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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.'"
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.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Business owners aren't reading the linux kernel mailing list.
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.
#DeleteChrome
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That's right. Instead of cursing in public, Microsoft executives throw furniture...
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
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).
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Mine is "Thanks!"
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.
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.
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.
the rudest word in the universe.
Belgium.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
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.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
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.
Your mother *and* your dead hamster?
But, I thought your mother *was* a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings