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Is Linus Torvalds Speaking for Linux Anymore?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Feb 08, 2008 02:36 PM
from the try-not-to-have-an-aneurysm dept.
from the try-not-to-have-an-aneurysm dept.
An anonymous reader writes to tell us CNET is currently running a story asking 'Is Linus Torvalds even speaking for Linux anymore?' It examines both Torvalds' recent public statements on other operating systems and his current approach towards Linux. The author wonders if his utopian view of how an operating system should be viewed and used is just too alien from what the majority of users are really looking for. "if it were up to Torvalds, beauty and intuition would take a backseat to functionality. But when you look at distributions like Ubuntu or OpenSuse, it looks like no one is paying attention. 'An OS should never have been something that people (in general) really care about: it should be completely invisible and nobody should give a flying [expletive] about it except the technical people.' Sure, that statement makes some sense, but in the grand scheme of things, it's the design and usability factor that makes the operating system much easier to use. And while both Mac OS X and Windows have their issues, for the average person, it makes more sense to use those than Linux."
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Linux: Torvalds on Where Linux is Headed in 2008 305 comments
Stony Stevenson writes "In an interview at the ITNews site, Linus Torvalds lays out his current excitement about the future of Linux. Torvalds is looking forward to hardware elements like solid-state drives, expects progress in graphics and wireless networking, and says the operating system is strong in virtualisation despite his personal lack of interest in the area. 'When you buy an OS from Microsoft, not only you can't fix it, but it has had years of being skewed by one single entity's sense of the market. It doesn't matter how competent Microsoft — or any individual company — is, it's going to reflect that fact. In contrast, look at where Linux is used. Everything from cellphones and other small embedded computers that people wouldn't even think of as computers, to the bulk of the biggest machines on the supercomputer Top-500 list. That is flexibility.'"
[+]
Linux: Torvalds Puts Support Behind GPL2 Linux 326 comments
Christiangrays writes "Linux creator Linus Torvalds has used an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation to stress that version 2 of the GPL still makes the most sense for the Linux kernel over the newer GPL version 3. GPL 3, which was released last year by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), reflects the FSF's goals while GPL 2 closely matches what Torvalds thinks a licence should do, Torvalds said. "I want to pick the licence that makes the most sense for what I want to do. And at this point in time, Version 2 matches what I think we want to do much, much better than Version 3," said Torvalds, who is now a fellow at the foundation. He was interviewed in late-October by Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin."
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Linux: Torvalds Says Microsoft is Bluffing on Patents 157 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's aggressive defense of its intellectual property, which includes claims that Linux violates a number of its patents, is nothing more than "a marketing thing," according to Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel. "They have been sued for patents by other people, but I don't think they've — not that I've gone through any huge amount of law cases — but I don't think they've generally used patents as a weapon," Torvalds said. "But they're perfectly happy to use anything at all as fear, uncertainty and doubt in the marketplace, and patents is just one thing where they say, 'Hey, isn't this convenient? We can use this as a PR force.'""
[+]
Linux: Torvalds On Desktop Linux's Slow Uptake 450 comments
javipas notes a Wired piece summarizing a two-part interview with Linus Torvalds that's up at linux-foundation.org (part 1, part 2). In the second part the creator of the Linux kernel gives his view on the limited success of Linux on the desktop. "I have never, ever cared about really anything but the Linux desktop... The desktop is also the thing where people get really upset if something changes, so it's really hard to enter the desktop market because people are used to whatever they used before, mostly Windows... better is worse if it's different."
Submission: Is Linus Torvalds Speaking for Linux anymore? by Anonymous Coward
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FUD alert (Score:5, Interesting)
More CNET FUD if you ask me. Although I'd probably do the same thing in their position. After all, their business is closely tied to the PC and, to a lesser extent, the Windows OS, so for every bit of ground gained by Linux, they can either risk losing relevance or have to expend time and money keeping up.
Re:FUD alert (Score:5, Funny)
'An OS should never have been something that people (in general) really care about: it should be completely invisible and nobody should give a flying [expletive] about it except the technical people.'
It sounds like this Linus guy should focus his energy on the Linux kernel then huh?
Parent
Re:FUD alert (Score:4, Insightful)
I know, it was a joke pointing out the ridiculousness of the article premise.
