Linus Torvalds Promises Profanity Over Linux 3.10-rc5

hypnosec writes "Linus Torvalds has released Linux 3.10-rc5, and he is certainly not happy with the changes merged last week. Rc5 is bigger than rc4 and has code scattered across its entire code base because it addresses many outstanding problems. In the release announcement, Torvalds noted, 'I wish I could say that things are calming down, but I'd be lying. rc5 is noticeably bigger than rc4, both in number of commits and in files changed (although rc4 actually had more lines changed, so there's that).' Torvalds has warned that he is going to start cursing again, and said, 'I'm going to call you guys out on, and try to come up with new ways to insult you, your mother, and your deceased pet hamster.'"

Comments

first

[Anonymous Coward]

windows > linux

Re:first

[future assassin]

Only when it involves chair throwing untill then Linux is safe.

Re:first

[Runaway1956]

In terms of resource consumption, yes, windows > Linux. Yeah, go for it. Why on earth did Microsoft claim that Windows XP could run on 128 meg of ram? Oh yeah - because being honest, and telling the world that XP really needed 512 meg to run well would increase the cost of computers to the point where people might explore Linux - which STILL can be configured to run on megs of ram, rather than gigs of ram. (before someone points it out, I'm very much aware that when poorly configured, Linux can waste 4, 8, or even 16 gigs of ram on the desktop environment and a browser)

Re:first

[theguyfromsaturn]

I'm still running Debian on 64 MB of RAM. With Xwindows and icewm. I can even browse the interwebs for a while with firefox until I hit a page with javascript requirements that beat the OS requirements. Sadly that is becoming the norm (I'm looking at you gmail)

Re:first

[jones_supa]

A Windows 7/8 desktop is faster and consumes less resources than a Linux desktop (for fair comparison, we should look at modern full-feature DEs such as KDE, GNOME or Unity).

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! Linus is a wimp. Steve Jobs threw a monitor and Ballmer followed up with a chair but all Linus managed was to be bitten by a Little Penguin.

Re:first

[Runaway1956]

No - I refuse to restrict myself to your definition of "modern full-feature DE's". There is really no need for these desktop environments. Eye candy is eye candy, and it adds little to nothing to the user experience over something such as Enlightenment or Mate. Further, there are various desktops that are more "lightweight" yet, and some of them are quite attractive. (personally, I don't find them ALL to be attractive - but that is somewhat beside the point) Waste is waste, it's really that simple.

Re:first

[Richy_T]

No. For a comparison, you need to look at usage requirements. If all you need is something on the level of fvwm, you can't get there with Windows.

Re:first

[wonkey_monkey]

I'm still running Debian on 64 MB of RAM

I can still Windows on 64mb of RAM, as I long I don't specify the version either...

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it be possible for you to reference an OS newer than 12 years old to try to make your point? And do you realize that the OS will run, but what you want to do might have it's own additional requirements?

Re:first

[HiThere]

FWIW, I believe that he was taliking about Debian stable. (Sorry, I don't remember the name.)

OTOH, that's a guess, as I've never tried to run in that particular configuration.

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, once a guy said to me, 'hey, it looks like you're running bare X!'
that's right, I was

Re:first

[im_thatoneguy]

I would ask though whether that's useful or just technological masturbation.

When RAM is plentiful and cheap and even your average smartphone has more than 1GB of RAM are you sacrificing anything by only using a few MB of RAM instead of GBs?

There clearly is purely wasteful uses of RAM but there is also fully utilizing your available resources. RAM is cheap and plentiful. I would rather a system be responsive and fully featured than tick off some statistic on how few resources it uses. A 486 uses less power than an intel core i7. But you'll get a lot more per watt out of the i7.

Ultimately the metric I care about most is productivity.

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

False. Just installed Linux Mint 15 on my netbook. It runs MUCH better with that (and uses much less resources) than Windows 7. Cinnamon and MATE are forks of GNOME, and are full-featured DEs.

Re:first

[ThePeices]

I'm still running Debian on 64 MB of RAM. With Xwindows and icewm. I can even browse the interwebs for a while with firefox until I hit a page with javascript requirements that beat the OS requirements. Sadly that is becoming the norm (I'm looking at you gmail)

Yes, because 64MB of RAM should be enough for anybody, amiright?

Just because you can, doesnt mean you should. In the age of large and cheap computing resources, saving every last byte and cycle is less of a concern than it used to be.

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlikely. Even according to the minimum requirements for Squeeze it said that 64MB of RAM is really only useful for a thin-client. A real workstation/desktop needs minimum of 256 MB.

Re:first

[brickmack]

I prefer command lines myself.

Re:first

[brickmack]

Irrelevant. An OS is useless on it's own, to consider it usable it must be able to do at least simple tasks. Which it isn't.

Re:first

[Bert64]

And you'll get more per watt from a lower clocked i7 or an ARM... And power is all important on battery powered devices...
And although ram is cheap, it still has a cost, and that cost soon adds up... Think of hundreds of workstations, or installations of virtual machines etc, halving the memory requirement could be a significant saving.

Re:first

[oPless]

I remember looking at Enlightenment and thinking how bloated that was.

UI needs less chrome, not more.

Metro^WModern UI looks nicer these days, but it still doesn't hide the fact what's under the hood.

Re:first

[u16084]

No - I refuse to restrict myself to your definition of "modern full-feature DE's". There is really no need for these desktop environments. - Who are you trying to fool? GUIS are there to assist you. Sure some platforms overly assist the user, but living in a terminal/command line might actually slow you down at times. Why not be able to get all the information you need at a glance, vs scrolling through log files/grepping your life away. Not trying to troll, but you might be the exception.

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[HiThere]

I'm sure. He didn't say what he was doing with it, though, so I presume that it wasn't a full install. There's a lot of stuff in the standard install that isn't really needed for many purposes. Many people severely customize it.

OTOH, he did say he was using firefox, which does raise some questions...though it doesn't provide many answers.

Re:first

[epyT-R]

which is why it takes gigacycles (and 10x the ram) to do the same things we used to do in a few megacycles.. It's one thing to not obsess over every extra loop or cache miss, but that doesn't excuse the slovenly, bloated mess that is the average software application today.

Re:first

[epyT-R]

nor hide the fact it's ill suited for desktop use.

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[TapeCutter]

Exactly, the resources equation only makes sense if you consider your time as a resource. For example I use python to automate nightly builds, I don't care that it takes 4hrs to run instead of 2, I don't care where things are physically located I just assume it will page to disk if it needs to. However I do care how much time I spend polishing it vs how much time it saves doing manual builds.

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[smash]

Newsflash: trading CPU cycles and RAM for more rapid development and use of shared libraries (rather than re-inventing the wheel constantly) is considered to be an acceptable trade-off.

Given that 16 GB of ram runs about $100 these days, running with 64 MEG is just making life more difficult for yourself than it has to be.

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[smash]

If you think a desktop environment is all about eye candy you are mistaken. yes there is eye candy, but the more important thing they provide is a development platform for applications.

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[Runaway1956]

I mentioned eye candy. It's always been somewhat important on Windows. In the Linux world, K made a big push to implement eye candy, then I became aware of Enlightenment, then Ubuntu announced their Unity, then finally Gnome did the same. Somewhere in that mess, Windows decided they were interested in the Metro thing - was it soon after KDE 4 was released?

Anyway - what I'm saying is, to much emphasis is put on the eye candy. Those things that the "development platform" is needed for, have been done all along on the older, simpler, if less pretty desktops.

What I'd LIKE TO SEE, is some of that wasted energy spent on developing Enlightenment. It has all the eye candy anyone could want - but uses far less resources than any comparably "pretty" desktop. Had Ubuntu picked up on Enlightenment, it's anyone's guess where E would be today. I mean - they created an all-new DE in quite short order. Had they taken Enlightenment, and spent the same resources on it, they could have customized E to do everything that Unity does, at much less cost in resources.

Ehhh - I guess when you get down to it, there's no accounting for taste, or for common sense. There are people who actually claim to LIKE Unity!

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people using debian call Iceweasel Firefox, it even installs a /usr/bin/firefox alias...
And yes, you can run a custom Wheezy install (base system with most services disabled, raw X) in 64MB without swapping too heavily.

Re:first

[Runaway1956]

I'll let you in on a secret. I'm not 100% comfortable in a CLI only environment all the time. My brain is aging, and I forget simple things sometimes. Other things, I never knew. I prefer a GUI most of the time. My argument is against those heavy weight DE's that require a gig of memory just to run. All those widgets and whatnot - they don't actually add anything to the user experience. Mostly, they just define new ways to do the same old stuff. Which only means that you and I have to learn the new ways that the developers have decided is "better" in some way.

I'm not exactly stuck in yesterday, but neither am I inclined to learn a new DE every couple of years because the younger generation deems it necessary.

Re:first

[smash]

If the development is put into E to give it similar functionality to KDE or Gnome as an application platform then guess what? It will grow to consume resources in a similar manner.

Re:first

[UltraZelda64]

A Windows 7/8 desktop is faster and consumes less resources than a Linux desktop (for fair comparison, we should look at modern full-feature DEs such as KDE, GNOME or Unity).

I am on a machine with an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ dual core processor and, if I really wanted to, I could pick a 64-bit Linux distribution and run it. In fact, for a while I was running a 64-bit OS, but in the interest of conserving memory (since I ended up choosing to run what could be considered a "full-featured" or "bloated" Linux distro--openSUSE with KDE4) I decided to switch back to 32-bit to conserve memory.

Would you care to tell me how the hell I could get 64-bit Windows 7/8 to run on this thing at all, without an upgrade to a bare minimum of 2 GB RAM? And I should point out that 2 GB is the max that this machine can handle in the first place. I should also mention that I have run both Windows 7 and Windows 8 on this system in the past briefly, and 1GB is simply inadequate for it.

Windows most definitely does *not* have lower system requirements than Linux, and that remains true even when talking about the most heavyweight of distributions. I should also add that it is almost always the web browser (not necessarily the distribution itself) that brings my system on its knees; I make heavy use of browsers with dozens of tabs open, but even just opening a browser with no tabs really eats into memory these days. Chrome, Firefox--they're both bloated pigs. Add a single Gmail or Google Voice tab and you've got a hell of a memory hog.

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[Runaway1956]

Uhhhh - no, not exactly. The E libraries work differently. Everything works differently. I've run exactly the same applications side by side on an E installation, and a Gnome installation, and then a K installation. E uses more resources than something like OpenBox, but considerably less than G or K, and certainly less than Unity.

E's problem is that some things simply remain unfinished.

I'll grant some slim possibility that you are partly right. Let's suppose that to finish all the unfinished stuff, E ends up using 10% more resources than it does now. It will STILL be significantly more efficient than any of the heavy weights in use today. People who are carefully conserving every single miliwatt may still opt for OpenBox or similar, but the differences aren't going to be deal breakers for all of us.

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[Ghaoth]

Operating systems should be seen and not heard. They should "just work" and do the bidding of the apps. There is little point in having a whiz bang OS/DE if the apps blow up in your face - or vice versa.

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[adolf]

Just because it's considered to be acceptable, does not mean that it is efficient.

Newsflash: My new-ish router only has 128MB of RAM, and runs Linux. My previous router also ran Linux on 32MB. And in times not-so-distant, I had a mail server, DNS, IRC server, router and multi-user general-purpose shell machine with 24MB, that even from time-to-time hosted a remote X app or three. It worked fine.

There's never an excuse to be wasteful of resources. Never. Suppose it costs a developer 50% more time to create resource-efficient code. And suppose that it costs users an extra $50 to allow inefficient code to run well on their computer.

$50 * millions of users == $$$. (I'll let you estimate how much optimization is worth in terms of developer-hours vs. end-user expenditure, if you choose. Myself, I can see quite plainly that whatever the figure is, it's well beyond my paygrade...and that's without factoring energy.)

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[adolf]

My "old" Android smartphone has 256MB of RAM, and would continue to work fine for me today if not for more-recent bloat: It's a far faster computer than my desktop of not-so-long ago.

Instead, it languishes on the corner of my desk. (I could sell it at the kiosk in the mall that eats cell phones and dispenses cash, but it's worth more to me as a paperweight than the $2 that they offer for such an "antiquated" device.)

Ultimately, the metric I care about most is getting the maximum use out of my dollars. Bloat always runs counter to that.

Re:first

[oatworm]

Sure you can. Heck, if you have the right version of Windows, you can even eschew the GUI entirely and go straight to the command line. Or, if you're looking for a lightweight DE, you could opt for the Minimal Server Interface.

