Nexus One First Phone Linus Torvalds "Doesn't Hate" 308
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by
CmdrTaco
from the it-ain't-half-bad dept.
from the it-ain't-half-bad dept.
SpuriousLogic writes "Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux kernel, has an absolute disdain for mobile phones. All of the ones he has purchased in the past, the man writes on his personal blog, ended up being 'mostly used for playing Galaga and Solitaire on long flights' even though they were naturally all phones run on open source operating systems. Things have changed now, he adds, now that he has caved and bought Google's Nexus One a couple of days ago."
Why (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So he uses the phone for GPS While Driving? (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation Needed
Considering I don't know of anyone who would ever call x86 anything 'big iron', I find it hard to believe a guy who started writing a kernel for himself at home on a 386 PC would say something like that.
Re:Why (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
SUpposed you got a mail from bill gates asking for a phone from your company because your phone factory has made a phone running windows mobile on it. What would you do?
The point is that famous people generally don't ask... they get sent stuff unsolicited a fair bit. At the Oscars, when you hear of someone's $100,000 necklace from Saks Fifth Avenue, do you really think the celebrity went out and spent their own money on that necklace? Hell no... that's Saks renting it (perhaps gifting it for smaller items) and getting free promotion. Saks is hoping all the non-famous rich people who watch the Oscars go out and buy the necklace.
In Linus' case, however, perhaps he's critical enough about phones that it's actually a risk to send him one. If he writes a bad review, the company who manufactures it and sent it to him has just shot itself in the foot.
Re:Why (Score:1, Insightful)
Ditto.
ObCarAnalogy: It's like listening to the Woz yammer on about how he doesn't understand how cruise control systems work.
Re:stupid Linus (Score:4, Insightful)
Except as soon as anyone finds out that he accepted money for expressing his opinion, people will value his opinion a whole hell of a lot less.
There is a lesson to learn there (Score:5, Insightful)
The lesson is: Even people famous for endless tinkering still like a simple, clean user experience once in a while.
Design your software with this in mind.
Re:Why (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not "supposed" to care, it's just that a lot of us do as result of him being a celebrity among geeks. Besides, his viewpoint is more likely to be closer to ours, as a fellow geek, than that of Steve Jobs or any such marketeer that gets published by pop media.
This article certainly raised *my* interest in the Nexus One. Not enough to buy it blindly, but at least give it some consideration along with the N900 I was eyeing before.
Re:Why (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just more evidence of societies celebrity worship.
Re:So he uses the phone for GPS While Driving? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most "in dash" GPs's are inferior than a $99.00 pocket cheapie.
Why? well the Updates for in dash units are typically so outlandish that nobody buys them A buddy of mine has a BMW 525i that it will cost him $399.00 for the map data update discs, he bought a pocket garmin unit he stuck to the windshield.. I buy a new $99.00 garmin yearly and that not only gives me a new map data set, but new hardware to boot!
Plus I get POI data. press one button and it will tell me that the next two exits have gas stations and restaurants..
Nope, it's dumb to spend a couple grand on an in dash unit and then pay out the butt yearly for updates.
Re:He bought one? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Doesn't hate."
Dammned with faint praise... [reference.com]
Re:There is a lesson to learn there (Score:5, Insightful)
Even people famous for endless tinkering still like a simple, clean user experience once in a while.
Once in a while? I find that I want to tinker with the subjects in which I am most interested, and prefer drool-proof interfaces the rest of the time. FOSS at its (unusual) best makes tinkering possible but not necessary. Programs should work well off the shelf but be readily amenable to user modification if the user cares to.
Re:but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps, unlike celebrities the masses drool over, Linus's endorsement, let alone mere use, isn't worth that much. Frankly, I don't care what phone, dental floss, bike, or anything else he uses.
Your point is well taken, though. If you want to give away free samples, giving them to notorious critics of mostly everything is probably not a good idea.
Re:stupid Linus (Score:3, Insightful)
You ever stop and think that a person who developed the core of an OS and gave it away isn't in it for the money?