Parent
Re:FUD alert (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point is that the only things the user should ever have to see are the task switcher, task launcher, and their programs. We don't have this kind of thing today because... hell I don't know. Too many proprietary standards? Too much greed, leading to them? Too many idiots spoiling good things? A combination of all these and more, I guess. I don't think there's any conspiracy. But we have had some great stuff, like on the Amiga computers where you had great autoconfiguration, a fast (compared to the CPUs of the time) bus and a flat memory model. Drivers in controller rom, and a microkernel-based OS where it was easy to load them. Or on the OpenFirmware (and earlier relatives) based systems, where you have forth-based drivers in controller ROM, good enough to get the system up and running anyway. Very classy. Unfortunately the PC won, the least advanced platform in pretty much every way. I'm not getting into CISC vs. RISC because as we all know you can argue that one either way, all day, and every mainstream x86-ish processor since the AMD K5 has been RISC or at least fairly RISCy anyway... but I think most can agree that the x86 ISA is ugly, the legacy PC hardware is ugly, the PC BIOS is ugly, and the PC is just now beginning to leave those things behind with EFI gaining steam, the ISA buses having dropped completely out of most systems, and so on.
*Whew* Anyway look at the pattern in computing today, it's away from computers which are even convenient to change the hardware in! Sooner or later we won't even have replaceable parts any more, you'll just throw the whole computer away when it fails. Well, there really is no "away", really it will just be recycled. The whole system including the main storage will be in one big integrated circuit, probably inkjet-printed onto a piece of plastic, and with a battery glued on. The user won't even be able to change hardware, aside from adding on USB (well, hopefully it won't be USB any more) dongles and whatnot. There will probably be precious little of that as well, with most or all peripherals communicating wirelessly. So the user isn't going to ever think about drivers - the peripherals will communicate via standard protocols and won't even have their own drivers. And more and more people are excited about PDA-type devices since Apple finally delivered one that people want to use, and you generally just run one program at a time on such devices. The user of an iPhone or a PDA doesn't care what OS is beneath it as long as they can do the things they want to do. And most users of an iPhone in particular will never feel the lack of any application not delivered to them directly through the menus or a website. So why do they care about the OS?
The job of the operating system is to permit the user to do work (whether that work is actual work, or having fun, whatever.) The more the user has to interact with the OS itself, the less the OS is doing its job, and the more the OS is asking the user to do the job. I should never have to think about emptying the trash, for example. I should just be able to delete things, and the OS figures out which ones to remove and when. What fucking year is it anyway? Is there ANY operating system that behaves that way? I don't mean prompting me when I'm about to run out of disk space and I have stuff in the trash, either.
Parent
Re:FUD alert (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:FUD alert (Score:5, Insightful)
The operating system itself should almost never be touched directly by the average user. The look/feel of the system however is not a part of the operating system itself, the "beauty and intuitiveness" is the responsibility of the GUI system (in linux, Xorg + Gnome/KDE/XFCE/etc)
Parent
Re:FUD alert (Score:5, Funny)
Karma please!
Parent
Re:FUD alert-Plug leak. (Score:5, Funny)
As far as I understand... it goes something like this...
IP "I got some shit!!!"
TCP "you got some shit? I know what to do with that shit!!!"
HTTP "this shit makes sense, thanx TCP"
TCP "No problem HTTP, but IP deserves most of the credit, thank IP"
IP "Your Welcome"
meanwhile NIC sulks in the corner who deserves all of the credit for the entire conversation.
Parent
Re:FUD alert-Plug leak. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:FUD alert-Plug leak. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:FUD alert (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm inclined to agree with this definition [reference.com].
In other words, the software that lets other software use the hardware. So, unless one was troubleshooting, programming, or engineering, I fail to see why the average user would be working directly with the Operating System.
My personal view is that Microsoft/Apple have poisoned the term "Operating System" to mean something entirely different: The distribution of programs with an operating system. For example: Windows, Ubuntu, Fedora, and MacOSX are all collections of programs bundled with the operating system.
Parent
Re:FUD alert (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, this misnaming kinda stuck and Apple renamed its 'system' software to 'MacOS' and IBM and Microsoft released something that, together, they called 'OS/2'.
So now people think of 'Linux' as being an 'operating system' including things like what would come with 'Ubuntu': Gnome, X11, etc. Thing is Linux is the 'operating system' in the sense that it is a kernel. 'K/X/Ubuntu' is a complete package, containing an 'operating system', some 'system software' (GNU stuff, etc.) and an 'operating environment' consisting of one of [ Gnome | KDE | XFCE ].
This is what 'Windows' is, but Microsoft calls it an 'operating system'.
Parent
Semantics Nazi alert (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on guys, English is not my first language. Try and keep it consistent for people like me. Call it "CNET is writing rubbish", or something more vigorous.
