Slashdot Mirror
Interview with Alan Cox
Tekmage hooked us up
with an Interview with Alan Cox called "Number two -- with a bullet" that is
currently running over at the Ottawa Citizen. Its a nice piece-
as always, Alan is super cool. Nice picture of his "Unconventional
Appearance" too ;)
Not a bad looking guy, what you talking about?
Alan said, "The target for the next release, in the fall.."
Fall? Fall? Jesus, hang around American too long and you start talking like them, the word's "autumn".
He start missing the U out of colour, and spelling centre like a dyslexic next.
What is the world coming to?
Here's a nickel, go but yourself a better computer
Not really. Dilbert's UNIX guru was bald, had a white beard, was fat and had suspenders.
Outside of that, yeah, a dead-look-alike.
and Liniux is on its way to being a better UNIX
variant than Solaris.. IMHO
Better in what way?
/proc on solaris is only minimally useful. You can only alter it by manipulating binary data.
/proc on linux contains far more information and can be manipulated with echo and cat.
Okay, that's one reason.
Anyone remember that article in Linux Today (I think), by Alan's wife Telsa where she said, "Remember: While root can do most everything, there are certain privileges that only a partner can grant."
OK wogs - put up or shut up. Anybody from a "Third World"
country like India, China or Brazil (don't be offended) have a
realistic assessment of how the computer-using population,
excluding hard-core Linux nerds, views Linux?
Prove me wrong. It seems to me that people in these countries
who should know better *prefer* pirated Miscosoft products to
free Linux. The black markets thrive, and governments look
the other way. (Of course, I'll also assume key officials are
bribed by MS to ignore the illicit trade. Microsoft likes for their
software to be pirated overseas because this increases the
dependence of people everywhere on their products). At
the same time may of these governments are endorsing
open source software for use in schools and agencies
and even requiring it for mission critical applications.
The governments don't like the insecurity of closed source
which may allow back doors into high securuty
areas by the software manufacturers themselves, not hackers.
(For the same reason closed-source should be banned from
all US Government contracts, including military systems).
At the same time these governments (including ours in the
US) are so corrupt that little of that seems to matter. There
may be some hope if Linux is used more in the schools,
but is that happening or not? It will not happen here in America
first. It must happen elsewhere first (Europe, Asia, etc.).
This saddens me because I do feel that the portion of the popluations
in such countries in Asia, South America and Africa who are
literate are more literate than Americans and and also are
smarter consumers. Why are they not already using Linux
instead of pirated Windows, especially considering that Linux
can run well on older, cheaper machines which people in less
affluent countries can better afford?
Time for these countries to "nationalize" their IT industries
by freeing them from control by a foreign software monopoly.
There is a recent publication: "Linux as an OPI Server
for the Graphic Arts Industry" where it is shown that Linux
is the fastest and Windows NT is the slowest (about half
the speed of Linux). Well, it surprised me to see Linux
being better than Solaris; now, I am starting to believe.
I've found that there is a lot of interest
in Linux and other Open Source projects
around the world. I try to help with questions
on a couple of the things I use, and I can
tell you that the users that I correspond
with are close to 50% non-us. Europe seems
to make up a big piece of the rest, but the
rest of the world is represented.
These are people running real projects for
real businesses with Linux and other
Open Source products. Once they have things
working I doubt they are going to spend a
lot of money to replace what works with
expensive commercial solutions.
-- cary
Who has a bullet? What is the bullet?
Who is it pointed at?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Could you explain why YOU are not pathetic
YOURSELF?
What make you THINK that you are any better
than other human beings? That is the basic
ingredient of racism.
YOURS is a pathetic frame of mind.
That's was fine for millions of it's users.
Are all KDE users non-English speakers? Probably, or else they would be using Gnome like a good American :P
i love linux and all, but there's no use being blind to the fact that maybe windows and linux aren't easy to install, but macOS is very easy to install. bootup off the CD-ROM (every mac with a CDROM will boot off it from day 1), double-click the installer, and it just works.
if linux could make their installer as good as the macOS installer, then linux would also be easy to install. don't be so pround that you can't recognise a good something when you see it. know how to what is good, understand good design, and then write something better...
this picture of alan...
are we looking into the future, perhaps seeing a picture of RMS in a few years?
I agree that Openwin and CDE are both kind of, well, bad. But if it bothers you so much, then use XF86 on your Sparc. It should port
easily, especially with the new Ultra 10's being PCI based you can go and get a new video card that is supported.
