4 ms·

Linus Torvalds calls OS X's file-system "utter crap"

20 points by nreece 19y ago

davidw 19y ago
Uh, that's not quite the whole quote... > "I don't think they're equally flawed - I think Leopard is a much better system," he said. "(But) OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary."
- reitzensteinm 19y ago
  Good catch. What an annoying, attention seeking, karma whoring title. What's next, 100 Ron Paul stories? :(
- michaelneale 19y ago
  yes the file system is a worry. But that headline is totally wrong.
  - lisper 19y ago
    What's wrong with the file system?
    - imsteve 19y ago
      The layout, the naming.
    - xirium 19y ago
      HFS has some cruft from pre-Unix implementations. However, this cruft allows you use the filing system on older versions of MocOS. HFS implements swap space as a hidden file. HFS+ implements journalling in same way. If you boot an older version of MocOS then you temporarily lose journalling. This is the behaviour that you'd want. However, some bits are messy, including directory seperators, Unicode file names, file forks and instant indexing of file names.
      - Kitto 19y ago
        Thanks for the explanation.
      - michaelneale 19y ago
        There was talk of ZFS for a while I think? I guess it will be post leopard now.
        wmf 19y ago
        ZFS is an alpha-quality optional add-on in Leopard; I guess most users won't see it until later.
        manvsmachine 19y ago
        last time I heard, ZFS was going to be supported in the server version first.
agentbleu 19y ago
Tosser
trekker7 19y ago
if the title's quote was what Torvalds actually said, this would be the funniest news post of the week
stillmotion 19y ago
He sort of bends the question like Hillary. He first puts down his competition, then curves the question back to his own product allowing himself to do some nice PR work for free. He's just looking out for his best interests.
tx 19y ago
That's the most uninteresting of things he said. The real value of the article were his thoughts on hardware vs software cost. Every hardware manufacturer must LOVE Linux for its own sake. And not just Asians, I would add. Ultimately, if DELL wants to make more money off each PC, they should switch to Linux. And now just vanilla distro, but their own unique flavor, with their own open source drivers for some unique hardware, similar to Apple's multi-touch. Right now that extra "software money" allowed per-PC is spent on Microsoft licenses. Software is the king. Our startup (hardware + software) recently got acquired precisely because of our small software team - the other 80% of the company (hardware) wasn't of much value to the acquirer.

20 points by nreece 19y ago

Uh, that's not quite the whole quote... > "I don't think they're equally flawed - I think Leopard is a much better system," he said. "(But) OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary."

reitzensteinm 19y ago
Good catch. What an annoying, attention seeking, karma whoring title. What's next, 100 Ron Paul stories? :(
michaelneale 19y ago
yes the file system is a worry. But that headline is totally wrong.
- lisper 19y ago
  What's wrong with the file system?
  - imsteve 19y ago
    The layout, the naming.
  - xirium 19y ago
    HFS has some cruft from pre-Unix implementations. However, this cruft allows you use the filing system on older versions of MocOS. HFS implements swap space as a hidden file. HFS+ implements journalling in same way. If you boot an older version of MocOS then you temporarily lose journalling. This is the behaviour that you'd want. However, some bits are messy, including directory seperators, Unicode file names, file forks and instant indexing of file names.
    - Kitto 19y ago
      Thanks for the explanation.
    - michaelneale 19y ago
      There was talk of ZFS for a while I think? I guess it will be post leopard now.
      - wmf 19y ago
        ZFS is an alpha-quality optional add-on in Leopard; I guess most users won't see it until later.
        manvsmachine 19y ago
        last time I heard, ZFS was going to be supported in the server version first.

agentbleu 19y ago

Tosser

trekker7 19y ago

if the title's quote was what Torvalds actually said, this would be the funniest news post of the week

stillmotion 19y ago

He sort of bends the question like Hillary. He first puts down his competition, then curves the question back to his own product allowing himself to do some nice PR work for free. He's just looking out for his best interests.

tx 19y ago

That's the most uninteresting of things he said. The real value of the article were his thoughts on hardware vs software cost. Every hardware manufacturer must LOVE Linux for its own sake. And not just Asians, I would add. Ultimately, if DELL wants to make more money off each PC, they should switch to Linux. And now just vanilla distro, but their own unique flavor, with their own open source drivers for some unique hardware, similar to Apple's multi-touch. Right now that extra "software money" allowed per-PC is spent on Microsoft licenses. Software is the king. Our startup (hardware + software) recently got acquired precisely because of our small software team - the other 80% of the company (hardware) wasn't of much value to the acquirer.