Parent
Re:Semantics Nazi alert (Score:5, Funny)
I propose an acronym for this behavior, much like FUD... that is "CNET". and it stands for "CNET: Nothing Except Trash". Phoenetically, you can say it as "Seen'it, nothing except trash." making it more suitable for things outside of CNET.
kthxbai
Parent
Hey Don Reisinger (Score:4, Informative)
set in stone (Score:5, Funny)
Re:set in stone (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:set in stone (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
People don't choose an OS for an OS. (Score:5, Insightful)
So Linus seems to still be completely accurate in his opinion.
Re:People don't choose an OS for an OS. (Score:4, Insightful)
So Linus seems to still be completely accurate in his opinion.
One contributing reason to why Linux looks and functions as well as it does today is because the kernel/OS designers have focused on the actual OS, and the graphic designers and GUI developers have focused on their thing. Linus is perhaps not a good GUI designer. Why not let him do the thing he enjoys most? This is an open source OS. Linus doesn't even need worry about the GUI, because there's very little of that tied into the Linux kernel. If Linux becomes popular enough, it'll attract the human-computer interface designers that enjoy doing that sort of development as much as Linus enjoys working on the kernel.
Parent
Re:People don't choose an OS for an OS. (Score:5, Funny)
I bet 99% of all people using Linux don't know how to change the current directory under Linux (on x86 it's: Load register eax with 12, load register ebx with pointer to zero-terminated string naming the new directory, call int 80h). But that's OK, because the user usually doesn't have to know it. Instead he interacts with some piece of software which does all this for him, be it the shell (where he'd type cd directory), or some file manager (where he probably would klick or doubleclick on a symbol representing the directory of choice; although that probably won't actually result in a change of directory, but just in the display of the desired directory; but then, the user couldn't care less how the functionality is implemented under the hood).
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Re:People don't choose an OS for an OS. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:People don't choose an OS for an OS. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:People don't choose an OS for an OS. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it amazing how stupid everyone has apparently become? I remember when the lowly secretary would type up professor's correspondences and papers using MSDOS and LaTeX. Now suddenly everyone is too mentally challenged to even consider such a thing.
Too many people act like my children: just because you are too lazy, unwilling, or incapable of learning or doing something doesn't necessarily mean the task is too hard or complicated.
Parent
Operating System != GUI (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Operating System != GUI (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Wtf? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wtf? (Score:4, Insightful)
Linus speaks about the kernel, and well he should.
Now, go talk with the Gnome developers or KDE developers about their piece...
OS? Yes, all the stuff that lies between the desktop and the kernel...
Thanks to MS not many people can imagine having to install an OS, then a windowing system, then a browser, then a
Parent
"Beauty" and "Intution" are not in Linus's hands (Score:3, Insightful)
But the user experience is largely the purvue of the Distros, their window managers, application suites, etc. And Linus is right, these are a disaster.
But saying he's divorced is silly, its never been his area of expertise or the area where he works.
What does Linus have to do with Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
If we think Linux is hard to use, why not blame the people who write the higher level utilities rather than the kernel itself?
I don't think this is a real argument (Score:5, Interesting)
Linus was talking about the things that truly are invisible to the average user: the API, the filesystem, etc. Not the user interface. When you are speaking about operating systems with someone who has written one, it must be realized that all the terminology is not the same. Ubuntu is a distribution of linux, with a lot of work put into the UI. That is a good thing, but it is not the same thing as talking about device drivers.
OS X is, at that level, a BSD operating system, with a really good UI and a sort of half-assed filesystem (no flames, I use OS X boxes, and they work well, but the filesystem is really from an earlier era).
There is nothing that keeps the functionality of the low level OS from the elegance of a well crafted UI.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with the parent. Too many people confuse the idea of an OS with the standard suite of applications that are shipped with it. When users say that they like the Windows OS or the Mac OS, what 99% of them mean is that they like the applications shipped with it. These applications include the window manager, mail software, file explorer, and others.
Linus is stating that the OS itself should take a back seat and be invisible to the user. And, ironically, this is why many people choose to use Windows an
Perhaps I am missing something (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, Ubuntu, for example, is trying to make Linux appealing to an average person. They aren't, therefore, going to distribute the Os without a UI. The operating system in Ubuntu should be (and mostly is) invisible, and the user is interacting with Gnome or KDE or XFCE or whatever.
Ubuntu, then, I would say, is not departing from Linus' philosophy--they give you several choices of user interfaces through which you can do what you want with your computer, while the OS does the work invisibly.
What am I missing here. Computer World MUST know more about this than me.
Linux != Operating System (Score:5, Insightful)
Ubuntu is an Operating System, that uses the Linux Kernel.