I don't see why changing from a commercial/stable X server to a free/unstable X server will help the problem with Openwin/CDE. I use the regular Solaris X with a WindowMaker windowmanager, it looks great.
Personally I think the best set up would be to have a bad ass SPARC server in the background with Linux clients attached to it. The best for the money, security, flexabilty, growth, and power.
Agreed. I heartily recommend the Starfire. I've got two. One controlling the household burgular alarm and the other dedicated to backing up my 2Gig harddrive on my 486 Linux box.
Surely?
Your phrasing seems to indicate that "commercial" and "stable" always go together, as well as "free" and "unstable." I hope this was because of poorly-worded opinions, and not poorly-informed ones.
in many ways, alan is the "leader" of linux, not linus.
linus is more and more becoming a public face, somewhat of a PR position. alan keeps to the technical aspects, adding experimental code to debug.
together, they're dynamite.
Wogs!!!???
Look moron, why is it always necessary for some fool to insult people just for humorous effect. I waited for someone else to say something, but apparently no one else will.
Take it outside, idiot.
On Slashdot, at least, we should be able to avoid the bigoted meanderings of weak minds.
D.
I run a company primarily working for Red Hat.
Easy as that. Now there is a Red Hat europe I
may well become even more directly working for RH
Alan
Right on! I agree with you 100%. Very insightful! I use the same 'dumb' style of asking questions myself.
Not at all, the connection is incidental. XFree is unstable IMO whereas Solaris' X Server is not.
Well, it surprised me to see Linux being better than Solaris; now, I am starting to believe.
Better in what way? Because it's faster? That's a ridiculous criteria for "better". How about stable and secure? Which one wins there?
When talking about Solaris, I should have thought most people are talking about the kernel and general stability. Sure the GNU tools are excellent and I can't believe anyone would deny that but how is that a measure for comparing Linux and Solaris. The GNU tools have always been designed so that compilation on just about *any* system is possible, even nonUNIX platforms.
Doesn't he look like the stereotypical Unix hacker character from the Dilbert series?? (sans glasses, mind you.)
It never fails to amaze me how insightful Alan Cox really is. He's a brilliant hacker, yes, and he's got mad skills, anyone who's poked around in kernal source can tell you that. But he's also wise enough to know the value that others will find in his work, which is something that most people can't do.
OK wogs - put up or shut up. Anybody from a "Third World"
country like India, China or Brazil (don't be offended) have a
realistic assessment of how the computer-using population,
exclusing hard-core Linux nerds, views Linux?
Prove me wrong. It seems to me that people in these countries
who should know better *prefer* pirated Miscosoft products to
free Linux. The black markets thrive, and governments look
the other way. (Of course, I'll also assume key officials are
bribed by MS to ignore the illicit trade. Microsoft likes for their
software to be pirated overseas because this increases the
dependence of people everywhere on their products). At
the same time may of these governments are endorsing
open source software for use in schools and agencies
and even requiring it for mission critical applications.
The governments don't like the insecurity of closed source
which may allow back doors into high securuty
areas by the software manufacturers themselves, not hackers.
(For the same reason closed-source should be banned from
all US Government contracts, including military systems).
At the same time these governments (including ours in the
US) are so corrupt that little of that seems to matter. There
may be some hope if Linux is used more in the schools,
but is that happening or not? It will not happen here in America
first. It must happen elsewhere first (Europe, Asia, etc.).
This saddens me because I do feel that the portion of the popluations
in such countries in Asia, South America and Africa who are
literate are more literate than Americans and and also are
smarter consumers. Why are they not already using Linux
instead of pirated Windows, especially considering that Linux
can run well on older, cheaper machines which people in less
affluent countries can better afford?
Time for these countries to "nationalize" their IT industries
by freeing them from control by a foreign software monopoly.
I have read here and there that, just like the Mexican
government,
1) The Philipines government endorsed Linux for official use.
2) The Philipines schools decided that Linux is good for them,
as well as some big companies.
3) The Chinese government endorsed Linux for official use.
I know of many Chinese persons who awoke to this reality. A
few million a month will follow.
4) The Korean government endorses Linux. The Korean Microsoft
officer was replaced due to low productivity.
I am doing what I can from my end to show to friends and
relatives that Linux is the way to go. But it is difficult to alter
a deeply rooted mentality. I can only act by example, without
pressure.
Is it another b0rken firewall their end, or have I tickled an IP masq bug? I can ping the box but not traceroute all the way to it, this looks suspicious. Mind you, my network link seems flaky tonight anyway. OTOH, when I connect to port 80 I get a little data and then a stall, looks like a fragmentation issue to me. *sigh*
I think we all want to nitpick the author of the article for assuming too much about RMS. I mean, basically, this guy must have thought "This Richard Stallman guy seems to be an important player in the Linux community, I'll go interview him."
