11 ms·

Linux at 25: Q&A with Linus Torvalds

304 points by Jerry2 11y ago

pcote 11y ago
> The fact that I didn’t really know where it would end up meant that I was perhaps more open to outside suggestions and influence than I would have been if I had a very good idea of what I wanted to accomplish. Not sure if I'm projecting or not but I think I've noticed this too. When I do projects that have some kind of grand goal, few people seem to care and I find I work mostly in isolation. Lots of pride and not a lot of fun. On the other hand, when I do a project where the thinking is "Let's screw around, quickly throw stuff out there, and see how people react to it", I tend to get a lot more interesting feedback. Even for smart people, there's something about a friendly game of "idiot ball" that seems to attract other people to come out and play too. Torvalds probably plays that game better than most.
VeejayRampay 11y ago
To this day I still can't believe the same person gave us Linux and git. The person might not be the most palatable, but what incredible feats of engineering he's capable of.
- mbrock 11y ago
  Yet in a way, both Linux and git are products of laziness... the kind of laziness that Larry Wall called a programmer's virtue. Linux is a pretty standard Unix kernel clone that got traction as an x86 kernel, combined with the GNU userland and various distributions. Git was intentionally designed to be "simple and stupid." It's extremely fast and reliable because of this simplicity, and because Linus knows how filesystems and kernel caches work. So I agree that Linus has helped bring about some remarkable things. But it's not because he's an ultra-productive genius. He has a knack for C coding, an impatient and "lazy" attitude, and a lot of help. And I think he belongs to this kinda older school of hacking, part of which is his rudeness toward bad patches. The GPL is also a big part of these success stories.
  - TorKlingberg 11y ago
    > It's extremely fast and reliable because of this simplicity, and because Linus knows how filesystems and kernel caches work. I would add an additional reason that may be unpopular here: It is written in C. A version control system doesn't need to be in C, and indeed Mercurial is written in Python, but C makes it faster.
    - randcraw 11y ago
      C also makes Linux uncomplicated in ways that hackers love. Because the language is simple and unsexy, the developer's focus is only on what you're doing. You don't have to learn someone else's model in order to add code -- a bunch of proprietary legacy data structures, conventions, and methods. You contribute directly to the koan of Unix in its native tongue, with minimimal mental impedence.
      - mbrock 11y ago
        And with Git, for example, you know that the project you're contributing to won't be dependent on some strange runtime, so all kinds of people and projects will find it easier to trust it as a core part of their infrastructure... so long as the project can maintain a reputation of secure coding practices...
      - ktRolster 11y ago
        Can you imagine if the kernel had been written in C++? With each iteration, C++ looks like a completely different language. If Linux had gone through those changes since the early 90s, it would look like a baroque conglomeration, like the strange twin-spires of chartres cathedral.
    - xorcist 11y ago
      The choice of language is uniquely important. Not so much that C "makes it faster", but it is so much more approachable. I believe that one reason that Linus started over with git instead of extending monotone was that the latter is C++.
  - 11y ago
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  Git is good under the hood but the interface is something of a mess of overloaded concepts, confusing terms and unexpected behavior. I'm somewhat disappointed that mercurial didn't become the de facto versioning standard instead.
  - VeejayRampay 11y ago
    It's likely that Linus built git around what worked for HIM and the LKML rather than for a wider audience. A lot of additional tools that you can plug on top of git-core make it more palatable. And that very plugging is made possible that the quality of the interface to the core.
  - david-given 11y ago
    I use hg-git as my git client; I get to use the hg semantics and UI but still talk to, well, github behind the scenes. There are a few rough edges but it works pretty well. But hg-git doesn't talk to the git CLI at all --- there's a Python library which speaks the wire protocol. So it'd be entirely possible to build a git workalike with a traditional DVCS user interface which seamlessly interoperates with git repositories. I wonder if anyone's already done this? ...dammit, I have too many stupid projects on the go as it is.
