for a variety of reasons. This is one of the primary reasons the dkms project exists.
Furthermore, since the source portion of Android's framework which accesses the power management driver is freely available, if someone wanted to, they could easily change the internal implementation to use Linux's official power management interface rather than Google's driver. Battery life is likely to only slightly suffer. And with small improvements to Linux's existing power management infrastructure, to bring it more in line with Google's implementation goals, battery life parity can be achieved while maintaining full Android compatibility.
At the end of the day, removal of the driver from the official source tree changes nothing for anyone.
It's a lot easier than stuffing rolls of coins and wads of cash up your rectum. More hygienic too.
However there can be benefits to storing coinage up your rectum.
If you were to say store unrolled rolls of pennies up your rectum then spend them at locations your boss visits then he would surely get some of that change when shopping there. Next time he goes to buy his kid an ice cream or take his wife out for coffee he's using money that has come from your rectum! You just can't buy that kind of superiority.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
My little brother just got a Nokia N900 and brought it over to show off. My impression: this just might be the first phone I've ever seen which doesn't suck. apt-get install whateverthefuckyouwant totally embarrasses everybody's "app store" and on top of that it's a fully working product.
Is Nexus One getting there too? Cool. I knew shitty phones' days were numbered, but had no idea just what that number was. Looks like we've finally gotten to 0 and I can start taking the phone market seriously.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.
Even "damning with faint praise" is pretty high approbation, coming from a geek like Linus. Most software geeks are this way; cf. mutt's "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less." motto, or "X is the second worst windowing system in the world - all the rest are tied for first." re: XWindows. That's not to say that geeks/engineers are more pessimistic than most people - just more honest.
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