Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Linux 3.11-rc7 Release Celebrates 22 Years of Linux

Posted by timothy on from the now-that-is-an-elaborate-prank dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It was on this day 22 years ago when Linus Torvalds humbly announced Linux and today he played on that in announcing the Linux 3.11-rc7 kernel release. The final Linux 3.11 kernel release is expected in about one week."

8 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Whoah whoah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Linus was humble once?

    1. Re:Whoah whoah by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

      He's just terse. Want him a bit more verbose, shoot a few "-v" his way.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Whoah whoah by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Interesting

      some possibilities:
      1. kernel programming isn't something most people can do. not just linux, but in general.
      2. the project is mostly stable at this point. 90% of the work is drivers anyway, and those are submitted by hw manufacturers for the most part.

      It's not like he's constantly flying off the handle as claimed.. It happens occasionally, and for good reason. Broken code from senior people and/or closed drivers make a ton of extra work for the rest of them, so he's justified. Look at what happened to android. If he yields to political correctness, he then has to clean up the mess left behind by people who need a grilling they now won't receive. Choosing between not hurting feelings and/or keeping these people away, and getting the job done right isn't hard.

    3. Re:Whoah whoah by cbope · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I hate to counter a possible AC troll, but Linus has always followed the "do one thing and do it well" mantra. In a sense, we are likely better off that he didn't "look at the big picture" and lose focus on the core.

      I believe the issue the AC brings up lies more with Linux desktop environments, rather than with Linus himself. If Linux had more or less standardized on a single desktop* for corporate use, we would likely see more Linux on the desktop today. But it didn't and the rest is history.

      * I am not trying to imply there should be one and only one desktop for Linux. I am simply saying that to address the corporate desktop market, a standardized desktop** is more or less essential. Of course there are also special needs outside the corporate desktop, and this is where different desktop environments can exist and fill a particular niche.

      ** Win8 is a good example where MS changed the standard desktop environment and is being shunned by the corporate crowd as a result. It's just too different from what had become the "standard" since Win95.

    4. Re:Whoah whoah by higuita · · Score: 4, Informative

      would you prefer to be ignored, with all your work and the patchs never getting merged and you didn't even knew why?

      That is the "correct and polite" way... but totally useless.

      And no, being polite and slowly trying to explain the errors will not work, too much people around, any manager will get tired of repeating the same thing over and over, and so getting more rude as time goes by.

      Please note that Linus is usually not rude for newbies, only for people that are around for sometime, specially for maintainers. Those should already know what is allowed or what is not and if maintainers, Linus already have some trust on then... if they fail that trust, Linus will be very direct.

      If you work with other top kernel developers (check the *BSD) you will see the same problem, with ones being more rude than others (ie: Theo de Raadt)

      If you are comparing with enterprise development, think again. Those can also be rude... but even if they are not, they are probably playing the ignore card, the faking/lying card or simple the "i can get you fired" card. And don't forget the "i'm the boss" card, where you don't even try to be a smartass and always do what you are being told.

      Finally, even if that attitude might scare some developers, at least have manage to keep the linux development together, there is no forks, so it isn't that much a problem.

      --
      Higuita
  2. Re:22 YEARS TO 3.11 !! WINDOWS DID IT IN SIX !! by loosescrews · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think the Linux kernel development team have slightly higher standards than Microsoft.

  3. Humility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It was 22 years ago today that Linus Torvalds last humbly announced anything.

  4. Re:Is it ready for the desktop ? by madsdyd · · Score: 4, Informative

    You are sorely lacking in the history department of Linux Video Editors.

    Kino was originally developed with only DV editing in mind. It grew to be pretty usefull, but around the mid 00's, the main developers (Charles Yates and Dan Dennedy) realised that the basic foundation of Kino would never accomodate anything besides a clip-oriented DV editor. They therefore wrote the MLT framework (http://www.mltframework.org/) that is a powerfull (open source) multimedia framework, which is used in TV productions, and is the basis of several open source video editors, most notable Kdenlive and OpenShot. (See list here: http://www.mltframework.org/bin/view/MLT/Projects).

    Dan Dennedy decided to keep Kino "alive" as it is usefull to some people, but not do any further development on it.

    Dan Dennedy still maintains MLT and have contributed to several of the MLT related projects. Kdenlive is a powerfull NLE video editor that can do most of, if not all, that the very expensive tools for other platforms do. In some cases way more. (And, yes, it runs under Gnome or other desktops, you just need the KDE libs)

    It is unfortunate that people keep referencing Kino. No new development have been made on it for literally years, and e.g. Kdenlive are much, much more powerfull.

    (On a side note, it is also unfortunate that so few people know of the massive amount of work that Dan Dennedy has invested in to Video editing on Linux. Besides Kino and MLT, he has been heavily involved in the Firewire/dv1394 drivers of the Linux kernels, and it is amazing how much he has contributed).

    If you want to see Kdenlive related videos, search for kdenlive on youtube. Tons of people have made videos with Kdenlive.

    Disclaimer: I have contributed code and translations to both Kino and Kdenlive. I belive I may even be listed as one of the authors of Kino (or at least was at some point).