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    Really? Git and Mercurial seem about the same to me. Maybe I don't get down deep enough into the features?
- dankohn1 11y ago
  But other than Linux and git (and a diving app [0]), what has Linus ever done for us? [1] [0] https://github.com/torvalds/subsurface https://github.com/torvalds/subsurface [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso
cm2187 11y ago
> As to why the desktop is such a hard nut to crack—there are multiple reasons, but one of the big ones is simply user inertia. Being a Windows user having tried to get into linux, there is a lot more than user inertia. A few reasons: The desktop is almost dead, what we call desktop today is really laptops, with custom hardware for which the drivers are rarely all available for linux. Try telling my mum: "you need to compile your own drivers". The UI is extremely limited and you end up having to type command lines almost immediatly, to install a software or change a configuration. First if command lines had even a remote chance to go mainstream, DOS would still be around and Apple would have gone bust. Then, there are many distributions of linux that take a different syntax so it's not even trivial to find help on the web. And again, try shouting "RTFM!" to my mum. Linux developers seem to be in love with cryptic acronyms which means nothing is intuitive or simple. For Linux to take over it needs not only to match but to surpass its competition (MacOS, Windows) in term of simplicity and ease of use. And right now it is far far far behind. I am sure we can make the list longer. But blaming user inertia for linux not going mainstream is exactly what Microsoft was objecting when they were told that the new Windows 8 UI was a piece of shit.
- embik 11y ago
  > Linux developers seem to be in love with cryptic acronyms which means nothing is intuitive or simple. To add to that point: Linux exposes a lot of information in general. That's great for me as an experienced user, but is certainly overwhelming for the "normal" computer user. GNOME is trying to de-mystify the Linux desktop and I think they're on the right track, but they don't have widespread support among the Linux community. A lot of people use and/or like it, but a very vocal group (is it a minority? I don't know) is opposing their approach. They (this certain group that's well represented on e.g. /r/linux) sometimes seem to dismiss any work on UI or UX as not relevant or limiting their freedom.
  - cm2187 11y ago
    I am not an advanced enough linux user to compile a long list, but a couple of examples from the top of my head: Windows:"Scheduled tasks" Linux: "CRON" Windows: "windows Firewall" Linux:"iptable" or "UFW" Windows: "Windows Update" Linux: "apt-get update" These are not really the internal guts of linux, but rather relatively basic features. Using plain words is the first step of making things intuitive.
doctorpangloss 11y ago
> The fact that I didn’t really know where it would end up meant that I was perhaps more open to outside suggestions and influence than I would have been if I had a very good idea of what I wanted to accomplish. That openness to outside influences I think made it much easier, and much more interesting, for others to join the project. People didn’t have to sign on to somebody else’s vision, but could join with their own vision of where things should go. I think that helped motivate lots of people. This is so quintessentially Linus. He's criticizing this idealized tech startup CEO character with a big passionate vision, a kind of person which I've heard described as "the captain of a ship where as long as everyone is rowing in the same direction, it doesn't matter where the ship is going." We obviously understand that is preposterous, and yet there are lots of very smart people rowing together on ships that are going shitty places. Who actually believes things like inbound sales will actually save the world? Containerization? Restaurant reservations? Ad mediation? Linus's opinion is inviting and has obviously contributed to the longevity of what he is doing. Has he built a huge multi-billion dollar business? I guess not. Neither has Jimmy Wales, as an example. And yet the yield-to-community, my-vision-isn't-first philosophy has firmly solved problems in ways which seriously threaten corporations with billions of dollars to spend on making their own operating systems, drivers, hardware, etc. (e.g., Microsoft). He didn't just motivate lots of people. He motivated lots of very talented people, with little recruitment, no equity and little money, over decades, with diverse skills, better than far better equipped institutions. The open source model repeats this success story in lots of places, naturally, but few have been as influential. I think this philosophy of not "having to sign on to somebody else's vision" is essential.