So is Gentoo, RedHat, CentOS, Mandrake, etc...
Is Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org] easy to use? I would say "not really"
How about Ubuntu [ubuntu.com]? (Ubuntu, in the live disc, was able to recognize and use the wifi card and odd screen resolution on my laptop [slashdot.org], so it very much gets my vote for "easy to use")
Does Linus speak for Red Hat, Novel, and SuSe? I wouldn't think so, unless he has invested enough in those companies to have a large enough share of the stocks.
Of course Linus speaks for Linux, since he is in charge of which patches get accepted into the stock kernel.
Someone friendly & flexible should speak for L (Score:5, Funny)
(Do I really need to add the
tag?)2 words (Score:3, Informative)
Torvalds Speaks for Linux(TM) (Score:5, Insightful)
He doesn't speak for any distro, never did, never claimed to. But that's part of the problem with calling, say, Ubuntu "Linux". Most of Ubuntu, or Red Hat, or aN4rCHi$tOS, or any other distro, is not the kernel. It's a lot of other software that's compatible with a Linux kernel it relies on. Most of which is usually GNU software, with its own spokespeople - who often disagree fundamentally with Torvalds. The people running those distro projects speak for them. And therefore they speak for what people call "Linux" more than Torvalds does.
And when they don't speak for someone who disagrees, that person is free to make their own "Linux" and speak for it.
I know the corporate mass media can't understand that kind of community ownership and independence. But Slashdotters should be able to tell the difference.
Linux Kernel != Linux Distributions (Score:3, Insightful)
Misinformed and misinterpreted (Score:5, Informative)
Linus is right. (Score:5, Insightful)
--Pathway
What is the Operating System? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Freecell
2. The web-browser
3. Media player Player
4. e-mail client
Because MS has distributed these things with its operating system and, with a straight face, asked why the web browser wasn't part of the OS***, people now have a kitchen-sink view of the OS. I think Linus takes a minimalist view to the OS.
*** Many of the Windows/IE security issues can be traced back to the integration of IE into the operating system.
Understand the Customer (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps the writer of TFA doesn't understand the s/w business in general or the Linux business in particular.
Linus (should) speak to his customers, the "technical people" who build the distros or some other product where they need to get down into the nuts and bolts of the O/S.
Each of these "technical people", the creators of Ubuntu, OpenSuse, or some product with embedded Linux needs to speak to their customers in turn. That's the beauty of Linux. Its a tool that can solve multiple problems without bothering the end user with the details of the underlying implementation.
Off-topic bit starts here:
That's why Google succeeds and Mic-Yah-ro-hoo-soft will fail. Microsoft expects all of its consumers to be immediately aware of the existence of the Microsoft brand name in all of their interactions with third party applications. Google, OTOH, does quite a bit of business with third parties, but in many cases, its difficult to tell unless you happen to watch the browser status bar when a Google domain name zips by, loading an ad. Most third party vendors don't want their market presence prefixed by a big, flashing banner Brought to You by Microsoft: and then their business name below that in small print.
Its the same with the Linux kernel.
Define 'beauty' (Score:4, Insightful)
Differentiating the Whole from it's Parts (Score:5, Insightful)
Linus doesn't really have any direct control over the distributions themselves, at least in terms of what features or programs they choose to bundle with the kernel to make usable. As such, there are distros specialized for just about every possible use- as a general desktop, server, embedded, small footprint, low power, etc. The versatility comes as a result of how the kernel was designed, even if it wasn't specifically designed for versatility.
It's time the Linux community finally wakes up and decides which way it will turn -- towards its roots or towards the features that the general public really wants. Until then, we'll have the old guard spewing their ideals, while the momentum of the operating system carries it away from its very foundation.
There are distributions going both ways- simple and complex. Look to something like Ubuntu/Kubuntu for a more windows-esque desktop experience out of the box. Look to something like Slackware to get "towards it's roots." The biggest strength of linux is that it isn't pinholed into one specific use or expectation, as the author asserts it is/was/should be. He doesn't "get it."
form or function (Score:3, Insightful)
Another good example is mobile devices. Palm and Microsoft had YEARS of experience on how to refine their mobile experience. They have barely made incremental UI changes since their first release. Apple managed to put Unix in a handheld and make it so easy to use that it doesn't even come with a manual.
While I respect Torvalds to a great degree, he shouldn't engage in his form/functionality debate. He's the expert at making the OS internals flawless. Let other experts figure out how to turn his masterpiece into a usable design. Please don't try to mix filesystems designers with graphic designers.