Granted, it's not quite fvwm, and it's certainly not available on consumer-grade Windows, but it's out there if you really want it and are willing to fork out the money for it.

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[smash]

Nobody cares that your router runs in 128 megs of RAM, when it does not provide the ease of use or rapid development provided by high level application frameworks. And yes I've built plenty of Linux boxes (with as little as 4 MEG - your 32 meg router was 4x the size of my first X11 box) myself. Thing is - they aren't desktops.

As far as a desktop environment goes - It isn't a "waste" of resources, it is a trade-off for programmer efficiency..

As any computer scientist will tell you - computing power scales, human processing power does not. In other words, processor time/RAM is cheap. Programmer time is not.

This is why we do not code everything in assembly language - it is only used if absolutely necessary.

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[adolf]

I didn't bother talking about my 4-megabyte Linux forays because I thought it might sound cheeky. (I didn't graduate to X11 until I had 8MB.)

And I'm here to tell you that sloppy programming costs billions of real-live dollars in hardware annually.

And everyone cares about their own pocketbook.

Put that in your rapid-development pipe and smoke it.

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[smash]

Uhhhh - no, not exactly. The E libraries work differently. Everything works differently. I've run exactly the same applications side by side on an E installation, and a Gnome installation, and then a K installation. E uses more resources than something like OpenBox, but considerably less than G or K, and certainly less than Unity.

Because it doesn't do as much. If you compare E to QT or GTK I'm sure you'll find that it has nowhere near the same feature set.

E's problem is that some things simply remain unfinished.

Considered why that may be?

I'll grant some slim possibility that you are partly right. Let's suppose that to finish all the unfinished stuff, E ends up using 10% more resources than it does now. It will STILL be significantly more efficient than any of the heavy weights in use today. People who are carefully conserving every single miliwatt may still opt for OpenBox or similar, but the differences aren't going to be deal breakers for all of us.

I think you'll find it will end up being somewhere around the same size as KDE or Gnome if the feature set is comparable.

I've seen it happen with Linux vs. Windows in fact. Windows 95 copped a heap of shit for being so large and requriing so many resources when it was released.

Fact is: despite being a hacked 32 bit environment on top of a 16 bit boot loader, in terms of what it actually DOES, it is comparable with a modern Linux distribution of today. Except Linux still doesn't have standard high level libraries for sound, graphics, a standard widget toolkit, etc.

Now obviously Windows 95 is a pile of shit and fails for many other reasons, but in terms of what it supports vs. size, it makes a typical linux distribution look pretty bloated. Linux used so much less back in the day partially because it did so much less... It's smaller than Linux is now because it had a company behind it who made the call one picking ONE widget set, ONE sound library, etc.

Re:first

[stiggle]

and it wasn't even a radioactive penguin to get superpowers.

Re:first

[tconnors]

When RAM is plentiful and cheap and even your average smartphone has more than 1GB of RAM are you sacrificing anything by only using a few MB of RAM instead of GBs?

Your *average* smartphone? I don't choose to throw out a perfectly workable smartphone Every Damn Year, so my year old phone only has 384MB of RAM. It still works, but some modern apps that add glitz at the expense of functionality are becoming seriously painful on it.

You sir, are what is wrong with the planet today. Too many teenage developer weenies that are so abstracted away from the machine that they've forgotten how to program efficiently. "Oh, but I need all that RAM to make my program cache things so it can be quicker". So why is it so much slower to fire up a pdf viewer on my phone with 384MB of RAM than what it was to fire up on my 12 year old laptop with 128MB of RAM?

All of my machines are maxed out. All of our rackfulls of ESXi servers at work are maxed out. Adding more RAM is not *easy*. Making devs do their jobs would be easier.

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll let you in on a secret. I'm not 100% comfortable in a CLI only environment all the time.

They are not arguing GUI vs CLI. They are arguing something like XFCE vs a modern, 3D accelerated animated desktop.

Re:first

[Merls the Sneaky]

I got win xp to run on a p3 with 32 mb ram and an IDE drive. It ran like a slug but it did run.

Re:first

[Anonymous Coward]

"RAM is cheap" is a lazy way out. I usually hear it when people do not want to spend some time optimizing their code. It is why firefox at this point is beating chrome in memory usage. Because the mozilla guys woke up and said 'hey our crap sucks lets fix it'. Now if they can keep that up...

Optimizing is the FUN part of coding. I do not know why people do not like doing it. Sure it is hard. But you are doing the same work with less resources. Resources that can now be used for something ELSE. You get to whip out all that cool stuff they crammed into your head in college about computer science.

Think about this take zlib for example. It has been fairly well proven at this point that you can get 3-5% extra compression just by using another library. Yet everyone uses zlib. What if it was 50% faster and 10% better in compression? But no one bothers. Take the emulator Bochs for example. Everyone said 'it is slow because it is in software'. Couple guys came along and got it within 5% of vmware speed all in software and not using dynamic recompile. The guy doing it has lost interest, but he was fairly confident he could be faster than vmware eventually.

I am in the same boat as you with the smartphone. I have a 3 year old droidx. Thinking of getting the galaxy 4. But can not justify it in any way whatsoever (other than it looks bad ass). The one I have works perfectly well for what I use it for.

Re:first

[TemporalBeing]

which is why it takes gigacycles (and 10x the ram) to do the same things we used to do in a few megacycles.. It's one thing to not obsess over every extra loop or cache miss, but that doesn't excuse the slovenly, bloated mess that is the average software application today.

Exactly. We shouldn't treat the computer as having "unlimited CPU and RAM", which is what Computer Science teaches (and Java/C#/VM-language developers generally expect) because it isn't. You don't need to fret over every little byte usage in memory or CPU, but you also need to be conscience of it so you don't waste it either.

There is no reason why a program from today should run slower than its equivalent 10/15/20/30 years ago. Yet that is often the case.

Re:first

[metrix007]

It's not about restricting yourself, it's about a fair comparison. If you want to compare the Windows Desktop to Linux Desktop, it makes sense to compare the Explorer shell with the most common Linux equivalents, Gnome or KDE, or maybe Unity.

If you want to talk about how Linux has other options for graphical shells, well then so does windows. Blackbox running on windows may well consume less than blackbox running on Linux, it's something I would be interested to see.

Re:first

[TemporalBeing]

Nobody cares that your router runs in 128 megs of RAM, when it does not provide the ease of use or rapid development provided by high level application frameworks. And yes I've built plenty of Linux boxes (with as little as 4 MEG - your 32 meg router was 4x the size of my first X11 box) myself. Thing is - they aren't desktops.

Ran Desktops with 4 MB RAM myself. Not saying today's desktop's shouldn't have more memory, but that additional memory and CPU should let you actually do more with the computer, not the same amount or less.

As far as a desktop environment goes - It isn't a "waste" of resources, it is a trade-off for programmer efficiency..

Incorrect. It's not a matter of "programmer efficiency", it's a matter of "software efficiency". The two are not necessarily the same.
"Programmer Efficiency" is how well the programmer is skilled in the field.
"Software Efficiency" is how efficient the software is with resources on the computer it is running on.


A skilled programmer (e.g, one with a high programmer efficiency) can create software that has a high "software efficiency". A unskilled programmer (e.g, one with a low programmer efficiency, typically in high school or right out of college) will not typically write software that has a very high "software efficiency", rather it will be very low on the "software efficiency" side. They're just not skilled enough to choose the right algorithms or implement the algorithsm in a very efficient manner.

The problem is that too many companies want to only use programmers with a low "programmer efficiency" because they're "cheaper" per hour than one with a higher programmer efficiency. Unfortunately, two (or more) low skilled developers do not necessarily equate one high skilled developer (Mythical Man Month).

And yes, you can choose to have the software be a little less efficient, but knowing how to that smartly is a key thing. For instance, you want your producitivity suite to be highly efficient in the user interface, but it doesn't need to be as efficient on its background processing. Knowing how to make that trade off requires more experience.

As any computer scientist will tell you - computing power scales, human processing power does not. In other words, processor time/RAM is cheap. Programmer time is not.

Computer Science views the computer resources as unlimited, inline with the Turing Machine (unlimited storage, unlimited processing, etc.) Software Engineering views the computer resources as limited, inline with computers you actually find in use around the world.

Yes, human processing does not scale well, and programmer time is not cheap. But that doesn't mean you can waste the user's time and resources either - they're not unlimited. And it can very well make the difference between a user purchasing your product or a competitors, or using your FOSS software versus buying something proprietary.

CPU, Memory, and Hard Disks are relatively cheap; but they're not necessarily cheap for the end-user.

This is why we do not code everything in assembly language - it is only used if absolutely necessary.

No one said you should use Assembly; only that you need to be conscience of the computer resources that are used by your software. Whether you are using Assembly, C, C++, Python, Java, C#, SmallTalk, Ada, Pascal, Cobol, Ruby, D, or whatever the next big language is - you have to be conscience of what the computer is doing and when in order to make your programmers work efficiently in ways that have the least system/user impact.

Re:first

[TemporalBeing]

And I'm here to tell you that sloppy programming costs billions of real-live dollars in hardware annually.
And everyone cares about their own pocketbook.
Put that in your rapid-development pipe and smoke it.

Well said.

Re:first

[TemporalBeing]

Take the emulator Bochs for example. Everyone said 'it is slow because it is in software'. Couple guys came along and got it within 5% of vmware speed all in software and not using dynamic recompile. The guy doing it has lost interest, but he was fairly confident he could be faster than vmware eventually.

I remember when the speed-up for Bochs came, and it was primarily because the QEMU guys made a kernel module that allowed them to use the hardware to run some of the instructions instead of having to virtualize every single instruction. Now everyone has access to the "VM" instructions on Intel/AMD processors, so you can do that without the QEMU kernel module; but then you are limited to having a host CPU be the same CPU as (or at least a compatible variant of) the virtualized one.

And, FYI, Bochs is one of the few virtual machines that can emulate a full X86 and X86-64 computer with ANY computer architecture as its host because they emulate the entire computer.

Now, if they've gotten some additional stuff since that one, I don't know.

Re:first

[Samizdata]

And, as I was reminded the other day, one advantage of GUIs over CLI is typos are a lot harder to make (as I sadly reminded myself the other day).

Re:first

[smash]

The increased resource requirements DO in fact do more with your computer. It means apps get developed in man-weeks or man-months rather than years or decades. It means we have a standard set of libraries shared between apps.

When RAM is under $10/GB, I'd much rather spend a couple of gigabytes on the OS platform to get apps that actually get released in a timely manner, include more features and plain do cool stuff that I want to do than bitch that they use more ram than my router built in 1992.

By programmer efficiency, I meant programmer hrs vs. real world problems solved. As I mentioned earlier, it is a trade-off. If you want an OS written in 2/3 of the resources for the same actual problem set, you will be waiting 2-3x as long for it or more. Or it will get "too hard" and never come out. Ever.

If you want to run wm2 or fluxbox or whatever, go for it. Other people have real world tasks they want to do and are prepared to spend say, 50 bucks on RAM and not have to fuck around wasting their time to do it.

Re:first

[smash]

I'm here to tell you that hardware is replaced periodically due to failure and continuation of support contracts anyway. In the real world, many companies simply lease their hardware and upgrade every 3 years. Or depreciate and re-purchase every 3 years. In the real world, it is a tax write off.

Re:first

[adolf]

And I'm here to tell you that I don't give a shit about corporate tax games. Money wasted is still wasted.

Re:first

[TemporalBeing]

The increased resource requirements DO in fact do more with your computer. It means apps get developed in man-weeks or man-months rather than years or decades. It means we have a standard set of libraries shared between apps.

Not necessarily. If you use less efficient code, structures, memory usages, etc. then no you will not. You'll just do the same thing with more resources, and you may even spend more time building it.

Shared libraries do not necessarily mean extra code/resources at run-time. You may, for instance, use static linker level libraries that simply allow modules to be shared; or you may make additional DLLs that do have run-time requirements. But you have to determine which is the best use for the application usage, not just blindly use one or the other.

When RAM is under $10/GB, I'd much rather spend a couple of gigabytes on the OS platform to get apps that actually get released in a timely manner, include more features and plain do cool stuff that I want to do than bitch that they use more ram than my router built in 1992.

Now you're supposing that adding RAM is (i) a possible, and (ii) feasible. Others have already mentioned cases where the systems (even new systems) are already maxed out. RAM is cheap enough now that I tend to max out the RAM when I get a new computer as well. So no, you cannot necessarily just add more RAM.

And when you start writing data intensive applications, more RAM won't help you as you need every bit of it you can to start with. A database not written to be mindful of the resources it uses will not be very useful to other applications except with very small data sets.