- blfr 11y ago
  Containerization is a very cool idea for managing complexity. It already did wonders in the physical world for international trade. I don't think it's fair to list it along restaurant reservations.
- majewsky 11y ago
  > Has he built a huge multi-billion dollar business? He's built other people's multi-billion dollar businesses. :)
smonff 11y ago
My mother use Linux on the desktop. My father never touched a computer or connect to the internet. Please don't assert sexist things about "mums".
- ryanlol 11y ago
  Would you mind explaining how exactly is that comment sexist? His comment says absolutely nothing about women.
  - ibotty 11y ago
    It's the connection between not-computer-savvy and female and elderly.
    - ryanlol 11y ago
      He specifically said "my mum" how does that imply anything about females and the elderly in general.
      - vacri 11y ago
        It's a trope when talking about tech naifs to mention grandmothers as the stereotypical tech-clueless people.
        madez 11y ago
        The problem here goes deeper. The initial complaint about someone else mentioning observations has grown out of the attitude "it can not be what must no be". It’s dangerous when people deny reality in favour of ideology.
        ryanlol 11y ago
        He specifically didn't mention grandmothers though. And anyway, do you believe that "grandmothers" isn't a good example of a demographic that's largely not tech savvy? That's not a stereotype, it's a fact. And no, I don't think that "grandmothers" is a better example than for example "grandfathers". In any case, I'd be willing to bet that nobody would be spewing these absolutely absurd accusations of sexism if cm2187 had used "my grandfather" instead of "my mum".
frozenport 11y ago
>>Do you think Linux will still be under active development on its 50th anniversary? It has to be, with the current driver model in Linux!
e19293001 11y ago
> The thing about bad technical decisions is that you can always undo them. Yes, it can be very frustrating, and obviously there’s all the wasted time and effort, but at the same time even that is not usually really wasted in the end This words inspired me more as this has similar context as what Donald Knuth had said in his book The Art of Computer Programming[0]: > At this point, it is often a good idea to scrap everything and start over again at step 1, or even at step 0! This is not intended to be facetious remark; the time spent in getting this far has not been wasted, for we have learned a great deal about the problem. With hindsight, we will probably have discovered several improvements that could be made to the program's overall organization. [0] - http://www.amazon.com/The-Computer-Programming-Volume-Fascicle/dp/0201853922 http://www.amazon.com/The-Computer-Programming-Volume-Fascic... (Chapter 1.4.1 page 64)
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Even a negative result is data?
- munificent 11y ago
  I'm also a big fan of Fred Brooks' "The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. […] Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PlanToThrowOneAway http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PlanToThrowOneAway
meesterdude 11y ago
Linux really blew my mind as a kid. It showed me what real computers could do, and i have had many, many adventures under a linux house of one distro or another. I know I would not be anywhere today without linux. Lets see if I can come up with a list of everything i've used linux for: * Routers * DNS server * Email servers * VOIP PBX (still crazy that asterisk let me build my own PBX) * Web Servers * Monitoring * Virtualization * Desktops (I do all my dev in a linux VM) * Honeypots * data recovery liveCD * Automation * failover (DRBD) * IRC server * Print server * File server * Media center A lot of those would simply not have been feasible for a kid to do in his basement with old computers. Most of that list wasn't otherwise economically feasible to do on windows, or possible. Slackware taught me a lot. I really had to get my hands dirty there, and was using that as my secondary desktop for the later years in high school. And linux is certainly how I got into programming, via perl, bash and php. And thats what I do for a living now, as a rails dev (thanks DHH!). I NEVER would have thought that a kid (this kid) with developmental disabilities could be a programmer; i flunked out of programming in HS pretty early into it. The deepest of thanks to linus, and everyone that has created or contributed to open source projects. The socioeconomic impact of your work is beyond measure, all because you put sharing and collaborating with people around the world before profits. I hope you take a step back from time to time and look at it anew; its an unprecedented and wonderfully human thing; Open source represents the best parts of us.