:)
What's wrong with that? To me, it's wrong to label RMS as a Linux guy. Remember, he didn't create the operating system - he created GNU, a set of utilities and programs that have the sole purpose of being free and portable (well, to most platforms...
However, I'm inclined to like this article for the same reason I hate it. Why? At the very least, it gives some good information to the non-open source community about RMS. Most people out there think of "These guys have something to do with Linux and it's main thing is that it's free." when they hear "Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman" on the television. This article at least makes the line between Linus and RMS a little more clear, but there is still a blurring which I wish would be set straight to the rest of the world for once.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Put the shades back on, you look like RMS in that picture. :)
No, seriously, I'm proud of my beard too, I just have to hack Unix more to get it to look like that.
However, what's up with the K-DE Windowing System? Eh? That strike anyone else as odd? KDE is common, and 'K DE' is bearable, because it is the 'K Desktop Environment', but where did that dash come from? Journalists, man... Somewhere in the public's respect with lawyers and used-car salesmen. (to paraphrase Barry Saunders)
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yeah, Cox is pragmatic. So is Linus, RMS, Walls, etc. Who ever said "Only GPL?" RMS doesn't say that. KDE/Qt is now past a licensing situation which was rightly condemned in the past.
Where's the force coming from? Does someone have a gun to your head?
Didn't I see Alan in a ZZ-Top video?
Kelly
I came to the conclusion a long time ago that in the great Linux epic, Linus is like Achilles (blessed of the gods, full of talent, and eminently marketable ...); Alan is Aias (Ajax): a mortal, who in his boundless energy and determination, crushes all obstacles in his path and strikes fear even in gods who would oppose him. (Remember, it was Alan that the BillG tried to turn. :-)
There's a few things that I'm sure Alan Cox wouldn't say but he is quoted as saying here such as Linux was shipped with KDE as its GUI.
No Linux is shipped with a kernel and then certain distributions then decide what desktop environment + other software they want to ship. Why can't the journalists get that bit right?
--
He looks EXACTLY like the unix hacker from the dilbert cartoon.
support gun control: take guns from cops
Uhmmmmm, maybe it's just me. But have any of y'all actually tried to install Windows, since it moved off floppies? Granted, I have installed all the versions that have been released the last couple of years, hundreds of times for work. But I don't have any problems installing Win at all. And even so, I was extremely impressed by the installation of Win2k. I have never seen an OS install so smoothly, and painlessly. And 98 has a very polished install routine too.
Meanwhile, I have never been able to install a clean, working copy of Linux by myself. Not that's actually booted, and been able to launch X at all. I suppose that not being able to launch a GUI, is not the ideal way to judge the "success" of a Linux install, but it's what I've come to expect from MS OS's.
Would I love to run Linux, yes. Do I plan on running it at home, yes. Do I like what I have to work with right now, as far as Linux stands, hell no.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Here's another little one: killall on linux (which does a VERY different thing on sysV unixen) provides far better feedback than pkill on solaris (2.7). killall will report if no processes were killed, pkill will not. You can check for a process by name by checking for the return status of killall -0 processname. Yes this could be ported to Solaris, but it's an example of the superior command set that comes with most free unixen.
XF86 manages colors better than openwindows. Openwin is stiiiiiingy, i have an ultra 10 creator w/ 24 bit framebuffer, but just try to put a nice background pic up as your wallpaper. Dithered to hell. Just about anything is better than openwindows mind you.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
The beginning of this interview is a little funny, in how they have trouble accepting the lack of a management structure. This seems to be a theme in many of the acceptance problems with Linux, and other open source projects. There needs to be a better way to explain Open Management ( for the lack of a better term ) to companies with a structure more rigid than my sun 4/330's case ( that's really rigid :) )
I need my coffee
Would you do it for some scoobie crack?
Something I've found amazing about Alan is how he always seems to have half a dozen projects in the air at the same time, and still manages to sleep. I mean, everyone knows he's a kernel hacker - but he does some much other stuff as well. In some ways, I respect him more than Linus - for one thing, Alan has never presented himself as anything more than one hacker among many.
ObComment on the article: Yet another interviewer shows their general lack of clues and unwillingness to do even the most basic research before conducting an interview...
Curiously, this is a different photo of Alan than the one which was printed in the hard copy version of the paper. In that one he was wearing an official looking RedHat red hat.
/peter
What's this, an edited interview! Released in the 'fall'.