I presently work on a near real-time measurement system. Brand new processor boards (even with Core2 Duos) have a max of 1 or 2 GB or RAM. My software has to be resource friendly. If we start swapping to disk (e.g. SWAP file or SWAP partition), it will cause the system to lose data which is unacceptable to our customers. And yes, I went from near zero code to having a deliverable system in less than 9 months, though some of the interfaces were crude it did its job very well.

I've written file servers in the past, and it's no different. If you're not mindful of resources then things can quickly get out of hand. We didn't expect the customer to transfer 1000 files in a day; but we tested for 10,000; the server was expected to be up for months and early testing determined that some lack of mindfulness of resources would crash the server side at just a few hundred at first. As we fixed things to be more mindful we eventually passed the 10,0000 test without any issues - you couldn't tell the software had 10,000 files transferred as we had a zero-sum of resources used after each transfer. We were a little more lenient on the client-side, but it was just as good in the end.

Point is, you have to look at what the software is doing, and making sure it works correctly for its use case and that it uses the resources properly and efficiently for those use cases.

By programmer efficiency, I meant programmer hrs vs. real world problems solved. As I mentioned earlier, it is a trade-off. If you want an OS written in 2/3 of the resources for the same actual problem set, you will be waiting 2-3x as long for it or more. Or it will get "too hard" and never come out. Ever.

And that's essentially the same thing as what I was calling it. it's something that only comes with experience, and cannot be reduced linearly by adding more programmers. And as I noted, programmers that have better programmer efficiency also have the ability to make software that is more efficient and determine where to make the tradeoffs.

If you want to run wm2 or fluxbox or whatever, go for it. Other people have real world tasks they want to do and are prepared to spend say, 50 bucks on RAM and not have to fuck around wasting their time to do it.

Re:first

[Richy_T]

Sure. So we come back to usage requirements again.

Re:first

[oPless]

I preferred the simplicity of system 7 (or 6) over the faux 3d of windows.

Every thing was really clear.

Anything that moves things back in that direction cannot be bad.

Re:first

[smash]

Your niche is not typical.

Re:first

[TemporalBeing]

Your niche is not typical.

And you completely missed the point

Re:first

[SirGeek]

I'm SO with you. My 1st "full time" programming job was for embedded systems where throwing "more RAM" at a problem wasn't an option. It was programmed with ASM (including a Custom Macro ASM language for the company's own CPUs).

There is ways to be efficient and there are ways to be lazy and there is some happy medium. My biggest gripe is that too many people rely on:

• Their IDE to tell them all the syntax, etc. instead of having to know when its right.
• Their IDE to do everything "under the hood" so they don't have to.

I didn't use an IDE for almost 20 years of my career (and I'm only using one now because of all the "young" programmers that can't even write a hello world program without one). While I'm no longer doing ASM programming, I still try to do things as efficiently as possible (code reuse, static libraries when possible, etc.)

Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calm and measured explanations of just what the coders are doing wrong would be ever so much more helpful. If all Linus is going to do is mouth off then perhaps it's time he just STFU and GTFO.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Profanity is the crutch of inarticulate motherfuckers.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

He did explained, which is "donâ(TM)t stop sending him non-critical stuff, he is going to start cursing again."

Obviously, people have not gotten his memo for the last 10 kernel releases- we've been hearing about this complaint since 3.0.

He is pissed because he has to waste time going thru the code for every single commit that should not go into a RC build.

At this point there's really only 2 things he can do- deny the commits, or/and swear at the dev. What else can he do, fire them?

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what he gave them now. The promise of profanity is for when they don't heed the advice.

The kernel merge window is closed, as can be deduced from the release candidate status of the kernel, so now is not the time to move stuff around, add more features, etc. Until the merge window opens again for the next release, it's all about fixing bugs, especially regression bugs.

Re:Profanity?

[JustOK]

what are you trying to say?

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

what advice? your mother is a goat fucker ... dont see how that fixes monitor support

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

what are you trying to say, bitch?

FTFY

Re:Profanity?

[Charliemopps]

I think most of us stopped listening to Linus quite a while ago. I've followed him on various social media platforms and it's been pretty clear that over time they have turned him into an asshole. Some people (myself included) should just avoid posting whatever they think at any time they want under their real name. He should just pick up some handle on slashdot and post away like I do. That way you can still be a dick and not have everyone hate you for it. And no, I'm not Linus... well, I don't think so anyway. I need to ask my shrink to be sure.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post artfully demonstrates that which I have always held true.

People who are not afraid to curse are capable of having a much stronger control over their language of choice, than those who refuse to curse for some arbitrary reason.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Calm and measured explanations of just what the coders are doing wrong would be ever so much more helpful. If all Linus is going to do is mouth off then perhaps it's time he just STFU and GTFO.

I think he should take your advice. Clearly his methods have been unsuccessful.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with being a dick when the situation calls for it. In fact that's sometimes the only way to get things done. Hiding behind anonymity just makes what you say LESS likely to solve anything, and worse, implies that you're just out to be a dick and not change anything.

If you're bothered by someone not being a wonderful human being all the time, then perhaps you've erected a few too many barriers against emotional stress, and should really consult your shrink about that as well.

Re:Profanity?

[gl4ss]

he just explained what was wrong.

too much shit changing around. that shouldn't be in fifth release candidate.

Re:Profanity?

[DJRumpy]

Or he could take the correct approach and just deny the commit, rather than spewing noise about it, all the while taking non-bug fixes in an RC and then bitching about it. Why waste the time and energy. Make them resubmit with only bug fixes the way it is intended to be done.

Re:Profanity?

[jamstar7]

Profanity is the crutch of inarticulate motherfuckers.

what are you trying to say?

Beats the shit outta me...

Re:Profanity?

[Stumbles]

Yeah he could do that and spend a lot of time spinning his wheels when a few well placed curses upon the offenders pet or pets would stop or reduce his spin time. Just how many times does he need to repeat himself after a while it becomes clear some public chastising might get their attention.

Re: Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

I concede that profanity may add humor when used in the right situations, however it in no way gives greater control of a language. The purpose of language is communication. And there is always a more intelligent way to express an idea than dropping the F-bomb.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

A link I found on a discussion on /. just a few days ago seems appropriate :
programming-motherfucker.com

Re:Profanity?

[lister king of smeg]

monitor support is a x11/window manager/desktop environment problem not linux kernal problem, the equivalent would be to yell at the NT devs for the failings direct3d.

Re:Profanity?

[HiThere]

He basically said "Stop making cosmetic changes in a release candidtate, or I will get abusive."

There was a bit more to it than that, including a threat to curse their dead pet hampster, but that was the nut of it.

Re:Profanity?

[Nivag064]

You obviously don't appreciate his sense of humour.

If you think he puts other people down, he can do worse to himself. I remember reading emails years ago when he released a kernel update saying in very picturesque language that he stuffed up the previous release.

He has also found being polite, can be worse for people.

I wish I was good enough for him to insult me! However, I am not a kernel hacker, so fat chance.

If someone sends a patch which is terrible from an unknown, he is likely just to ignore it, but a good patch that did the job would go into the kernel with no fuss. If someone competent sends in a patch he doesn't like, with something he thinks is really bad, he will say so in no uncertain terms.

I have been reading what he has written and seeing videos of him, from time to time for over 20 years, so I understand where he is coming from and have immense respect for him.

He is neither a smarmy politician or a hypocritical religious evangelist - he is extremely honest, competent, & caring. Don't judge him by such superficial considerations that you seem to use.

Re:Profanity?

[murdocj]

Yes, there is something wrong with being a dick. It is very, VERY rare that people need to be dicks. What I've find is that people who enjoy being dicks find excuses to be dicks, no matter what.

Re:Profanity?

[Nivag064]

You are truly clueless - I've just read what he actually said, he was actually giving a very mild rebuke in a humours way - and considering the situation, he was more than justified to be harsher!

Re: Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

I concede that profanity may add humor when used in the right situations, however it in no way gives greater control of a language. The purpose of language is communication. And there is always a more intelligent way to express an idea than dropping the F-bomb.

Fuck you.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calm and measured explanations of just what the coders are doing wrong would be ever so much more helpful.

Bull mother-fucking pussy. There is not one fucking shred of evidence to support that claim, and you sure as hell haven't written a single good line of code.

You can write an algorithm ten ways, all of which accomplish the task. Objectively, they all work.

But at least 9 of them are going to be fucking ugly and cause problems down the line. It is good for someone to tell you sooner that something you wrote is fucked up than to discover that later.

It's like writing material for stand-up or sketch comedy. All your jokes might have all the elements of humor, they "work" in that sense. But some asshole has to say, "no, that's fucking garbage, it's not good enough," and he has to do that for 95% of what you wrote. Otherwise you won't find out until you're standing in front of an audience and they're booing your ass off stage.

Re:Profanity?

[epyT-R]

Not listening to someone because of their style is not the mark of a rational individual, so I would hope that 'most of us' don't just tune him out because of it. Do his arguments make sense? Is he battling idiocy? If so, vitriol is warranted.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

what are you trying to say?

Enough is ENOUGH! I have had it with these motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plane!

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

what advice? your mother is a goat fucker ... dont see how that fixes monitor support

My mother's goat doesn't have proper monitor support, you insensitive clod!

Re:Profanity?

[epyT-R]

Being blunt and direct is the only way to fight the catty, passive aggressive behavior seen in modern social interaction. If anything, to people like linus, saying dumb things and then hiding behind your feelings when called out on it is dickish.

Re:Profanity?

[Kjella]

Calm and measured explanations of just what the coders are doing wrong would be ever so much more helpful. If all Linus is going to do is mouth off then perhaps it's time he just STFU and GTFO.

Mostly he's talking to seasoned veterans at kernel development who damn well know what the rules are, they just choose to bend them. They're always pushing and he's the one who has to push back, measured explanations is as useless as explaining to boys that trying to sneak a peek into the girl's locker room is wrong. Of course they knew that but they did it anyway and a "please don't do that" won't discourage anyone from trying again. Even if he rejects the patches unless he talks back he becomes the wall people throw crap at to see what sticks. Usually The I'd call developers who should know better behaving in ways that are destructive to the project a management problem, but he's the project manager so his way of resolving it is to give people a well-deserved ass chewing on the LKML. Don't knock it if it works...

Re: Profanity?

[Nitewing98]

Can I quote you on that?

Re:Profanity?

[PPH]

Expletives are like rim shots. They work well to emphasize a certain point. Trouble is; some people are stuck playing drum solos.

Re: Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

That may be true but the 'more intelligent' ways almost always make you sound like a crashing bore whose nose is 10 feet above everybody else. Not to mention a cunt.

Re:Profanity?

[tibman]

Europeans sound like dicks to most Americans. What one culture considers to be candid the other considers to be rude.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are only three types of people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cV_q-mVAAA

Re: Profanity?

[philip.paradis]

I must object to this fucking view, on the grounds that the F-word is very versatile.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calm and measured explanations of just what the coders are doing wrong would be ever so much more helpful. If all Linus is going to do is mouth off then perhaps it's time he just STFU and GTFO.

Congratulations for not letting ignorance or irrelevance prevent you from holding as strong opinion. Lacking the coding skills to make a web page shouldn't prevent you from trolling kernel development stories, your opinion is important. Really.

Re: Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so verstile that the only meaning it could possibly convey is, "I am not articulate".

Re:Profanity?

[Lisias]

It is very, VERY rare that people need to be dicks.

Are you from Mars?

Look out the window. See how many cops, soldiers et all we need to keep our civilization barely civilized...

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Expletives are like rim shots. They work well to emphasize a certain point. Trouble is; some people are stuck playing drum solos.

are rimshots requried after rimming?

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is not one fucking shred of evidence to support that claim, and you sure as hell haven't written a single good line of code.

You don't see what's wrong with this sentence? Here's a hint: "do as I mother-fucking say, not as I father-cunting do".

If you want someone to get better at what they do, start by giving more comprehensive criticism than "you're shit".

Re: Profanity?

[arglebargle_xiv]

And there is always a more intelligent way to express an idea than dropping the F-bomb.

Is that somewhere between an A-bomb and an H-bomb? If it were up to me, I'd go the whole way and drop a Z-bomb on the fucking fuckers.

Re:Profanity?

[oatworm]

Pretty much this. There are three ways to handle disagreements:

1. Engage in a respectful, carefully thought out conversation weighing the pros and cons of each position, then achieving some sort of consensus.
2. "Agree to disagree", then passive-aggressively do your own thing or otherwise lobby with others to follow your path over the other person's path.
3. "Be a dick", call the person out, and make it clear that, since you're the one making the decisions, you are the one making that decision, not them.