dcdevito 11y ago
Linux has changed my life for sure, like others who have commented here. I just wish there was a bit more commercial support for a true polished, seamless desktop Linux experience (and more OEMs selling machines with it preinstalled). Google is the only company who has championed Linux for mass market success, but calling Android handsets and Chromebooks Linux computers makes me cringe a bit. But that's what makes it great, being so modular and flexible. On the flip side, Windows get bashed way too frequently. Say what you want, but since Win8 Windows has been fast, fluid and stable, and gaming and video performance are top notch. That's hard to walk away from when comparing to Linux.
- jhasse 11y ago
  > Android handsets and Chromebooks Linux computers makes me cringe a bit. Why?
  - chippy 11y ago
    I believe the comment was saying: calling Android handsets and Chromebooks "linux computers" makes me cringe (versus "both android handsets and chromebooks make me cringe") if that helps understand the context a bit more.
    - jhasse 11y ago
      Ups, yeah. Sorry I just missed copying the whole sentence by accident. I wanted to know why it makes him cringe to call them Linux computers ;)
      - skosch 11y ago
        Presumably because they're so far removed from the Linux-On-The-Desktop Experience™ we (the HN crowd) are familiar with. It's the tradeoff between mass-market UX and raw power and customizability, and Android/Chromebooks are at one end of the spectrum while what we associate with "Linux computers" is at the other.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
AlexAffe 11y ago
25 years of GNU + Linux and he manages to not mention Stallman or GNU once. Not once.
- smonff 11y ago
  Unfortunately. It's too bad that it don't focus a bit more on the ideological philosophy of GNU, even if, as far as I know, Torvalds don't care much about it. Especially for those who would like or dislike the ideology: those who disagree or for whom it don't make a sufficient reason to use it could get away from it, those who don't know could be attracted. In my personal experience, the ideological aspect is 90% of why I use GNU and Linux, and when I see all the people running a GNU/Linux desktop inside or outside the tech communities, I don't really agree with the idea that it "never became a significant presence on mainstream desktops". It does became mainstream for people with specific uses for various reasons (political, technical, ethical, etc.). For sure, it never became mainstream in supermarkets.
- gkya 11y ago
  I won't dismiss that he's been successful, but he's one of the people that I dislike the most in the tech industry. If GNU stuff didn't exist, he probably wouldn't even be able to compile and run his own work back in '91. All of the success of Linux is because there was a userland in search of a kernel. And if it wasn't for thousands of guys coding up drivers for Linux, Torvalds would probably end up an embedded guy in a washing-machine company. GNU has been crucial to the flourishment of community-developed software today, both with their effort in creating the tooling, and their effort in keeping it accessible and liberated. So, the Linux guys need to learn to say thank you, because it's for GNU that there is a Linux for which development they get paid and feed their families. After all, who cares about a kernel, as a user? For me, currently, if it supports the ath5k driver, and runs Emacs and supports POSIX, it's OK. I switched to FreeBSD, and, well, I didn't really notice anything.
AlexAffe 11y ago
25 years of GNU + Linux and he manages to not mention Stallman or GNU once. Not once.
known 11y ago
Thank you, Linus.
simonebrunozzi 11y ago
Still fascinated by the mistery of Hacker News. I posted this link a few hours before the OP, and got no traction.
verbify 11y ago
> S.C.: What’s the biggest challenge currently facing Linux? > L.T.: The kernel is actually doing very well. People continue to worry about things getting too complicated for people to understand and fix bugs. It’s certainly an understandable worry. But at the same time, we have a lot of smart people involved. I never thought Torvalds and Trump would say similar things.
- verbify 11y ago
  "We're going to build a firewall, and make Microsoft pay for it"
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