And on a final unrelated note, to counter Torvald's argument that HFS is crap, we've been reading for nearly a year that Apple is ready to adapt ZFS. Once MacOS defaults to ZFS, it'll trounce any existing form of ext3. He really should be comparing the merits of ext3 against ZFS, the future, not the past. Otherwise we might as well discuss the Minix one too =)
Logic is cheaper at CNET! (Score:5, Funny)
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
I didn't RTFA and I'm not going to RTFA. Whenever I hear logic like this, it makes me reach for my revolver.
And while I'm in the mood, don't get me started on how CNET isn't really complaining about Linux, it's GNU part - you know, the part that seems to be always denied by not using the proper name, GNU/Linux, but always gets trundled out as a defense mechanism.
I hate the smell of bad logic. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
And for anyone tempted to not get it - this post isn't flamebait. It's a retaliation against the slagging my intelligence was just given.
Maybe I'd be in a better mood if the summary went, "An anonymous reader laughed his fucking ass off when he saw this crap, and thought - correctly - that any of us in a bad mood might find fun in slagging CNET. Here's their latest proof that journalist with IQs below 50 can get a job at CNET - because they know their market:
Yeah. That's the ticket.
Ease of use is why I use Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Note I did not say ease of configuration: I have run Linux off and on since it had to be installed from a 7-floppy image, and that was back in 1992 or 1992, downloading them using kermit (OUCH!) over a 1200 baud modem. It was HARD to use then - hardware support was lacking, etc.
When the slackware CD distribution came out I ran that - I could get a very basic desktop running, but 8-bit only. By that time VLB was all the rage. and I had the infamous Diamond Stealth 32 VLB card. The ET4000 server would not run with this card because of some proprietary extensions to it, so I learned enough x86 assembly (I had come over to the PC from the C= and Amiga computers and programmed assembly on those) to write a utility which would probe the card's registers with various values, respond to keystrokes, and log the results. I finally figured out what needed to be set and I patched the X server to work - and had 24-bit color in X! I should have submitted that code and utility to the project but at the time I didn't know I could contribute to OSS projects.
Anyway, it was a pain in the ass to configure. Once it was configured, it was a pain in the ass to use. I had to view images from the command line? Launch GUI programs from the command line? If I wanted a menu, I had to edit a slew of poorly-documented
Then, I went from a job which was 100% windows to one that was 150% windows - as in I worked in Windows at work for about 50-60 hours a week, then I had to do more work at home, on Windows (yes, I was a sucker working unpaid overtime for a dot-com, and got NOTHING from my stock options!). I had to dump Linux - but on the bright side my hardware worked! Well, I was on SMP systems (at home!) by then, so everything worked, well, except my Soundblaster Live! card because of the race condition Creative folks FINALLY admitted to only a few years ago when multi-core chips hit the market and SMP became mainstream.
Well, between then and 2005, Linux went and growed up big and strong - I guess Tux drank milk or took steroids or something. Bleeding-edge chipsets still didn't work well, USB was a little flaky, SATA was weak, but less-than-bleeding-edge hardware worked better, more reliably than Windows. On top of that, KDE was usable. No, not just usable - damn good. The best desktop environment I've ever used - and this includes both CDE (hated it, but it was easy to use!) and SGI's Indigo Magic (loved it! At the time, mid-90s, it was fantastic).
I dual booted Windows for a while. I used Windows about half the time, and Linux half the time. Then, KDE was updated (to 3.1 I think) - what a difference. On a dual Celeron with 1GB RAM, compared to Windows XP, performance was excellent. It was fast and responsive. I could open a SINGLE file browser and have multiple Windows - File Manager-like split views, Explorer-like tabbed views, multiple tree controls, PLUS I could seamlessly access FTP, SMB/CIFS, and SSH/Fish shares and drag and drop between them all! Not only that, with the customizable views, thumbnail views which were USABLE, and the various application preview plugins, Linux became more user-friendly than the Macintosh, more capable out of the box than Windows, and was actually supporting hardware pretty well.
Then, SuSE upgraded to the 2.6 kernel. This made all the difference in the world. Not only was the desktop more capable and easy to use than Windows, OS X, or $foo, most current hardware out of the box worked - better than Windows. USB became more reliable than Windows,
he never has been (Score:4, Interesting)
Given the choice.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Although the analogy's not perfect, Torvalds is the Steve Jobs of the OSS world, whilst RMS is Ballmer.
(And please don't view this as 100% of a flame. RMS's contributions to the Open Source world have been vast. However, I don't think he's particularly good as a spokesman or to be "at the helm" of Open-Source development. He's also a bit too stubborn on his ideologies, as shown with the GPLv3 debacle.)