Option 1 is great when you have nothing but time on your hands and/or when you're dealing with someone whose opinion you trust. It's also only useful when there's a clear definition of "right" and "wrong" regarding the topic at hand - more often than not, choices in life and engineering pretty much boil down to "which trade-offs suck less for the domain we're working in", which are more subjective than not in most cases. Option 2 is the default position drilled into our heads during school, which is a useful default when you're dealing with equals or people who you have no authority over - I mean, sure, you can yell and scream at them, but it's not like they're required to listen. The catch with option 2, though, is that, though it leads to less hurt feelings in the short run, you're as liable to have different factions competing against each other to prove who's "right", which can lead to some major issues down the road.

Option 3, meanwhile, is useful when you're in a hurry, a decision needs to be made now, and it needs to be made decisively. The goal here is to nip a problem in the bud before it metastasizes into something serious and political. In this case, Linus wants to enforce some discipline on the code review process because his time is finite and the deadline is near for 3.10 to get out the door, and "receive lots of crap code and reject it" doesn't solve that problem. He needs to not receive non-essential code in the first place. The only way to do that is by convincing those committing code to make only meaningful commits, either through well-defined requirements (tried; apparently that's failing), polite warnings (what Slashdot picked up here tonight), or "being a dick" (Linus will continue the beatings until morale improves if his warning isn't heeded).

Personally, I've found that the sort of people that claim "being a dick" is the sole refuge of people that enjoy being dicks are the sort of people that have a reflexive inability to defend their opinions under any sort of sustained criticism and just assume that, if their "brilliance" needs to be defended, it's because it's being witnessed by simpletons that just "don't get it". From where I'm sitting, that's a pretty dickish and passive-aggressive position to adopt and I... well, come to think of it, I actually do enjoy being a dick to people that think like that. Seriously, screw them.

Huh. Guess I pretty much proved the grandparent's point right there, didn't I?

Re: Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

The external purpose of profanity is similar to that of an emoticon: It disambiguates and emphasizes. It also has the healthy internal purpose of expressing anger and frustration.

Re: Profanity?

[davester666]

For example, you never know when you might find an infestation of snakes on a plane.

Re:Profanity?

[Waccoon]

The real problem is that cursing is too commonplace. It doesn't mean anything, anymore.

Re:Profanity?

[wisty]

> If all Linus is going to do is mouth off then perhaps it's time he just STFU and GTFO

Rubbish. I bet 99.99% of the time he's calm, collected, and insightful. But Slashdot doesn't report on "Linus explains why the new patch improving memory use in large systems is a great example of OO-style C".

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no "p" in hamster, you retard. :)

Re: Profanity?

[Merls the Sneaky]

People who make these sorts of arguments against using profanity only convey "I will use and ad hominem to dissuade its use because I personally do not like profanity".

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly don't have a clue what it's about.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a blunt ...heavy, object, directly, is another way to quiet down a catty, passive aggressive problem.

Re: Profanity?

[Archangel Michael]

The F Bomb is utterly meaningless when used for every other word. It makes little people seem bigger, but only in their own eyes and the eyes of small people. To artfully use vocabulary to disrespect others is actually not easy, which is why simple people resort to using F-Bomb. It is right up there with calling people "Racist" (or similar) because they are losing a political argument.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calm and measured explanations of just what the coders are doing wrong would be ever so much more helpful. If all Linus is going to do is mouth off then perhaps it's time he just STFU and GTFO.

Ah, another member of the "don't hurt my precious feelings" generation. How about this- suck it up, Princess.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there is something wrong with being a dick. It is very, VERY rare that people need to be dicks. What I've find is that people who enjoy being dicks find excuses to be dicks, no matter what.

Yes, there is something wrong with being an overly sensitive, delicate emotional flower. It is very, VERY rare that people need to give a shit about what others say to them. What I've found is that people who enjoy imposing their own prejudices on others find excuses to become offended by what others say, no matter what.

Re:Profanity?

[Yvanhoe]

Yeah... If only there was a way to see the full text of his declaration. I don't know, we could try to use one of these things youngsters use, how is it again?... Ah yes! hyperlinks. I think they call this situation a RTFA YOLO LOL

Yes, it's that time again - another week or so has passed, and a new release candidate is made in order to encourage and remind people to try things out.

I wish I could say that things are calming down, but I'd be lying. rc5 is noticeably bigger than rc4, both in number of commits and in files changed (although rc4 actually had more lines changed, so there's that).

Guys, guys, guys. I'm going to have to start cursing again unless you stop sending me non-critical stuff. So the next pull request I get that has "cleanups" or just pointless churn, I'm going to call you guys out on, and try to come up with new ways to insult you, your mother, and your deceased pet hamster.

So don't do it. Send me just fixes to serious problems. Ok?

Anyway, the rc5 changes are pretty much all over: pretty much exactly half are drivers (networking, usb, gpu, mmc, sound..), with the other half being various other subsystems. Some arch updates: MIPS, arm, smattering of ia64, microblaze, s390 and some x86. And networking (non-driver), xfs, fuse, gfs2, jfs..

So there's more than I'd like, but at least none of it looks particularly scary.

Go out and test. And again - please don't make me curse you and your pets.

Linus

Shocking heh? Linus did just what you suggest he should do. Giving clear instructions and humorous threats. I guess that's his mistake : he has been living in America for long enough to know to not trust Americans' sense of humor.

Re:Profanity?

[chaim79]

I often find that option 2 leads either to collapse or option 3.

When people are doing their own thing in a passive-aggressive fashion they can easily get into a situation where they are undermining the end goal, and if it continues it will cause the project to fail. If they don't respond to option 1 and they start using option 2, then the leadership is usually left with option 3 or simply firing them in order to keep the project successful.

Re:Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Profanity is in the crotch of inarticulate motherfuckers

FTFY

Re:Profanity?

[zwarte piet]

Go wash your mouth young man!

Re: Profanity?

[cockpitcomp]

Used appropriately, F-Bombs can be necessary and effective.

Re: Profanity?

[philip.paradis]

I think you took my post entirely too fucking seriously.

Re:Profanity?

[Nivag064]

Obviously you have no clue about his workload, competence, effective leadership, his genuinely caring nature, nor his wonderful sense of humour.

I having been reading stuff he has written and seen videos of him over a period of 20 years - I would love to have him as a friend, colleague, or manager!

I think either you are very superficial, and/or a paid Microsoft troll.

Re: Profanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you guys please watch your fucking language?

Re:Profanity?

[jay_desh9]

Give Linus a break. If you happen to moderate the thousands of patches on daily basis , you would realize how frustrating it is to keep rejecting someone else's work. Saying "No" to someone else not only gives negativity to them but also brings negativity into one's life. He's job is not that easy. Here's are few recent interactions : http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1306.1/00154.html , some guy submitted some patch which ( obviously ) had bugs in them. Then there was an issue about the date. Linus sounds furious about the mess but then explains why he wants it fixed and how he foresees its use. Its not possible to keep giving explanations all the time to everyone who screws up. I think its just frustration nothing else , on his part .

Re:Profanity?

[murdocj]

Being clear and direct is fine. Being a dick is worse than useless, it's counterproductive. It generates anger and locks people into positions they would otherwise not take. Furthermore, being a dick is usually a sign that you have a weak case that you can't argue on merits, so you resort to name-calling.

Re:Profanity?

[raynet]

There is now, it died due to the extra p.

Re:Profanity?

[DrStoooopid]

Fuck you... ...sarcasm is the last resort of a fragile intellect. ;-)

Re: Profanity?

[Larryish]

You fucking racist!

Re:Profanity?

[Larryish]

After rimming, a shot may be required... ...to clean out yo mouf, muthafucka!

Re:Profanity?

[bluefoxlucid]

Why would you limit the use of a language?

How many people would you describe as ebullient? How many folks would you describe as cock-sucking assholes that need to extract themselves from civilized society and go hurl themselves and their immature fucking bullshit off a god damn cliff?

Re:Profanity?

[bluefoxlucid]

If you're always nice, friendly, sterile, and PC, people won't take you seriously. The landscape is non-threatening, and we all learn to smile and nod and pretend to play along and then go do our own stupid shit just the same.

When someone comes up and rams you in the ass for your shit, you learn different. Not faster--different. Life is about learning to manipulate people. People will beat the -shit- out of you if you go fingering their screaming, crying 13 year old daughter in the park--in order to not get the shit beat out of you, don't do that. If people just went, "Maybe you shouldn't do that," just a friendly suggestion, how much of this do you think would go on? Hint: We arrest folks for doing this sometimes.

The situation needs to become uncomfortable sometimes. Unpleasant conversations are easy to deal with. Constant ranting and screaming can create stress and interference; but it's not very effective. When you -really- fuck up, maybe you -need- your ass kicked; it's not appropriate all the time, but a few choice words and some raising of voice -will- get the point across PDQ.

Fuck Torvalds

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't need any of his bullshit. He's a fucking rip off artist.

Yay; Linus the motivator

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, next time, let's have fewer enhancements and bug fixes so that scary Linus doesn't cuss.

Re:Yay; Linus the motivator

[UnknowingFool]

You understand what "release candidate" is right? A release candidate is not a time for adding new enhancements. It should be for streamlining and tightening the code for release. The fact that RC5 is bigger than RC4 means that people either were not doing their jobs in the previous 3 releases or that the code submitted earlier was so crappy that it needs more work. Release candidates should get smaller than the previous not larger.

Re:Yay; Linus the motivator

[Anonymous Coward]

Streamlining and tightening code increases the "size of the release candidate" because that size is the number and size of the patches, not the absolute size of the code base. These "unnecessary" patches are meant to be merged during the merge window, and they are exactly what Torvalds is angry about. The release candidate phase is for fixing bugs, especially regression bugs, not for code beautification. And FFS Slashdot, the exponential backoff for ACs is ridiculous.

Re:Yay; Linus the motivator

[HiThere]

A release candidate is NOT!! the place for streamlining and tightening the code. It's a place where only bug-fixes should be added to anything beyond documentation.

Your comment reveals why Linus is tearing his hair out trying to get the release candidate changes smaller.

Save the cleanup and streamlining for the next version, NOT for the release candidate.

Re:Yay; Linus the motivator

[Anonymous Coward]

why smaller? from RCx to RCx it should stay about the same..

Re:Yay; Linus the motivator

[mysidia]

You understand what "release candidate" is right? A release candidate is not a time for adding new enhancements. It should be for streamlining and tightening the code for release.

That "streamlinin and tightening the code" is the problem; he wants only bugfixes for critical issues, not code cleanup and no minor bugfixes.

Re:Yay; Linus the motivator

[eyenot]

Soooooo to make sure this is always the case, Linus should obviously be reaching out to code obfuscators. Obviously legible, robust code is not at issue -- shorter, smaller code using more geeky twists and obfuscations is the best possible fucking idea for any huge, gigantic-ass code base.

I mean, I can understand getting pissed about new features being added. But obviously the point of a release candidate is to slowly compress and obfuscate the code into smaller and smaller renditions until it's humanly unreadable because, hell, fuck, god damn, that's how progress works in open-source land. Smaller = better.

Oh I dunno, maybe I'm talking out of my ass, here. For all we know, Linus' bottom line is that the same OS works on both smartphones and desktops.

Re:Yay; Linus the motivator

[JasoninKS]

But if you keep ignoring the minor bug fixes to solely focus on the critical stuff, you'll NEVER get the minor things fixed. And frankly, cleaning up code so it's better for the next guy shouldn't ever be a problem either. Now yes, there should be a "final date" where you aren't changing more items in a given upcoming release. But being an ass about things certainly isn't doing anyone any favors. Granted, Linus has his set of uber-fanboys that worship him. He could shoot an elderly grandmother in broad daylight in the middle of a filled football stadium, and those fanboys would say she deserved it. But at some point, someone needs to drill it in Linus's head that Linux isn't "his" anymore. Not solely anyway.

Re:Yay; Linus the motivator

[mysidia]

But at some point, someone needs to drill it in Linus's head that Linux isn't "his" anymore. Not solely anyway.

He's still leading the project. If you want to be a maintainer or contributor, you either follow his rules, or you fork the project and start your own.

Re:Yay; Linus the motivator

[DrJimbo]

But if you keep ignoring the minor bug fixes to solely focus on the critical stuff, you'll NEVER get the minor things fixed.

Linus was not suggesting that minor bugs fixes should be ignored in perpetuity. There is a time and a place for everything. He was saying that the release candidates are not the time nor the place for these minor bug fixes. The time and place for those is the next release.

