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A Brilliant Mind: SUSE's Kernel Guru Speaks

Posted by timothy on from the celebrities-are-the-ones-you-celebrate dept.

An anonymous reader writes The man who in every sense sits at the nerve centre of SUSE Linux has no airs about him. At 38, Vojtch Pavlík is disarmingly frank and often seems a bit embarrassed to talk about his achievements, which are many and varied. He is every bit a nerd, but can be candid, though precise. As director of SUSE Labs, it would be no exaggeration to call him the company's kernel guru. Both recent innovations that have come from SUSE — patching a live kernel, technology called kGraft, and creating a means for booting openSUSE on machines locked down with secure boot, have been his babies.

3 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Vojtech Pavlik is awesome :) by paskie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Vojtech brought me to SUSE Labs where I then worked on git and glibc for several years; since I did home office, we didn't meet that often but whenever we did, even because of something banal, it was a little awe inspiring for me. SUSE Labs is packed with brilliant people, but I always got the feel he's the smartest guy around. *And* at the same time it's a place that feels as un-corporate as possible in a corporation, I'm sure mostly thanks to his managing role.

    So, I'm generally a bit sceptical about revering articles. But this one is spot on. When I think about it, I guess I still consider him one of my role models. :)

    P.S.: Don't you guys feel kind of bored by the systemd spam under every Linux article too?

    --
    It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end. -Douglas Adams
  2. Re:patching a live kernel? by cardpuncher · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Quite. Telephone exchanges have had live upgrades for decades - upgrading not only the code but the data structures while calls are in progress. What is "nuts" is to assume that systems *need* to be shut down for upgrades - that really is a failure of proper architecture.

  3. Re:patching a live kernel? by Maxwell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because x86 doesn't have the system management chip that Unix boxes (full disclosure, old AIX admin, last used 5.1L) have. x86 has the crappy bios and UEFI neither of which can manage the system. This also what allows hot cpu, hot ram upgrades etc. The AIX system chip is an OS unto itself, it will boot with no RAM or CPU on board.