Alan did you really say this?
H&Ks Garf
I hvae used Solaris, and yes it does scale better than Linux, but LInux is working on this, and will probably someday scale better than Solaris .. thinks about that...
Only 'flamers' flame!
Installing Windows isn't easy, either. The difference is Windows comes pre-installed on most PCs, while Linux doesn't. You need more vendors selling Linux machines.
A: Right now, NT is faster at some things, Linux at others. Each have their strengths. The biggest problem with Linux today is it doesn't scale to a large number of processors. We do two processors well, four passably, and eight not at all. The target for the next release, in the fall, is to be much, much better at multiprocessor scaling.
A: Right. There's no central authority making decisions. There's no waiting around for a manager to give the go-ahead on a project. If someone doesn't think something is working right, and he wants it fixed, he just goes ahead and fixes it.
Only 'flamers' flame!
"I am Spartacus!"
Reminds me of the old story of how a bunch of Wobblies were asked which one of them was their leader. They answered, "We're all leaders!"
It appears that Linux itself is considered by Linus and Alan to be more important than their respective egos. This is a Good Thing, and it's part of what makes Linux stronger than other projects that serve largely to stoke the egos of their leadership. So far, I've mostly seen this in companies with corporate leader personality cults.
You just can't really respect a man who doesn't have a beard...
;-)>
My understanding is that technically he owns a consulting company ("Building Number Three"), and that his company (i.e. Alan) is being paid by Red Hat to work on the kernel. IMHO, one of the best reasons to shell out for the official versions of Red Hat.
nice to finally know exactly who this shadowy "alan cox" figure who is always credited with huge chunks of the linux kernel.
but what i'm curious about is, exactly where does alan get the money to, like, pay for food and stuff?
-mcc
"k-de"? never seen that spelling before.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
1 Million! Very cool. Certainly puts the Linux in schools project here in Oregon, USA in to perspective....
-- 100% MS-Free as of 4-4-1999, 11:47:38 PST. "The lapdance is always better when the stripper is cryin'" Free Kevin,
Funny how tricky a word like "freedom" can be, isn't it? After all, is freedom truely freedom if you try to force your particular brand of it on people?
Words are tricky. For instance, your remark, "Do these ppl forget that it is about Freedom (not beer)" could be interpreted as an endorsement of Stallman's GPL (instead of the more general meaning which I know is what you really meant.)
Also, it is interesting to note other examples, such as ESR's side by side idealogies - "I want to live in a world where software doesn't suck - bottom line" vs. "The code must be open for peer review, because, after all, nobody ever built a successful cathedral" *cough*
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I thought these "What is Linux" articles and interviews were starting to get out of fashion again already... Guess I was wrong.
The article doesn't really say anything new, does it?
Besides there are those who might think the US - read Bill Gates - owns enough souls already. ;/
Well, I certainly wouldn't call it "3rd World", but South Korea seems to be adopting Linux (note I don't live there). They recently formed a government committee to evaluate Linux and adopt it to Korean better. So at the least the government is pro-Linux.
And they're also anti-Microsoft. The head of Microsoft-Korea recently resigned, citing "family concerns". Of course, it's more likely he was just taking a fall. You see, Microsoft recently tried to buy out the company that made the best-selling Korean word processor, but for some reason that fell through (either government regulation or because the company said no). So, to compete, they started offering MS Word for $5 per year! As a result, they've gotten in trouble with the Korean government for dumping. It's not going very well, and that's a more likely reason that the president resigned.
So this isn't a perfect example. It's not even third-world, but the types of places you are discussing seem general enough to include S. Korea, which seems to be embracing Linux even better than the US or Europe.
The photo in the online article is the same as the one on page D7 of today's dead-tree Ottawa Citizen article - the one accompanying the interview. I think the one you're refering to is on D1.
--The more you know, the less you know.
Several posts poke fun at the interviewer's apparent ignorance. I'm convinced that the opposite is true; note how the interviewer seems to "get" Cox's responses pretty quickly. For example, note this exchange:
... but wait! They do!" I see this throughout the article; the interviewer is asking questions that are the perfect setup to quash some persistent myths about Linux.
Q: What's your title with
Linux?
A: Um, it doesn't really work
that way. We're not organized
along corporate lines. We
don't have titles.
Q: OK. How should one
reference you in terms of your
role in the Linux community?
So we go from the "ssumption that Linux is a single hierarchical entity to the understanding that there is a Linux community that refers to itself as such. This looks a lot more to me like the interviewer know's what's up, but is writing for a target audience of Linux-ignorant readers. As far as I can tell, the Ottawa Citizen is not a technical publication...