And frankly, cleaning up code so it's better for the next guy shouldn't ever be a problem either.

Please get a clue. There are most certainly times when cleaning up code for the next person is definitely a problem. A release candidate is the prime example of when such needless changes are a problem.

But at some point, someone needs to drill it in Linus's head that Linux isn't "his" anymore. Not solely anyway.

Linus is simply doing his job, a large part of which consists of herding cats. It is obvious that his previous, less flamboyant, attempts to get this particular point across failed. Just because Linus is right about Linux kernel development and you are dead wrong doesn't make me an uber fan-boy worshiper. Nor does it make me a condoner of murder.

Re:Yay; Linus the motivator

[Anonymous Coward]

Now yes, there should be a "final date" where you aren't changing more items in a given upcoming release.

And that date is called RC1.

We're at RC5, and he's complaining about people still changing stuff rather than fixing the remaining bugs, so the next release can get out and they can go back to changing stuff.

Re:Yay; Linus the motivator

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I dunno, maybe I'm talking out of my ass, here.

Indeed. He's talking about the size of the delta, not the size of the entire kernel.

Whew

[filmorris]

Lucky that he told us before. No one could have seen that coming. I mean, like he's ever done it before... The hamster thing is heartless though.

Re:Whew

[derGoldstein]

It's comparatively tame this time. When I clicked on the link I expected much more flamboyant profanity. This isn't going into his top-ten vitriolic reactions, not even close (Google "linus torvalds hates" and see how many auto-completes you get).

Re:Whew

[sconeu]

Your mother *and* your dead hamster?

But, I thought your mother *was* a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries?

Re:Whew

[Anonymous Coward]

The hamster thing is heartless though.

Tell me about it! My hamster and my mother are committing to the rc the best they can.

WHY NOT DO SOMETHING ELSE ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Go into acting !! Or maybe woodwork !!

profanity

[buy59]

Torvalds has warned that he is going to start cursing again, and said, 'I'm going to call you guys out on, and try to come up with new ways to insult you, your mother, and your deceased pet hamster.'"

This is why businesses choose Microsoft.

Re:profanity

[Microlith]

No, it's why Linux has made so much progress. It has nothing to do with why "businesses choose Microsoft."

Re:profanity

[UnknowingFool]

Am I the only one that sees the dead hamster thing as a joke? Linus is not happy but he also seems to be making light of the situation. As for businesses choosing MS over Linux, I suppose you don't wander into many server rooms. I know in ones I've been in, there are as many or more Linux servers than Windows servers.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. But the real difference is that MS coders/managers curse privately and not publicly! :) (Citation Needed? = Business SOP #1 - Don't air dirty laundry :P)

Note that I'm not taking sides, but I think everyone curses, albeit in different ways. Torvalds, just does it openly and often it seems.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is why business rightfully keeps us engineers in isolation from the rest of the population.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Business owners aren't reading the linux kernel mailing list.

Re:profanity

[93 Escort Wagon]

Oh come on. Did people shun Microsoft when Ballmer did the Sweaty Monkey Dance or threaten to "fucking kill Google"?

No one of consequence cares when Linus Torcalds acts like a petulant child - if they have an interest in Linux, they're more concerned about support availability and duration.

Re:profanity

[gmuslera]

Business could deserve (or at least, survive) what he have in store for them, their mothers or their deceased pet hamsters, but a chair could really harm them.

Re:profanity

[msobkow]

That's right. Instead of cursing in public, Microsoft executives throw furniture...

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Torvalds has warned that he is going to start cursing again, and said, 'I'm going to call you guys out on, and try to come up with new ways to insult you, your mother, and your deceased pet hamster.'"

This is why businesses choose Microsoft.

Right. Because throwing chairs is so much more mature.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why businesses choose Microsoft.

Go back under your bridge you stupid troll.

Re:profanity

[westlake]

As for businesses choosing MS over Linux, I suppose you don't wander into many server rooms. I know in ones I've been in, there are as many or more Linux servers than Windows servers.

Who just wanders into a server room?

Most of us are content to simply curse the administrator.

How many of those Linux servers are direct descendants of the UNIX servers which preceded them?

Re:profanity

[jelizondo]

And the profanity heard in such rooms is in direct proportion to the number of Windows servers...

Linus has the advantage of being able to curse personally those responsible for shit; whereas Windows admins can all only insult Microsofties collectively...

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one that sees the dead hamster thing as a joke? Linus is not happy but he also seems to be making light of the situation. As for businesses choosing MS over Linux, I suppose you don't wander into many server rooms. I know in ones I've been in, there are as many or more Linux servers than Windows servers.

This varies greatly, but I work for an international software company that just discontinued our Linux server product because of the overwhelming demand from Windows Server customers in comparison (growing over Linux). I know, just another anecdotal data point, but when you talk about seeing "as many or more Linux servers than Windows servers" I think you have a very particular and not necessarily representative type of server rooms you visit.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's a joke. But Linus's bad behaviour isn't something you can polish away with a joke. Telling people their code is buggy is perfectly fine, mistreating them the way Linus does isn't and he knows it. Well, he's an intelligent man, so why doesn't he stop? Simple. He enjoys abusing people and he's managed to make himself appear irreplaceable. Mind you, if he were working for me, I'd fire him instantly without a second thought. Maybe his replacement is going to be worse, but the effects of bad behaviour are insidious and structural and a lot worse long-term.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Around 420 companies contribute code to linux. Its software development process is bigger than that of Windows.

Re:profanity

[UnknowingFool]

I'm a contractor who has worked for multiple companies, some of the Fortune 100. For many companies I've worked for Windows Servers are used for Windows services like Exchange, Sharepoint, Active Directory, etc. Everything else was Linux with some big iron Unix now and then.

Re:profanity

[houghi]

Am I the only one that sees the dead hamster thing as a joke?

A joke? A JOKE? Linus can be seen right here insulting my mom AND my hamster.

Seriously, if you did not get what he was talking about the first time, please hand over your geek card.

Re:profanity

[gagol]

Business choose microsoft, because business has choosen microsoft for 25 years...

Re:profanity

[Seumas]

Agreed. Windows is the choice for people who hate themselves, their mother, and their pets.

Re:profanity

[tragedy]

This is why businesses choose Microsoft.

Ah yes, no raging, chair-throwing, monkey-boy dancing whack-jobs running a solid organization like Microsoft, after all.

Re:profanity

[Runaway1956]

I'll PM Linus right now, and tell him that he should never apply for a job with Mr. Anonymous Coward. And, which of the Fortune 500 companies do you work for, Sir?

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

and after 21 years they still cant produce a RC

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Torvalds has warned that he is going to start cursing again, and said, 'I'm going to call you guys out on, and try to come up with new ways to insult you, your mother, and your deceased pet hamster.'"

This is why businesses choose Microsoft.

Because, unlike Torvalds, Ballmer is a paragon of refinement and respect, right?

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

What bugs me about Exchange is that jmz is right and we'll never have an opensource groupware product worth anything because it's not sexy.

Meanwhile, Outlook is a shitty email client with a shitty calendar. Exchange only nominally manages to salvage it, and then only when sending messages within your own corporation. As soon as you need to send a meeting invite outside of your organization, watch the fuck out because if you send it to someone who doesn't have outlook, they get a blank email with an ICS attachment that their client may or may not be able to open to show them the meeting details.

Or you can turn ICS off, in which case if your recipient has a calendar they'll have to update it manually. Outlook is a complete fucking failure at sending meetings to another person. This is "the best" you can do. And yet nobody will ever be able replace it.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

This entire thread drips of so much maturity it hurts to watch it.

Re:profanity

[psergiu]

Business also choose microsoft because microsoft has a special budget line for "greasing" key factors at those businesses.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I have the opposite experience.
The one server room I visited had one Linux server. It also had about 30 Windows servers basically accomplishing the same thing (mail handling).

But yes, given your experience, I see why businesses would choose MS over Linux.

Re:profanity

[spasm]

Businesses who choose microsoft do so because they prefer to be literally fucked over rather than just threatened..

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of those Linux servers are direct descendants of the UNIX servers which preceded them?

None? You don't replace a UNIX-server.

Re:profanity

[stephanruby]

This is why businesses choose Microsoft.

Until they watch a video of an overweight Ballmer sweating, shouting, cursing, and throwing chairs at his own people.

That's also why many businesses switched to Apple when Steve Jobs was around. Steve Jobs was well known for his saint-like patience and composure with his underlings.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Because Balmer's approach is so much less offensive. http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmer-golf-2011-11

Re:profanity

[NotBorg]

This is why businesses choose Microsoft.

That's right! Businesses care about Profanity Hardened Kernels when the kernel would be used on a desktop. Everything else is a-oh-kay. Cars, supercomputers, servers, printers, routers, phones, tablets, cameras, toasters, Large Hadron Colliders, space stations... There's no business in any of that so PHK doesn't matter there.

However, on the desktop, it really matters. Fuck you Linus!!!!! Your potty mouth alone is what holds back Linux on the desktop!!!! It's the only market Linux sucks at and it's the only market businesses care about. The corollary is clear.

Linus, grow up. Bite your tongue and pick up a chair like a professional. Also when you're on stage if you could scream and run around a bit, that would help too. It's how professionals act.

Re:profanity

[Nivag064]

Not if they want to be competitive!

What O/S kernel Google does mostly use?

What O/S kernel does Dig mostly use?

What O/S kernel do most smart phones use?

What O/S kernel do most supercomputers use?

What O/S kernel does the LHC mostly use?

See a pattern here???

(hint: _NOT_ Micosoft!)

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

His swearing is kind of like drill sergeant swearing. It's not necessarily personal, he just wants people to pay attention. If he was just being a dick, he'd swear at Microsoft and the like, not Linux developers.

Re:profanity

[Kjella]

Linux the kernel runs extremely well on everything from smartphones to supercomputers, obviously it's more than ready for the desktop. The challenge (remember, we don't have problems anymore) is the desktop environment and the applications, none of which are Linus' responsibility. And right now I'd take bets that Android hybrids conquers the desktop before Unity, Gnome 3, KDE or any of the existing solutions do. Too bad we can't clone him so he could run those projects too, because he's got both the doer gene and the manager gene. Forget about the kernel for a moment, remember the BitKeeper debacle? Other managers of a huge project like the kernel might do a lot of things, but I don't know anyone else but Linus who sits down and cranks out git on top of everything else. He's not just floating on past glory, he keep earning that respect he enjoys.

Re:profanity

[sjames]

Yes, because businesses get so involved in the day to day discussions amongst the developers at MS!

I suppose you want released kernel to have an untested change wedged into it at the last moment?

Re:profanity

[eyenot]

It must have been easy to be Saint-like, knowing there were legions of essentially incarcerated Asians being forced to manufacture your products on the cheap.

I can see why your church authority, whoever the fuck that is, Partially Beautified and Nearly Canonized Steve Jobs so that he would be referred to as (at the very least) "Saint-like" by millions of hipster trash looking after his Departure from this Realm.

He was an ANGEL! *sob*

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Whooosh!

It was sarcasm, Steve Jobs was certainly not know for saint-like patience and composure around his underlings.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

I never registered on Slashdot because I always thought the whole moderation thing generates more heat that light. That said, there are some comments I'd trumpet to the skies. The parent comment is one of those.

Too bad we can't clone him so he could run those projects too, because he's got both the doer gene and the manager gene.

The best thing that Linux has going for it is Linus Torvalds running it. I'm afraid that there's only so much pushing back he can do in the face of strong headwinds by certain strongheaded developers. As I try to work out the best strategy for getting around the udev/systemd fiasco and its network-device naming, I strenuously wish that people like Kay Sievers would get taken out of the picture (a long sentence for something like tax evasion would do). At the same time I wish Linus nothing but continued health, strength, and fortitude.

Re: profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a former Microsoft employee. Microsoft has historically had a culture of "yelling at people" style management. Bill was famous for it.

Then there was the part where Ballmer threw a chair.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

...I suppose you don't wander into many server rooms...

Not surprisingly. Those that do often don't come back.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Your that douchebag manager who fires anyone who is smarter than himself because you view them as a "threat". When really the issue is you have a very tiny penis and that a well endowed black man from West Africa coming into your office and having their way with your white women....you can't have that now can you Mister AC.

Re:profanity

[stephanruby]

As the AC already said, I was being sarcastic.

You obviously haven't heard the many stories of Steve Jobs losing his cool and throwing temper tantrums.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as GNOME is ready to conquer the desktop, they're going to drop the existing codebase and start again, hiding all the key functionality from the end user. GNOME2 to GNOME3 was just a tester on hiding the real stuff from the users.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Torvalds has warned that he is going to start cursing again, and said, 'I'm going to call you guys out on, and try to come up with new ways to insult you, your mother, and your deceased pet hamster.'"