304 points by Jerry2 11y ago

pcote 11y ago

> The fact that I didn’t really know where it would end up meant that I was perhaps more open to outside suggestions and influence than I would have been if I had a very good idea of what I wanted to accomplish. Not sure if I'm projecting or not but I think I've noticed this too. When I do projects that have some kind of grand goal, few people seem to care and I find I work mostly in isolation. Lots of pride and not a lot of fun. On the other hand, when I do a project where the thinking is "Let's screw around, quickly throw stuff out there, and see how people react to it", I tend to get a lot more interesting feedback. Even for smart people, there's something about a friendly game of "idiot ball" that seems to attract other people to come out and play too. Torvalds probably plays that game better than most.

VeejayRampay 11y ago

To this day I still can't believe the same person gave us Linux and git. The person might not be the most palatable, but what incredible feats of engineering he's capable of.

mbrock 11y ago
Yet in a way, both Linux and git are products of laziness... the kind of laziness that Larry Wall called a programmer's virtue. Linux is a pretty standard Unix kernel clone that got traction as an x86 kernel, combined with the GNU userland and various distributions. Git was intentionally designed to be "simple and stupid." It's extremely fast and reliable because of this simplicity, and because Linus knows how filesystems and kernel caches work. So I agree that Linus has helped bring about some remarkable things. But it's not because he's an ultra-productive genius. He has a knack for C coding, an impatient and "lazy" attitude, and a lot of help. And I think he belongs to this kinda older school of hacking, part of which is his rudeness toward bad patches. The GPL is also a big part of these success stories.
- TorKlingberg 11y ago
  > It's extremely fast and reliable because of this simplicity, and because Linus knows how filesystems and kernel caches work. I would add an additional reason that may be unpopular here: It is written in C. A version control system doesn't need to be in C, and indeed Mercurial is written in Python, but C makes it faster.
  - randcraw 11y ago
    C also makes Linux uncomplicated in ways that hackers love. Because the language is simple and unsexy, the developer's focus is only on what you're doing. You don't have to learn someone else's model in order to add code -- a bunch of proprietary legacy data structures, conventions, and methods. You contribute directly to the koan of Unix in its native tongue, with minimimal mental impedence.
    - mbrock 11y ago
      And with Git, for example, you know that the project you're contributing to won't be dependent on some strange runtime, so all kinds of people and projects will find it easier to trust it as a core part of their infrastructure... so long as the project can maintain a reputation of secure coding practices...
    - ktRolster 11y ago
      Can you imagine if the kernel had been written in C++? With each iteration, C++ looks like a completely different language. If Linux had gone through those changes since the early 90s, it would look like a baroque conglomeration, like the strange twin-spires of chartres cathedral.
  - xorcist 11y ago
    The choice of language is uniquely important. Not so much that C "makes it faster", but it is so much more approachable. I believe that one reason that Linus started over with git instead of extending monotone was that the latter is C++.
- 11y ago
crdoconnor 11y ago
Git is good under the hood but the interface is something of a mess of overloaded concepts, confusing terms and unexpected behavior. I'm somewhat disappointed that mercurial didn't become the de facto versioning standard instead.
- VeejayRampay 11y ago
  It's likely that Linus built git around what worked for HIM and the LKML rather than for a wider audience. A lot of additional tools that you can plug on top of git-core make it more palatable. And that very plugging is made possible that the quality of the interface to the core.
- david-given 11y ago
  I use hg-git as my git client; I get to use the hg semantics and UI but still talk to, well, github behind the scenes. There are a few rough edges but it works pretty well. But hg-git doesn't talk to the git CLI at all --- there's a Python library which speaks the wire protocol. So it'd be entirely possible to build a git workalike with a traditional DVCS user interface which seamlessly interoperates with git repositories. I wonder if anyone's already done this? ...dammit, I have too many stupid projects on the go as it is.
- ktRolster 11y ago
  Really? Git and Mercurial seem about the same to me. Maybe I don't get down deep enough into the features?
dankohn1 11y ago
But other than Linux and git (and a diving app [0]), what has Linus ever done for us? [1] [0] https://github.com/torvalds/subsurface https://github.com/torvalds/subsurface [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso

cm2187 11y ago

> As to why the desktop is such a hard nut to crack—there are multiple reasons, but one of the big ones is simply user inertia. Being a Windows user having tried to get into linux, there is a lot more than user inertia. A few reasons: The desktop is almost dead, what we call desktop today is really laptops, with custom hardware for which the drivers are rarely all available for linux. Try telling my mum: "you need to compile your own drivers". The UI is extremely limited and you end up having to type command lines almost immediatly, to install a software or change a configuration. First if command lines had even a remote chance to go mainstream, DOS would still be around and Apple would have gone bust. Then, there are many distributions of linux that take a different syntax so it's not even trivial to find help on the web. And again, try shouting "RTFM!" to my mum. Linux developers seem to be in love with cryptic acronyms which means nothing is intuitive or simple. For Linux to take over it needs not only to match but to surpass its competition (MacOS, Windows) in term of simplicity and ease of use. And right now it is far far far behind. I am sure we can make the list longer. But blaming user inertia for linux not going mainstream is exactly what Microsoft was objecting when they were told that the new Windows 8 UI was a piece of shit.

embik 11y ago
> Linux developers seem to be in love with cryptic acronyms which means nothing is intuitive or simple. To add to that point: Linux exposes a lot of information in general. That's great for me as an experienced user, but is certainly overwhelming for the "normal" computer user. GNOME is trying to de-mystify the Linux desktop and I think they're on the right track, but they don't have widespread support among the Linux community. A lot of people use and/or like it, but a very vocal group (is it a minority? I don't know) is opposing their approach. They (this certain group that's well represented on e.g. /r/linux) sometimes seem to dismiss any work on UI or UX as not relevant or limiting their freedom.
- cm2187 11y ago
  I am not an advanced enough linux user to compile a long list, but a couple of examples from the top of my head: Windows:"Scheduled tasks" Linux: "CRON" Windows: "windows Firewall" Linux:"iptable" or "UFW" Windows: "Windows Update" Linux: "apt-get update" These are not really the internal guts of linux, but rather relatively basic features. Using plain words is the first step of making things intuitive.