I think if more people behaved like Linus this would be a more pleasant world to live in.
Re:Why (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Only a couple of days (Score:3, Insightful)
The iphone is multi-tasking for those built in apps that are allowed to. Even as a developer I am perfectly fine with this
as I know it keeps craplications from installing service listeners, ram chewers and other junk to my device. In use and in development
I have never seen the need for it on a phone device. All applications are required to save and have the ability to resume
when restarted so I really don't see the big deal about it. As a end user it just plain works and keeps the devices fairly junk
free which keeps the end users happy.
Re:He bought one? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the "doesn't hate" line doesn't appear anywhere in Linus' words. His actual statement about the Nexus One is not "faint" at all.
From Linus' own blog (TFA):
"But I have to admit, the Nexus One is a winner. I wasn't enthusiastic about buying a phone on the internet sight unseen, but the day it was reported that it finally had the pinch-to-zoom thing enabled, I decided to take the plunge. I've wanted to have a GPS unit for my car anyway, and I thought that google navigation might finally make a phone useful. And it does. What a difference! I no longer feel like I'm dragging a phone with me "just in case" I would need to get in touch with somebody - now I'm having a useful (and admittedly pretty good-looking) gadget instead."
That doesn't sound anything like "damning with faint praise" now, does it?
Re:So he uses the phone for GPS While Driving? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a lot easier than stuffing rolls of coins and wads of cash up your rectum. More hygienic too.
That's more of a long-term strategy. [comedycentral.com]
Re:There is a lesson to learn there (Score:4, Insightful)
Even people famous for endless tinkering still like a simple, clean user experience once in a while...
... especially if it's something like a phone.
Honestly, I'm not a super-geeky tech genius, but I like to screw around with computers and that has lead to a career in IT. However, I learned a long time ago that I like to keep a separation between "the gadgets that I tinker with" and "the gadgets I depend on." The two can't really be the same, because if I'm screwing around with something long enough, I *will* break it. I'll probably also fix it, but it might take hours or days.
I wan't my phone to work all the time, and therefore I don't want a phone that I need to tinker with.
Re:I know I'm old fashioned, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who works in a technical or managerial capacity for a very large corporation will find themselves quite fired for that
Ain't my fault that people sign contracts they shouldn't. I've worked in IT for a couple of reasonably large companies, in one case as the sole IT support, and am now working for a university. One of the first questions I'm asked is always "would you be willing to be on call 24 hours a day," and my answer is always "No. I'll work my butt off for you during the day, and if there's an emergency and I'm reachable I'll come help, but I'm not going to put my life on hold while I work here." Some companies weren't willing to hire me, some respected the fact that I was going to state up front what I was and wasn't willing to do. Sounds to me like you don't hate your cell-phone, you hate your job, or at least the contract you signed.
Re:Mislabelled (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, Stallman would find Linux on nexus one to be a fairly reasonable description, since it contains no GNU code.
This is because unlike on the average GNU/Linux system where there is more GNU code than code from any other single project, so the name GNU would be applicable, except that would be misleading, since it would not really be using the GNU operating system, since that would use Hurd. So GNU/Linux is the next best name.
For Android, more code on the system comes from the Android project than from any other system. Further unlike GNU android by default uses the Linux kernel[1], so saying Android/Linux is just a bit redundant.
[1] At the moment AFAIK no other kernel is possible, but porting Android to say a BSD based kernel is still quite possible.
Re:He bought one? (Score:3, Insightful)
Linus wrote a kernel not a GUI.
Oh, and I think you meant "ease of use".
Other than that, great post!
Re:He bought one? (Score:3, Insightful)
Chris DiBona and other people have stated that it's a fork.
Its a fork only to the degree that anyone who developers a device driver is forking the kernel - which is to say its not. Its a "fork" in the most general of layman's expressions. Technically its not a fork at all. A fork is a divergent source tree. This is not a divergent source tree. This is the official source tree plus a driver. That's a huge difference.
If you want to call it a "fork", fine, but technically that's not accurate. With this definition of fork, every distribution and every device which runs Linux, has a "fork".