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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 ;)
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.
Didn't I see Alan in a ZZ-Top video?
Kelly
They call the season 'fall' here in America, because that's when the leaves fall to the ground and cover it with so many different pretty colors. I suppose it is the other way around on the other side of the equator (so, which way do your toilets flush?)
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.
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!
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.
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
He gets paid by Red Hat, and possibly others, I think.
If you want to know more about the "shadowy" alan cox, just hop over to his website. Be sure to check out the diary, it's fun.
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.
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
I don't seem to remember having seen RMS with such a big beard as Alan though.
Oh man, that's funny. When that series of strips came out we were ROTFLOAO because we had a consultant that looked and talked *exactly* like the unix guy in Dilbert. White beard, bald, fat, suspenders.
"Oh no, you're one of those condescending unix guys!"
"Here kid, here's a nickel. Go buy yourself a *real* OS"
This guy was sharp as a tack, no doubt. But he looked the part and had the same attitude as Scott Adam's character!
>they have trouble accepting the lack of a management structure.
Well, that's really the problem that we have around here where I work and it'll just take time to overcome it. They are so used to vendors in suits driving BMW's taking them out to lunch that its really hard for them to adjust to anything else.
Our PHB's have their well-worn paths when it comes to dealing with IT management. You shake-down the vendors and play them off each other to get the deal you want. You get them to buy you lunch, dinners and golf rounds. You get them on the phone and scream bloody murder when something goes south (even if its not their problem). You get SLA's and hold them to the wall when they don't deliver. This is just the corporate culture that is so ingrained in how these weasels conduct their daily business.
So Linux/Free Software/Open Source/Call-it-what-you-will is a baffling concept to them. It is going to basically take a generational changing of the guard to get us out of this cycle. The best way I can see to move this along is to give up on the sodgy PHB in charge and work on the heir-apparent so that when he takes over for the PHB when he moves out, we may have a change for the better.
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