This is why businesses choose Microsoft.

Riggghhht, because Balmer is known for his calm temper and pleasant demeanor.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

The saddest part is even if you add all of those together, it still isn't as many computers as use a Microsoft kernel.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

when linus behaves like a petulant child, will that be the day that you have something of importance to share? and the day that mods don't suck sweaty donkey feces? and slashdot makes a glorious return to relevance?

Re:profanity

[GuB-42]

Steve Jobs is well known for his saint-like patience and composure with his underlings.
His attitude changed less than two years ago.

Re:profanity

[Anonymous Coward]

But Linus's bad behaviour isn't something you can polish away with a joke.

You are confused. There's nothing bad about the behavior of Linus. It works. It has always worked. And it works extremely well. Everyone involved in kernel development are fully aware of what it takes and what it entails. Don't presume. Ask any of them. Find out for yourself.

Mind you, if he were working for me

He would never, ever work for someone like you. And you would never, ever come into position where someone like Linus would work for you. You are not qualified. Actually, I seriously hope you are not in, and will never get into, a position of management for anyone, ever.

In short: You appear to be an incompetent douche. Go fuck yourself.

Torvalds is right

[Anonymous Coward]

When you are maintaining a project of this size and you get bothered by little annoying cosmetical fixes and non-critical bugs you do lose your temper. I have to say he stayed pretty civilized till now. I suggest we start a kick-starter project to give torvalds the vacation he really needs!

Re:Torvalds is right

[swalve]

Maybe he should train some devs to take over some of the stuff he's doing. If Linus's genius is the only thing that keeps Linux on track, he's doing it wrong. Delegate or Linux will not survive long term.

Re:Torvalds is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Delegate or Linus will not survive long term.

Fixed.

Seriously, for his own health, and the health of Linux, it sounds like he needs to allow others to be in charge of portions. I know thats a hard thing to do, and I'm sure Linux is like one of his own children to him, but at some point you need to back away to let children flourish. And for your own sanity as well.

Re:Torvalds is right

[HiThere]

I think you haven't been following Linux development very long. There are several branches at all times, each with their own maintainer. Linus controls the final merge, but it's the same basic process used in the other trees.

The question is, when Linus retires, will there be one sucessor or several, not whether there will be any. And that depends on the politics at the time.

Also, somebody needs to be in charge of the final merge. Some one person. If you have several independent trees, each one of them needs someone in charge of the merges into their trees. It's better PR to have one tree that is released. Currently that one's managed by Linus. But note that that's PR. Each distro really manages it's own tree, and they can accept and reject software and patches without reference to what Linus decides. And they frequently do. For eas of reference they generally describe what they're using as a customization of some particular Linux kernel.

Re:Torvalds is right

[Anonymous Coward]

From https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/development-process/2.Process (emphasis mine):

A relatively straightforward discipline is followed with regard to the merging of patches for each release. At the beginning of each development cycle, the "merge window" is said to be open. At that time, code which is deemed to be sufficiently stable (and which is accepted by the development community) is merged into the mainline kernel. The bulk of changes for a new development cycle (and all of the major changes) will be merged during this time, at a rate approaching 1,000 changes ("patches," or "changesets") per day.

(As an aside, it is worth noting that the changes integrated during the merge window do not come out of thin air; they have been collected, tested, and staged ahead of time. How that process works will be described in detail later on).

The merge window lasts for approximately two weeks. At the end of this time, Linus Torvalds will declare that the window is closed and release the first of the "rc" kernels. For the kernel which is destined to be 2.6.40, for example, the release which happens at the end of the merge window will be called 2.6.40-rc1. The -rc1 release is the signal that the time to merge new features has passed, and that the time to stabilize the next kernel has begun.

Over the next six to ten weeks, only patches which fix problems should be submitted to the mainline. On occasion a more significant change will be allowed, but such occasions are rare; developers who try to merge new features outside of the merge window tend to get an unfriendly reception. As a general rule, if you miss the merge window for a given feature, the best thing to do is to wait for the next development cycle. (An occasional exception is made for drivers for previously-unsupported hardware; if they touch no in-tree code, they cannot cause regressions and should be safe to add at any time).

As fixes make their way into the mainline, the patch rate will slow over time. Linus releases new -rc kernels about once a week; a normal series will get up to somewhere between -rc6 and -rc9 before the kernel is considered to be sufficiently stable and the final 2.6.x release is made. At that point the whole process starts over again.

[...]

2.3: HOW PATCHES GET INTO THE KERNEL

There is exactly one person who can merge patches into the mainline kernel repository: Linus Torvalds. But, of the over 9,500 patches which went into the 2.6.38 kernel, only 112 (around 1.3%) were directly chosen by Linus himself. The kernel project has long since grown to a size where no single developer could possibly inspect and select every patch unassisted. The way the kernel developers have addressed this growth is through the use of a lieutenant system built around a chain of trust.

The kernel code base is logically broken down into a set of subsystems: networking, specific architecture support, memory management, video devices, etc. Most subsystems have a designated maintainer, a developer who has overall responsibility for the code within that subsystem. These subsystem maintainers are the gatekeepers (in a loose way) for the portion of the kernel they manage; they are the ones who will (usually) accept a patch for inclusion into the mainline kernel.

Here is my message to Linus

[dugancent]

Grow up.

Re:Here is my message to Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine is "Thanks!"

Re:Here is my message to Linus

[gagol]

Feel free to review RC patch that includes non-critical-bug fixes... do you want Linus email?

Re:Here is my message to Linus

[casings]

Here's my message to you. No one fucking cares about your opinion. Especially not the maintainer of the linux kernel.

Re: Here is my message to Linus

[dugancent]

If he can't manage it without throwing preschool temper-tantrums, turn it over to someone who can.

Re: Here is my message to Linus

[Ant P.]

You certainly aren't that person, Armchair Manager.

Re: Here is my message to Linus

[Osgeld]

he never claimed to be, but thanks for that waste of space numbnuts

Re: Here is my message to Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh the Linus fanboys! Like any good fanboy, they personally insult those who don't share their love for thing X.

Re:Here is my message to Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus, this time you've gone too far, you can insult me and even my Ma, but not, I repeat NOT my dead hamster!

Re: Here is my message to Linus

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

If you don't like the way he works developing the kernel, then you can always fork it.

The best thing Linus can do for Linux is stay away

[Anonymous Coward]

He does more harm then good now - so long and thanks for all the (mostly just ok) code!

Linus, Shut the Fuck Up

[EmagGeek]

Linus, listen, you may be the father of the Kernel, but it is not your Kernel. It is not your own private property. You are enjoying the notoriety that comes on the backs of thousands of developers who, by the way, are working for free.

Shut the fuck up already. We're all tired of your childish bullshit. Bugs need to be fixed, and if a lot of them get fixed in a particular release, so be it. Shut your goddamn mouth for a change, understand that the Kernel has exceeded your ability to "go it alone," and get the FUCK out of everyone's way.

Fuck you very much, and have a nice day.

Re:Linus, Shut the Fuck Up

[sjames]

Actyuallym, unless or until you get off of your ass and start managing a fork, yes it is. So get moving, MUSH!

Re:Linus, Shut the Fuck Up

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't agree more. Fuck this asshole.

Well...

[SirLurksAlot]

Everyone has to have a hobby, right?

Seriously though, who the hell cares if the RC is bigger than the one before it, or whether the changes are scattered everywhere? If there were any number of concerns that needed to be addressed before the next release then it wasn't ready to go in the first place. Just test the hell out of everything, make sure nothing is broken, and make sure that each change was necessary and correct. In short calm your tits and keep coding.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of the release candidate process is to provide something that contains the entirety of the feature set in a release, but to provide it for testing, not release.

Re:Well...

[interval1066]

Seriously though, who the hell cares if the RC is bigger than the one before it...

That's kind of where my head is at in this. If Torvalds is really upset about it he can fork the code and create a "Linux-Lite" or something.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not bitching about it not being ready, he's bitching about it being even LESS ready. Being a project lead, he reserves the right to call people out when they're screwing the pooch and not cooperating for the greater good of the project. And even if it's not that dire, it's a good thing to remind people what their goals are, even if it means joking about insulting their dead pets.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

it wasn't ready to go in the first place

Exactly. Linus is unhappy because already merged changes weren't as ready as they were supposed to be before merging to mainline.
This means that there will be need for more testing and more delays before releasing when the number of changes isn't decreasing as it should towards release-quality.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's angry because many of the changes are to non-critical stuff. That's not the priority, and it gets in the way.

Here's part of his quote in context, which the summary didn't bother to provide:

Guys, guys, guys. I'm going to have to start cursing again unless you stop sending me non-critical stuff. So the next pull request I get that has "cleanups" or just pointless churn, I'm going to call you guys out on, and try to come up with new ways to insult you, you mother, and your deceased pet hamster.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand how software engineering works, Computer science maybe, but software engineering, clearly not. Or maybe you just didn't read TFA.

The problem isn't that the release is too broken, nor that a lot of critical fixes are needed. It's that devs are committing excessive non-critical stuff. At this point in the release cycle, ONLY critical stuff should be committed.

Linus has every right to be a bit angered. He's done so effectively, in a way that will get the devs attention (hopefully) and he's made a joke out of it. If that has no effect, he has every right to become MORE than a bit angered.

Re:Well...

[Todd Knarr]

Because people aren't sending him fixes for concerns that have to be addressed before the release. They're sending him "this is a bit messy, here's code that looks a bit cleaner" or "it works but I don't like it so here's a different way to do the same thing". And sometimes as the manager you have to smack the devs with the cluebat to get them to remember that it doesn't matter if the code's messy or ugly, it doesn't matter if there's another way to do it, it doesn't matter if there's a better way to do it, by the time you're at the release-candidate stage the only things you should be sending in changes for are fixes for the things that're actually not working right. If you don't, they'll keep tweaking forever and you'll never get a release. As a dev myself I can understand where Linus is coming from here. I doubt he's even really mad at anyone, just irritated at everyone and issuing a pointed reminder that there's a difference between what the devs want to do and what they ought to be doing before he does have to get mad at anyone.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't iTunes or a new incarnation of Angry birds, it's a kernel. A kernel that has been used on almost any type of hardware imaginable (not just PC's but countless routers, phones, vacuumcleaners, navigational appliances and god knows what else), size use matters.

There aren't a whole lot of acceptable reasons why the bugfixes in RC increments should result in a larger codebase, which is probably why Linus is putting on his kicking boots.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can take allusions to my dead hamster but don't you dare insult my pooch!

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Seriously though, who the hell cares if the RC is bigger than the one before it, or whether the changes are scattered everywhere?"

the guy who has to read and decide on all that bullshit, obviously. did you read the article?

Re:Well...

[SirLurksAlot]

So, the great thing about an Open Source project is that developers have the ability to say "Hey, I think we can do this better." and then go off and actually fix it. They are not beholden to a corporate IT overlord that says "Thou shalt not commit code that is directly related with the task in front of you!" Telling a contributor that they shouldn't be submitting the code they worked on is a great way to kill creativity and drive people away from the project.

As far as Torvalds getting pissed off (as a feint or not) and talking smack about how when a developer's mother sat round the house she sat around the house he's brought this on himself as the gatekeeper for the project. This is simply the nature of an Open Source project. Furthermore there is nothing that says he can't simply reject a pull request and declare the RC closed for anything but direct bug fixes (which is what he is actually doing I suppose).

FWIW I don't disagree with you exactly, I just think it is important to keep in mind what kind of project and what kind of developers we're talking about.

Re:Well...

[SirLurksAlot]

Non-critical doesn't mean trivial or unimportant. Simply because he doesn't see the changes at the same level of criticality (is that a word?) doesn't mean that they're not important to someone. The message he sent out on the mailing list goes on to say:

Anyway, the rc5 changes are pretty much all over: pretty much exactly half are drivers (networking, usb, gpu, mmc, sound..), with the other half being various other subsystems. Some arch updates: MIPS, arm, smattering of ia64, microblaze, s390 and some x86. And networking (non-driver), xfs, fuse, gfs2, jfs..

I don't know about you, but none of those things sound unimportant to me. How long have people been bitching about driver and network support in the kernel? And he's complaining that that stuff is getting fixed? Please. The fact of the matter is that he's annoyed because he refuses the let got of the reins and let someone else help out. If he is the gatekeeper than this is what he should expect.

Re:Well...