doctorpangloss 11y ago

> The fact that I didn’t really know where it would end up meant that I was perhaps more open to outside suggestions and influence than I would have been if I had a very good idea of what I wanted to accomplish. That openness to outside influences I think made it much easier, and much more interesting, for others to join the project. People didn’t have to sign on to somebody else’s vision, but could join with their own vision of where things should go. I think that helped motivate lots of people. This is so quintessentially Linus. He's criticizing this idealized tech startup CEO character with a big passionate vision, a kind of person which I've heard described as "the captain of a ship where as long as everyone is rowing in the same direction, it doesn't matter where the ship is going." We obviously understand that is preposterous, and yet there are lots of very smart people rowing together on ships that are going shitty places. Who actually believes things like inbound sales will actually save the world? Containerization? Restaurant reservations? Ad mediation? Linus's opinion is inviting and has obviously contributed to the longevity of what he is doing. Has he built a huge multi-billion dollar business? I guess not. Neither has Jimmy Wales, as an example. And yet the yield-to-community, my-vision-isn't-first philosophy has firmly solved problems in ways which seriously threaten corporations with billions of dollars to spend on making their own operating systems, drivers, hardware, etc. (e.g., Microsoft). He didn't just motivate lots of people. He motivated lots of very talented people, with little recruitment, no equity and little money, over decades, with diverse skills, better than far better equipped institutions. The open source model repeats this success story in lots of places, naturally, but few have been as influential. I think this philosophy of not "having to sign on to somebody else's vision" is essential.

blfr 11y ago
Containerization is a very cool idea for managing complexity. It already did wonders in the physical world for international trade. I don't think it's fair to list it along restaurant reservations.
majewsky 11y ago
> Has he built a huge multi-billion dollar business? He's built other people's multi-billion dollar businesses. :)

smonff 11y ago

My mother use Linux on the desktop. My father never touched a computer or connect to the internet. Please don't assert sexist things about "mums".

ryanlol 11y ago
Would you mind explaining how exactly is that comment sexist? His comment says absolutely nothing about women.
- ibotty 11y ago
  It's the connection between not-computer-savvy and female and elderly.
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    He specifically said "my mum" how does that imply anything about females and the elderly in general.
    - vacri 11y ago
      It's a trope when talking about tech naifs to mention grandmothers as the stereotypical tech-clueless people.
      - madez 11y ago
        The problem here goes deeper. The initial complaint about someone else mentioning observations has grown out of the attitude "it can not be what must no be". It’s dangerous when people deny reality in favour of ideology.
      - ryanlol 11y ago
        He specifically didn't mention grandmothers though. And anyway, do you believe that "grandmothers" isn't a good example of a demographic that's largely not tech savvy? That's not a stereotype, it's a fact. And no, I don't think that "grandmothers" is a better example than for example "grandfathers". In any case, I'd be willing to bet that nobody would be spewing these absolutely absurd accusations of sexism if cm2187 had used "my grandfather" instead of "my mum".

frozenport 11y ago

>>Do you think Linux will still be under active development on its 50th anniversary? It has to be, with the current driver model in Linux!

e19293001 11y ago

> The thing about bad technical decisions is that you can always undo them. Yes, it can be very frustrating, and obviously there’s all the wasted time and effort, but at the same time even that is not usually really wasted in the end This words inspired me more as this has similar context as what Donald Knuth had said in his book The Art of Computer Programming[0]: > At this point, it is often a good idea to scrap everything and start over again at step 1, or even at step 0! This is not intended to be facetious remark; the time spent in getting this far has not been wasted, for we have learned a great deal about the problem. With hindsight, we will probably have discovered several improvements that could be made to the program's overall organization. [0] - http://www.amazon.com/The-Computer-Programming-Volume-Fascicle/dp/0201853922 http://www.amazon.com/The-Computer-Programming-Volume-Fascic... (Chapter 1.4.1 page 64)

digi_owl 11y ago
Even a negative result is data?
munificent 11y ago
I'm also a big fan of Fred Brooks' "The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. […] Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PlanToThrowOneAway http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PlanToThrowOneAway