The interview also seemed pretty Linux-friendly to me. (Paraphrasing) "When will you have a GUI? You have one ALREADY?" Surely you've seen infomercials that use this technique. "If only these Ginsu (tm) knives came with a built-in umbrella
The conventional wisdom around here is "I like Linux and Solaris, but Solaris is a little more polished."
/bin?
/home/archive/foo.tar.gz ...
/home/archive ... fn d1 ... dn-1 dn
/bin/sh script that does the same thing as cp -avpu.
This may be true for the kernel and hardware, BUT:
Question for sysadmins who use both linux and solaris:
How long can you tolerate Solaris' standard environment before you break down and install GNU replacements for all the garbage in
Notice I'm NOT talking about X11Rx vs Openwin or Motif vs dt.
I'm talking nuts and bolts here.
# tar czvf .
tar: z: unknown option
Usage: tar {txruc}[vfbFXhiBelmopw[0-7]] [tapefile] [blocksize] [exclude-file] [-I include-file] files
#
ARGUH!!!
# cp -avpu .
/bin/cp: illegal option -- a
/bin/cp: illegal option -- v
/bin/cp: illegal option -- u
Usage: cp [-f] [-i] [-p] f1 f2
cp [-f] [-i] [-p] f1
cp -r|R [-f] [-i] [-p] d1
#
JESUS H FUCKING CHRIST
For those of you who like to flame GNU/FSF (even if you begrudgingly admit gcc/egcs is just ok), try to sit down at a vanilla Solaris box. Then send me a
That's it! I was wondering why they described his appearance as "unconventional", but now that you mention it -- he's not wearing glasses! Other than that, he looks pretty darn conventional to me.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The journalist shows the usual cluelessness (a)Linux doesn't have a GUI - please! b)Linux is hard to install - no OS is easy to install) and Alan sets him straight. I was also interested to hear Alan's comments about the suits delaying releasing product until the PR guys prepare a spin. Very typical of bureaucrats.
;) But who cares......
Overall not a bad article. Though Alan's appearance might scare off a few "corporate sponsors"
The only reason all cover-ups appear to fail is that you never hear about the ones that succeed.
Now I know why this guy is so successfull. Not ideologies like "Only GPL", "No KDE", "No commercialism" but pragmatism drives this man. He cares about what works, not about how the world should be like or what other ppl should do. In this way he seems alot like Linus Torvalds. To be honest I can not stand those flamers anymore who tell others what distribution, software or licences they should use. Do these ppl forget that it is about Freedom (not beer) and that there is more than one way to do it (right)
(Thanx Larry!)
I'm mexican, and I can only say: One million computers with linux running on them are being deployed in our schools as we speak. I think the project is due mid-2000 or so.
Vox
Pain is the gift of the gods, and I'm the one they chose as their messanger...
>XF86 manages colors better than openwindows.
I thought we were talking about operating systems.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
I especially like Alan's comment about Linux and the third world. Linux is certainly a good alternative, not only because it's cheap, but also because it runs on old (cheap) software. Of course, this not only applies to the third world, but also the poorer contignent of the first world.
// Simon
I thought these "What is Linux" articles and interviews were starting to get out of fashion again already...- big-from-the-Linux-community interviews. The kind of thing that's more to attract people who don't know squat about Linux but have heard the name and want to feel like they're keeping on top of things by reading this interview.
They are, IMHO. The article doesn't really say anything new, does it?
Exactly. It's pointless. It simply restates what the Linux community, and the world in general, already knew. But it's not even restating that much. It's just another one of those aren't-we-cool-because-we're-interviewing-someone
Insert mind here.
I agree that Openwin and CDE are both kind of, well, bad. But if it bothers you so much, then use XF86 on your Sparc. It should port easily, especially with the new Ultra 10's being PCI based you can go and get a new video card that is supported.
A good portion of Linux stuff works on Solaris, but Solaris has much finer locking, more stability, and frankly more security. It may be quite a while, if SGI doesn't step in, before Linux has as fine locking as Solaris. As for the other two, well... they're moving very quickly.
Frankly, I don't think that it is a good to compair Linux to Solaris. They are two different classes of OS right now. Solaris is the big time server OS, and Linux is the midrange to low end server and workstation OS. They may compete for the midrange but if a company is willing to spend the money Solaris is probably the better choice in most cases. Personally I think the best set up would be to have a bad ass SPARC server in the background with Linux clients attached to it. The best for the money, security, flexabilty, growth, and power.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person