[toopok4k3]

The thing is, those belong to the next kernel version at RC state. Not as RC fixes. People are screwing up by not following the proper process.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

He is trying to stop the number one software developer disease. "I don't like how that code is written, its to messy/inelegant/cludgy etc. etc, and I'm going to do it better". The thing is most production code actually looks inelegant/cludgy/messy. If it does what is required, and is mostly issue free DO NOT TOUCH IT. Because in the process getting it working and bug free it has gone through an iterative cycle of testing and bug fixing. Re-engineering a solution is a recipe to drag in the worse sort of bug, an unknown bug, and when you are at the release stage what you want to do is fix the known issues.

I've been on the receiving end of the bad effects software developers with that disease can do to an established code-base they haven't written themselves. They can't resist touching and inevitably breaking everything.

There are cases where rewriting is necessary. The code is inefficient or does not scale and that is causing issues in production environments. There is a new important feature that the current architecture simply can not do. There is a big bug that is due to a fundamental flaw in the architecture. But that should be rare at this stage of the development cycle.

Re:Well...

[Richy_T]

It's not that they shouldn't submit non-critical code, it's that they shouldn't submit it into a release candidate. It's a time for eliminating bugs. New code means new bugs.

Re:Well...

[casings]

Seriously though, who the hell cares if the RC is bigger than the one before it

The maintainer of the kernel does. You fucking ignorant twit. When you are a fucking kernel maintainer, then we will listen to what you have to say. Until that time, your opinion is of as much use as an asshole on my elbow.

Re:Well...

[darkfeline]

This is important to keep in mind. As much as I want better Linux support for these things, first and foremost I want stable support, not buggy support as Windows is known for. The proper process reserves RCs for bugfixes, which is something I can stand behind.

Re:Well...

[HiThere]

It's *much* worse than that. Every change is a potential new bug, even if it fixes a standing bug. Well, if it fixes a standing bug, maybe it's worthwhile. But if it doesn't, it means that all the pervious tests haven't passed the new code. This is extremely bad. It's not good even in documentation. (I've had an important part of a system fail because of a bug introduced when documentation was changed. But that's VERY rare.)

At the release candidate stage ONLY bug-fixes should be accepted. In the late release candidate stage, only bug-fixes for significant bugs should be accepted. In a final release candidate stage, only bug-fixes for critical bugs should be accepted.

Re:Well...

[greg1104]

Telling a contributor that they shouldn't be submitting the code they worked on is a great way to kill creativity and drive people away from the project.

Know what's an even better way to drive people away from a project? Never ship a high quality release, so your users give up and stop deploying your program. Adding immature developers to a project isn't a gain either, and that's what this whole "you'll kill my creativity" angle is--a mix of immaturity and ego.

You can adopt tactics toward tight change control to try and reduce bug count, or you can let developers work with an unbounded target where people can change things forever. But you can't do both, and Linus is running a project where it's important to ship releases. In every project there are some developers with an ego or authority issue, ones who think the rules around release candidates don't apply to them, that their changes are important, and surely they cannot introduce bugs. But that's how amateur coders think, and adding people with that attitude doesn't benefit any serious project.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the great thing about an Open Source project is that developers have the ability to say "Hey, I think we can do this better." and then go off and actually fix it.

And they can do that while sticking to a release schedule. Just because it's Open Source doesn't mean they should act like a bunch of fucking amateurs.

Re:Well...

[epyT-R]

He's not telling them not to contribute.. He's telling them they're trying to place their contributions in the wrong tree. They don't belong in the -rc trees.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously though, who the hell cares if the RC is bigger than the one before it

The maintainer of the kernel does. You fucking ignorant twit. When you are a fucking kernel maintainer, then we will listen to what you have to say. Until that time, your opinion is of as much use as an asshole on my elbow.

So nobody here should have an opinion unless they are a "fucking kernal maintainer"? Poor pathetic excuse for a human...

Re:Well...

[lilrobbie]

You and Linus actually fully agree on this topic. That is precisely why he is throwing said tantrum... the size and churn landing annoys him because it's clear that people have not taken due care before submitting this stuff to his tree.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

One man's trash is another man's treasure. Just because they are non-critical in Linus's opinion doesn't mean they are non-critical to everyone else.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

By logic negation rules, "Doesn't mean .. to everyone else" = "Does mean ... to someone else", right. And that someone can freely work on it in 3.11 branch instead of dragging it into release candidate.

Re:Well...

[casings]

When it comes to the size of the kernel's RC. Yea, no one's opinion matters unless they have actual experience there. Sorry to get your panties in a bunch, anonymous coward. Your opinion doesn't mean shit unless you have some experience behind it.

You can't even put your slashdot account behind your opinion, go fuck yourself.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet he has the hide to bring up non-critical spelling mistakes?

Charles Keepax (1):
regulator: core: Correct spelling mistake in comment

RC release are for bux fixes, not new features

[chromaexcursion]

There's a more complete explanation in the article.
At this point in the RC cycle, the expectation is that only bug fixes will be introduced. The latest merge include changes that had nothing to do with listed issues.
New features belong in the 3.11 branch.

Re:RC release are for bux fixes, not new features

[Anonymous Coward]

Not new features, those are NEVER introduced after the merge window. What he is complaining, however, is getting lots of fluff patches that are not purely bugfixes and should be postponed for 3.11, like patches removing an unused variable, or correcting a spelling mistake in a documentation file.

Re:RC release are for bux fixes, not new features

[Anonymous Coward]

New features belong in the 3.11 branch

Hilariously just in time for those who thought Windows for Workgroups 3.11's GUI was better then Windows 8's GUI and both improvable with a GUI change. 3.11 with Norton Desktop and 8 with Classic Shell. Might as well go with Linux + GNU with X + GUI option other then Unity.

*puts on asbestos suit*

Re:RC release are for bux fixes, not new features

[Anonymous Coward]

New features belong in the 3.11 branch.

a "workgroup" feature, for example?

Scarface was a gerbil, not a hamster, Mr. Torvalds

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck you very much

old school

[Anonymous Coward]

sticks and stones and furniture may break my bones, but dissing my dead hamster...that's fucking WAR LT!

Re:old school

[Tablizer]

Instead of "Developers developers developers" it's now "Chairs chairs chairs!"

Leave my late pet hamster out of it!

[Anonymous Coward]

He died before rc3, you insensitive clod.

Captcha: bitches
I hope they meant that as a verb or in the canine sense.
Seriously, that was the captcha. What's next, /., something NSFW?

Re:Leave my late pet hamster out of it!

[magic maverick]

fuck - the rudest word in the universe.
you fuck.

Re:Leave my late pet hamster out of it!

[wonkey_monkey]

the rudest word in the universe.

Belgium.

Re:Leave my late pet hamster out of it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Moist Belgium

Re:Leave my late pet hamster out of it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Belgium? I hardly know'im!

Re:Leave my late pet hamster out of it!

[magic maverick]

Only 'cause you got the American version. For everyone else it's "fuck".

Re:Leave my late pet hamster out of it!

[epyT-R]

fuck - the rudest word in the universe.

yes, for spineless twats.

Re:Leave my late pet hamster out of it!

[Anonymous Coward]

no, it isn't.

Re:Leave my late pet hamster out of it!

[fibonacci8]

Semprini

Yell at the release manager not the developers

[davidwr]

It's the release manager's call to decide what to take. He could've said "no" but didn't. Heck, he could've yelled at the developers and said "HELL @#$^ING NO" in public, but he didn't.

It's also his job to take the heat for unpopular decisions and defend them if necessary.

Re:Yell at the release manager not the developers

[phantomfive]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Linus has to accept every one of those merges personally, so if he's accepting things that made it bigger than the previous rc, it's kind o fhis fault.

Re:Yell at the release manager not the developers

[Anonymous Coward]

The kernel is big. Really big. Linus has relied on other people inspecting and "vouching for" the code for many years now, and has no idea what large parts of the kernel code do in detail. Expecting him to double-check every commit from a subsystem maintainer would be insane. But sometimes he has to scold some of the maintainers for pushing stuff into rc that should have waited for the next merge window, and his goal is to make them improve on this behaviour because he actually relies on and trusts them.

captcha: centers

Re:Yell at the release manager not the developers

[Anonymous Coward]

Your prescription for the concern is not
feasable. The project is too big and complex
for Linus not to have to depend on the
various branch managers to do most of
this filtering Linus is concerned about.

It's kind of NOT his fault. It isn't feasible
for him to monitor every change in a code
base this formidable, short of cloning himself
a dozen times or so. --Which, from one
point of view, is what he is trying to do.

I don't get what the developers are thinking

[NotSoHeavyD3]

I mean speaking as a developer when I'm working and at this point I don't want to put in any new features. It's usually one of the managers or QA with a stupid "Hey lets put in a new feature right at the end" request.(And then it becomes "How willing am I to put up a fight over this?") I'm honestly surprised with no managers (and I mean business oriented managers) that this still happened.

Re:I don't get what the developers are thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit. Do you and I work for the same company? QA where I was working had a habit of defining new features for no good reason. It drove me over the edge. Glad to be gone from TNS!

Re:I don't get what the developers are thinking

[aflag]

When you're doing something you like doing, then you always want to add one cool new thing. Or you want to fix something that really bugs you. The developers probably don't care much how long things take, as long as everything is done right. That's different from a corporate environment, when you really want to write as little as possible and you hope to be at the office the shortest amount of time. Moreover, you want to deal with the least amount of problems, so you need the least amount of features.

Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus believes that "people who get offended should be offended". That's a direct quote. As such he makes himself into a highly offensive person and he's been that way since the beginning. Of course that makes him a terrible person to have to deal with. This story is going to be full of people who are offended (thus gratifying Linus) and others who understand nothing of people and who therefore argue that giving offense is a great leadership technique. This has happened before and it will happen again, right here on Slashdot. The editors like it because it causes lots of page hits. Yawn.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] and others who understand nothing of people and who therefore argue that NOT giving offense is a great leadership technique.

FTFY

Re:Yawn

[casings]

When you've had as much success as Linus, then we will listen to what you have to say oh great anonymous coward. Until then, keep posting anonymously on the internet.

Everyone's a critic, and everyone's got an opinion. Yours is worth the absolute same as every other anonymous asshole.

Re:Yawn

[epyT-R]

A good argument is a good argument, a bad one is a bad one. Anonymity has no bearing on this.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Assertion != Argument

Re:Yawn

[casings]

Not when it's one random jackass criticizing the work of someone who has obviously been successful. Uninformed opinions mean absolutely nothing, no matter how the words were arranged to sound logical. If he had any legitimacy he wouldn't post anonymously.

You gotta be kidding me....

[Bastardinho]

Why the PEER-REVIEWED-FUCK does the world need to know about what a software developer thinks about the patches the team is sending him? What's next? An article everytime one of the kernel volunteers has a dump?

Re:You gotta be kidding me....

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize it's been a while since Linus has been in the "news" for something? The arrogant prick probably just needed a fix of media attention before he went into serious withdrawal.

Not news

[mvar]

To whoever reads occasionally the kernel list, there are no news here. This could fit in the Sun's or the "OK! Magazine" inner pages, but ./'s front page? Really?

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and it's repetitive too. Every time Linus blows a blue streak it gets submitted to Slashdot and is dutifully selected, and pretty much the same comments appear:

- Gosh, what an asshole!
- How unprofessional!
- No, the developers are screwing up and he deserves to be angry
- And, besides what have YOU ever done for free software?

etc.

Check back in about five months.

Who determines what gets comitted?

[HockeyPuck]

Does someone oversee what gets into a RC? Or do the kernel maintainers get to commit whatever they want?

I'm not a linux kernel developer, but in my company when we get into the RCs, we have pretty tight control in which bugs/enhancements get added.

What's Linus' specific role in this besides "yelling and screaming"?

Re:Who determines what gets comitted?

[Todd Knarr]

It's a three-layer process. Devs themselves are expected to adhere to the rules. Then the subsystem maintainers are supposed to filter changes to their subsystems. And finally Linus is the final arbiter on what gets merged into the release branch. Technically devs can check in anything they want, but it has to go through the subsystem maintainers and Linus to get into the release. Linus' role here is prodding the subsystem maintainers and the devs themselves to remember the rules and stop sending him so many things to sort through. It's easier on him if it's 90% rubber-stamp approvals and if a few stragglers get through it's not causing any widespread issues, as opposed to if it's 50% cruft and if he doesn't scrutinize everything carefully it's going to be a mess.

Re:Who determines what gets comitted?

[toopok4k3]

He is the top dog to decide what goes in. He has people below him doing the same thing. It's a nifty hierarchial system, obviously the devs in lower branches are fucking things up by allowing stuff thru that shouldn't go thru, it gets all the way upto Linus and he doesn't like it.