meesterdude 11y ago

Linux really blew my mind as a kid. It showed me what real computers could do, and i have had many, many adventures under a linux house of one distro or another. I know I would not be anywhere today without linux. Lets see if I can come up with a list of everything i've used linux for: * Routers * DNS server * Email servers * VOIP PBX (still crazy that asterisk let me build my own PBX) * Web Servers * Monitoring * Virtualization * Desktops (I do all my dev in a linux VM) * Honeypots * data recovery liveCD * Automation * failover (DRBD) * IRC server * Print server * File server * Media center A lot of those would simply not have been feasible for a kid to do in his basement with old computers. Most of that list wasn't otherwise economically feasible to do on windows, or possible. Slackware taught me a lot. I really had to get my hands dirty there, and was using that as my secondary desktop for the later years in high school. And linux is certainly how I got into programming, via perl, bash and php. And thats what I do for a living now, as a rails dev (thanks DHH!). I NEVER would have thought that a kid (this kid) with developmental disabilities could be a programmer; i flunked out of programming in HS pretty early into it. The deepest of thanks to linus, and everyone that has created or contributed to open source projects. The socioeconomic impact of your work is beyond measure, all because you put sharing and collaborating with people around the world before profits. I hope you take a step back from time to time and look at it anew; its an unprecedented and wonderfully human thing; Open source represents the best parts of us.

dcdevito 11y ago

Linux has changed my life for sure, like others who have commented here. I just wish there was a bit more commercial support for a true polished, seamless desktop Linux experience (and more OEMs selling machines with it preinstalled). Google is the only company who has championed Linux for mass market success, but calling Android handsets and Chromebooks Linux computers makes me cringe a bit. But that's what makes it great, being so modular and flexible. On the flip side, Windows get bashed way too frequently. Say what you want, but since Win8 Windows has been fast, fluid and stable, and gaming and video performance are top notch. That's hard to walk away from when comparing to Linux.

jhasse 11y ago
> Android handsets and Chromebooks Linux computers makes me cringe a bit. Why?
- chippy 11y ago
  I believe the comment was saying: calling Android handsets and Chromebooks "linux computers" makes me cringe (versus "both android handsets and chromebooks make me cringe") if that helps understand the context a bit more.
  - jhasse 11y ago
    Ups, yeah. Sorry I just missed copying the whole sentence by accident. I wanted to know why it makes him cringe to call them Linux computers ;)
    - skosch 11y ago
      Presumably because they're so far removed from the Linux-On-The-Desktop Experience™ we (the HN crowd) are familiar with. It's the tradeoff between mass-market UX and raw power and customizability, and Android/Chromebooks are at one end of the spectrum while what we associate with "Linux computers" is at the other.
ZenoArrow 11y ago

AlexAffe 11y ago

25 years of GNU + Linux and he manages to not mention Stallman or GNU once. Not once.

smonff 11y ago
Unfortunately. It's too bad that it don't focus a bit more on the ideological philosophy of GNU, even if, as far as I know, Torvalds don't care much about it. Especially for those who would like or dislike the ideology: those who disagree or for whom it don't make a sufficient reason to use it could get away from it, those who don't know could be attracted. In my personal experience, the ideological aspect is 90% of why I use GNU and Linux, and when I see all the people running a GNU/Linux desktop inside or outside the tech communities, I don't really agree with the idea that it "never became a significant presence on mainstream desktops". It does became mainstream for people with specific uses for various reasons (political, technical, ethical, etc.). For sure, it never became mainstream in supermarkets.
gkya 11y ago
I won't dismiss that he's been successful, but he's one of the people that I dislike the most in the tech industry. If GNU stuff didn't exist, he probably wouldn't even be able to compile and run his own work back in '91. All of the success of Linux is because there was a userland in search of a kernel. And if it wasn't for thousands of guys coding up drivers for Linux, Torvalds would probably end up an embedded guy in a washing-machine company. GNU has been crucial to the flourishment of community-developed software today, both with their effort in creating the tooling, and their effort in keeping it accessible and liberated. So, the Linux guys need to learn to say thank you, because it's for GNU that there is a Linux for which development they get paid and feed their families. After all, who cares about a kernel, as a user? For me, currently, if it supports the ath5k driver, and runs Emacs and supports POSIX, it's OK. I switched to FreeBSD, and, well, I didn't really notice anything.

AlexAffe 11y ago

25 years of GNU + Linux and he manages to not mention Stallman or GNU once. Not once.

known 11y ago

Thank you, Linus.

simonebrunozzi 11y ago

Still fascinated by the mistery of Hacker News. I posted this link a few hours before the OP, and got no traction.

verbify 11y ago

> S.C.: What’s the biggest challenge currently facing Linux? > L.T.: The kernel is actually doing very well. People continue to worry about things getting too complicated for people to understand and fix bugs. It’s certainly an understandable worry. But at the same time, we have a lot of smart people involved. I never thought Torvalds and Trump would say similar things.

verbify 11y ago
"We're going to build a firewall, and make Microsoft pay for it"

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]