Re:Who determines what gets comitted?

[HiThere]

Deciding how to refuse to accept changes without alienating the coders. So he's reluctant to reject the code they've worked so hard on without a specific reason. Here he's reminding people of what the reason is when a release candidate is being worked on. (He's also suggesting that they stage it for the next version.)

Anyone who gets offended at this particular post is just being silly. It's not directed at anyone in particular, it's just a general notice that they should notice that the version says "Release Candidate" and act appropriately. And not get offended if he rejects inappropriate code changes.

Please note, Linus can't pay developers, so he has to use other approaches. This one seems to work. (Actually, he's being quite mild here. Much moreso than the Slashdot headline indicates.)

how the sausage is made

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this happen all the time?

Its how the sausage is made.

So funny

[Azure Flash]

Ah, The Onion, funny as always!

Enthusiasts are limited

[evanism]

Ive been contrubiting code since 1998.

Linux is regressing.

It's broken. Get rid of Torvalds.

Re:Enthusiasts are limited

[Tablizer]

Fork to "Evanux" than. Love it or leave it.

Re:Enthusiasts are limited

[Microlith]

A masterful troll.

Re:Enthusiasts are limited

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop biting contrubes then.

Re:Enthusiasts are limited

[epyT-R]

Fix it, or use something else then.

Maniac Mansion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Linus has been playing Maniac Mansion recently?

Just because you can microwave the hamster doesn't mean that you should.

Explain please

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I right in thinking that Linus isn't complaining about kernel improvements in general, but only about them being made so far into the RC series?

Right after a new development window has opened, I assume that he's totally happy with receiving a maelstrom of enhancements, cleanups, new features, and everything else that constitutes useful progress for Linux, isn't he?

I hope so, anyway. But of course he's dead right that this should not be happening during the RC countdown.

I'd be grateful for a confirmation, or otherwise.

Re:Explain please

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, your first line got it right. Everything else would be illogical anyway.

There is the "main" code for development, which people can fork and go wild on. Every now and then, the kernel maintainers copy it to a separate branch called "release candidate", which receives increased scrutiny and testing, while the main development continues as before. The process of scrutinising that code is screwed up if you have huge changes in the middle of it (say, at rc5), because every single change is a potential new bug. This is absolutely no problem in the main branch, but makes Linus curse your hampster if you push it to rc. The guys he addresses are those who have direct commit rights and should know better.

captcha: cassock

Re:Enthusiasts are limited (correction)

[Tablizer]

correction: "then"

Must be tough being Linus..

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies like Google and Amazon have made millions of dollars using Linux and Linus still has to live in an igloo eating dried penguin.

Businesses are Fucking Profane

[neoshroom]

Any operating system without a browser is going to be fucking out of business. Should we improve our product, or go out of business? -- Bill Gates

Of course, what you don't often hear is the response to that question, where they decided through intensive bureaucratic meetings to compromise between the two positions and make a browser, but make it such a bad browser that it would slowly drive them out of business. The rest is history.

Is Linus really that stupid? Yes, yes he is.

[Cammi]

How about Linus does his job instead of complaining like a spoiled teenager? All he has to do is reject the commit and provide a link with the standards. If the idiot decides to submit again, ban the griefer. He has no right to complain about anyone but himself. He is sounding more and more like the mental nutcase, RMS. While I might get modded down, any rational person will see the logic.

Re:Is Linus really that stupid? Yes, yes he is.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't feed the troll, kids.

polar opposites

[slashmydots]

So then we go over the Microsoft's Windows 8 team where it's like "It's okay guys. We can patch it. I'm sure people will get used to the changes."
Microsoft should hire Linus for just a day to come in and scream at people about the shit design job they did on Windows 8.

Re:Is Linus really that stupid? Yes, yes he is.

[peppepz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_of_humour

Hero's don't last for ever.

[jellomizer]

I have always had an issue with "Hero's" in people minds, either being a religious figure, or a vocal member of some group.
hat
They are all human, and most of us experience some point(s) in our lives where we seemed to do some great things, however we are human we fail, make mistakes, or just loose track, or our morals.

In Open Source Figures such as Linus and RMS, while they did good things in the past, have been using their fame to push what ever tantrum they have at the time. Because of their Hero status there will be enough people who will follow them, they will allow their mind to twist to follow their views as they are considered a Hero.

For all people you need to take a step back and realize they are human, no better or worse then us. The Stereotype Superman or the Stereotype Dr. Evil really doesn't exist, people are complex with good and bad.

Re:Hero's don't last for ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is more like a manager telling you to do your fucking job correctly. You are the only one talking about worshipping these guys.

Re:Hero's don't last for ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

As I believe you're a non-native speaker, I think you'll appreciate this. That apostrophe does not belong in "hero's" unless you're referring to something the hero owns, and the verb "loose" means "set free" or "untie", completely changing the meaning of what you actually said. The word you were looking for is "lose".

I've heard tales of this somewhere before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like someone is taking a page out of Jobs' book.

Mod parent up.

[sconeu]

He nailed it. At the rc4/rc5 level, the ONLY things that should be going in are bug fixes against this release. Not "cleanup" or new features. Those belong to the next release.

Linus is dead right on this, and everyone who has EVER done serious development should know it.

Name of release =? Promises Profanity

[charlesjo488]

Or is that Ubuntu naming convention?

And I'll give you the finger.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were paying me, MAYBE you'd get some traction with "finding new ways to insult me", though probably not in a legal sense.

As it is, if you bawl me out, I have no qualms to tell you to shove your head up a cows arse and blow rasperries for the afternoon, so fuck off out of my face and let me continue my work.

Does anyone else think

[WOOFYGOOFY]

That Linus is just a run of the mill, kick-down, kiss-up asshole of the sort graphically described in the book The No Asshole Rule?

Management by Perkele

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all: In Finland there is this fine institution that Swedes call "Management by Perkele". What we are witnessing is intra-communal communication of the working team. We do not (usually...) hear about the swearing in private corporation meetings, but open source community is public.

Secondly: A tight military-like control is required to handle something huge as Linux kernel project. You can try to silk-glove it, but in Finland the usual way is to say (brutally...) honestly what you are thinking. (Part of that "Perkele" management.) This also requires that the participant taking the beating beats back if needed using similar brutal honesty. Honesty is the key. "Show me the code", as Linus said. May the best code win.

Thirdly: Evolution works the best in harsh environment. If you are a delicate little princess, you should probably not do Linux kernel development.

I'm tempted to say...

[agapeton]

"...Linux people are deeply immature!", but then I remember that Linus is only doing his impression of Steve Ballmer and Steve Jobs.

All maximized all the time

[tepples]

And right now I'd take bets that Android hybrids conquers the desktop before Unity, Gnome 3, KDE or any of the existing solutions do.

That depends on how quickly other Android distributions adopt a way for applications to opt in to Samsung or Cornerstone multiwindow mode, which allows applications to opt into having variable window size, through the manifest. Currently, the Android CDD allows applications to assume that the screen area will never change after an application is installed, and this mentality of all maximized all the time leads to workflow problems analogous to only having room on your desk for one piece of paper at once. If Android supported multiwindow mode like Ubuntu for Tablets ("Side Stage") and even Windows RT ("Snap an App") do, a four-function calculator app wouldn't need to fill the screen.

What's the issue?

[Nitewing98]

If Linus isn't happy with the code, why go through with the release? And why is he unhappy? Why not hold the release until his issues are resolved? This makes no sense.

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't like the open contributions, shut up and close it then.

Refactor

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's time to refactor the linux kernel. Get rid of all the cruft and strip the kernel to it's bare essence. Then add services to it via a common interface. Like a network or something.

Re:Is Linus really that stupid? Yes, yes he is.

[Cammi]

Not trolling, simple fact, as any developer who works on a team knows.

Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

More Profanity means a better OS? Send all your words to Microsoft then! ;)

fool of me

[sponse]

I really believed that profanity was a new technology I didn't know about.
I'm not sleeping well lately.
;P

well....

[smash]

Anyway, the rc5 changes are pretty much all over: pretty much exactly half are drivers (networking, usb, gpu, mmc, sound..), with the other half being various other subsystems. Some arch updates: MIPS, arm, smattering of ia64, microblaze, s390 and some x86. And networking (non-driver), xfs, fuse, gfs2, jfs..

Well maybe, just maybe if he had a stable driver ABI (at least between releases in the same stable tree) he'd:

• cut his work in half
• actually have commercial driver support

Why every fucking driver under the sun belongs in the kernel tree (and thus, every driver change impacts the kernel) I have no idea.

Re:well....

[xororand]

actually have commercial driver support

You mean proprietary drivers that only work on one or two architectures and seize to be supported when new hardware generations need to be sold.

Re:well....

[smash]

If you want to be negative about it, sure. I'd rather have a driver that works today than no driver at all.

Re:well....

[smash]

Besides, a driver ABI doesn't exclude open source drivers. If that was to happen, someoen reverse engineers it and we're back to where we are today. Except we have a binary blob to reverse engineer which did work with A VERSION of the kernel.

Re:well....

[lilrobbie]

Do you write many drivers?

Re:well....

[serviscope_minor]

cut his work in half

He doesn't seem to think so. Given which one of us has spent 22 years maintaining one of the most widesprea
The thing is there are already a number of good solutions. Firstly, the in-kernel divers can usually be updated pretty easily with a minor tweak here or there. d and flexible kernels on the planet, I'd tend to side with his opinion over yours.

Seriously, he has actually explained why he does this. The stable ABI means that they are stuck maintaining it even when the kernel internals change, which they do. In that case they then have to maintain a full backwards compatibility layer because they have no idea who is using what parts. As the ABI gets updates (multiple versions) and the kernel drifts further away from the architecture represented by earlier ABIs, this generates more and more and more work.

actually have commercial driver support

There are plenty of commercial drivers. Oh binary proprietary drivers you mean? Well, both nvidia and AMD do a reasonable job with those. Oh you mean crappy written once, never maintained and scribble all over kernel memory drivers (totally, and I mean totally like Nvidia or AMD)?

Why on earth do you think Linus would make a ton of work for himself in order so that you (not him) can buy some cheap piece of hardware less carefully. His job is not to enable laziness on your part.

Re:well....

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who were told "nope, we don't support anything above XP" disagree with you. Plenty of them then found out that because Linux drivers are maintained differently, that their devices still work on Linux.

Re:well....

[smash]

And plenty of people with current hardware have no linux driver support at all, or shitty support that doesn't fully utilise their hardware? What's your point?

I'd much rather my brand new machine worked, than some 8 year old box I pilfered out of the garbage.

Re:well....

[smash]

Why on earth do you think Linus would make a ton of work for himself in order so that you (not him) can buy some cheap piece of hardware less carefully. His job is not to enable laziness on your part.

And this is why Linux will never make it on the desktop.

Re:well....

[raynet]

It made into my desktop, but why should it be on everyones desktop?

Re:Is Linus really that stupid? Yes, yes he is.

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone is a mental case, it's you.

Linus is swearing again.

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Big fucking deal.

Fins

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus is Finish (Swedish speaking) and they are the most candid people I know, to a fault.

Lord Torvalds Speaks.

[Virtucon]

To quote another Slashdotter today..

"Lighten Up Francis..."

Leave Sneakifur Pelletpooper out of this Linus!

[FilmedInNoir]

She was a saint.

The whip is better than a quiet word

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nothing to do with Linus' desire to be a mouthy arsehole, we all know when you whip your workers, and put them under threat of whipping, that they write better and more accurate code (the mouthy arsehole bit comes free).

Stress also helps people code better, and bugs are not an unavoidable fact of programming, they are in fact caused by not enough stress.

Man up dammit!! Our Alpha-Linus will whip you into shape; you don't need physical Alpha-traits these days either, you just dress people down from the other side of a mailing list, where they're unable to punch you in the face.

As Torvalds and whinging 12-year-old FPS players can attest, anyone can be a true 'Alpha' on the Internet. What-cha--gonna-do, noob?!

From Unix Comes (the) Kernel

[bbsalem]

Need I say more?

Read and learn

[npsimons]

*Sigh*. I guess I'll just have to post this for the millionth time:

http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/stable_api_nonsense.html

If you don't agree with the decisions in that link, please do us all (and yourself a favor), and go use something besides open source kernels. If you can't even be bothered to read (at least!) the executive summary in that link, then please stop posting.

Linus Torvald

[Anonymous Coward]

gosgog:
I'll tell you what HE GOT YOUR FUCKING ATTENTION !! and that's what counts.