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Profile of Linus Torvalds
- thiagowfx 11y agoMisleading title. I'd say click bait. It talks about Linus and Linux but not about the "future without him" part.
- dang 11y agoOk, we changed the title to something generic. Suggestions for a better title are welcome, as always.
- emodendroket 11y agoI'd go so far as to say this is too generic, but what do I know? In any case I thought the original title was better.
- dang 11y agoIt is too generic, but I can't think of anything better. The original isn't accurate. Suggestions are welcome.
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoActually, it does talk about the future without him, though that is perhaps not the primary focus of the article.
- arca_vorago 11y agoMy main criticism of the linux ecosystem is this: The many eyes theory is broken due to complexity and amount of code, and hence the primary way to the future is in reduction of both (loc and complexity thereof). At over 10 million loc these days, linux has become unweildy for even the most experienced kernel hacker to really understand. This is why I think microkernels like Minix 3 have a bright future as their development progresses. (Minix 3 has <15k loc)
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoHere's the problem: At what rate do microkernels like Minix 3 progress? Compared to Linux, they progress glacially. And, when Minix 3 has as much functionality as Linux does, how many loc will it have? I grant you that you might have some efficiency from the (assumedly) better architecture, but how much? Would Minix 3 have 5M loc? Would it be really understandable at that point? (Perhaps more than Linux, because of more modularity. Still, you're essentially comparing a robust product to a nowhere-near-production-ready proof-of-concept. It's very much not apples-to-apples.)
- arca_vorago 11y agoI completely agree, but one thing to keep in mind is that Minix 3 just relatively recently got it's BSD license, and I think that was it's main limiting factor in the past. As for how it progresses, I can't predict the future, but I think something similar to it could easily get a good boost if it was embraced/pushed in the sector it's best at, eg embedded devices and iot. I work along-side scada systems and am constantly appalled at the state of security on systems.
- dctoedt 11y agoTrivia: In the video he pronounces the first syllable of his first name as lie; Wikepedia has an audio file [1] in which someone pronounces it as lee. Perhaps he uses the former to conform to expectations of American English speakers who are used to Linus Pauling and the Linus character in the Peanuts comic strip. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Sv-Linus_Torvalds2.ogg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Sv-Linus...
- gtk40 11y ago"I'm Lee-nus Torvalds and I pronounce 'Lee-nux' as 'Lee-nux.'"
- Nux 11y agohttp://dl.nux.ro/audio/linus-says-linux.oga http://dl.nux.ro/audio/linus-says-linux.oga
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoHis voice has gotten deeper and his accent has gotten better in all these years since :)
- andrewbinstock 11y agoDuring the early days of Linux's emergence, it was pronounced"Lie-nux", "Lin-ux," and "Lee-nux" by various groups of users. Finally, Lin-ux became the standard pronunciation b/c Torvalds explained that in Finnish his name was pronounced Lin-us, not Lie-nus. Given that he's spent most of his life in the US, he may have subsequently decided to "americanize" the pronunciation.
- amyjess 11y agoIn Revolution OS (made around 2000), he explained that he pronounces it differently depending on what language he's speaking. He gave examples in English, Swedish, and Finnish.
- malkia 11y agoThere are some programmers on the planet that I just don't know how to they do the things they do: Linus Torvalds, Mike Pall (luajit), Edi Weitz (Common Lisp) and several others, but these were the ones I always remmember from my limited exposure to the unlimited world of operating systems, languages, environments and virtual machinery...
- baldfat 11y agoI feel like I read this story every 6 months.
- pschastain 11y agoI stopped reading when the author referred to Linux as an operating system.
- acveilleux 11y agoWhile it's only a Kernel, common, if sloppy, usage for the last 20 years has been to refer to any distro as Linux. And, well, the Kernel is really the only common things between the various distros these days.
- emodendroket 11y agoWow, Richard Stallman's posting here. What an honor.
- knicholes 11y agoIs this sarcasm, or is Stallman really posting here? What is his username?
- knicholes 11y agoI don't understand the downvotes. Is there something wrong with asking questions?
- anta40 11y agoI don't think Stallman himself would like to waste his time on HN :p
- emodendroket 11y agoPretty hard to use HN through wget.
- bra-ket 11y agoyou can use lynx: http://lynx.isc.org/ http://lynx.isc.org/
- hoopd 11y ago> Linus Torvalds is the creator and sole arbiter of the Linux operating system Well, yeah, but the first rule of journalism is to know your audience and I'd bet if you asked the readers of Bloomberg to name a few operating systems they'd say "Windows, OSX, Android, Lin..Lin...Linux." How many would list things like Darwin or kFreeBSD?
- ksk 11y agoAs an aside, how does Linus come across as a grouch? Like any other normal human being that expresses a range of emotions, he might have exhibited an imperfect control on his temper/tone. People are way too judgemental / thin skinned these days.
- Trufa 11y agoI am a very thick skinned person, I like people joking about me and like to joke about others, but let's get not confused about Linus, he's quite a character, I personally really like him (as far as I know him, basically his internet persona), but I can perfectly understand how it doesn't fit with a lot of people. I find the following phrase hilarious: >> I find people who think open-source is anti-capitalism to be kind of naive and slightly stupid. Now, even if I find it particularly funny, I'm not sure if that's the best face for open source, maybe someone less confrontative and more politically correct would be better suited, but he is who he is, and his contribution to open source, well, need no explanation. Even so, I wonder if Linux and open source in general would benefit from having a more friendly / approachable face and have Linus in the technical side of things. It's not something that's easy to change though because it wasn't a decision, it's something that just is.
- ksk 11y agoWell, I think that instead people should be more accepting towards others' personal imperfections. Political correctness should be avoided at all costs because it's by definition a kind of dishonest manipulation.
- cpncrunch 11y agoI don't think it's "political correctness" to prefer not to be verbally abused. Linus has admitted that he doesn't care about people: http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-why-he-isnt-nice-i-dont-care-about-you/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29 http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-wh...
- dougmany 11y agoI have the same model keyboard as in the video! Just thought I would share.
- jdecuyper 11y agoWhich model is it?
- jomclaughlin 11y agoDude is 45 years old and we are already planning for his death. In other industries he would just be hitting his stride. In this one we are getting fitted for diapers.
- dmix 11y agoIs the tech industry really the only one that asks the "what happens if you [the founder] gets hit by a bus tomorrow?" question.
- mr_sturd 11y agoPerhaps just of the ones where [the founder] has their feet still firmly on the ground.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoWe care about Linus dying because he is Linux. The BDFL model makes a project more dependent on one person than it really should be.
- sampo 11y ago"Torvalds released the Linux operating system from his college dorm room in Finland in 1991." Apparently the reporter assumed that everyone who goes to college, lives in a dorm room. But in this case that was not true.
- wnewman 11y ago"It's weird that a person who can come off as a real grouch has managed to be such a supremely effective dictator." It's weird that a writer at the level of Bloomberg would be so weirdly dogmatic about this. To the best of my knowledge there is nothing weird about capable people being attracted to a leader who is good at identifying actual problems and is grouchily intolerant of those actual problems attracting capable people. Nor anything weird about such a leader motivating the people who are attracted; nor anything weird about such a leader getting high performance out of the organization. Supposed examples are not exactly scarce in business, military, scientific, sports, and entertainment off the top of my head, and as far as I know they're mostly true, not misleading legends. In most cases I only know second-hand, and I could be mistaken or misled. But the most straightforward interpretation of the evidence seems to be that successful doesn't-suffer-fools-lightly leadership is a pretty common pattern in sharp results-oriented endeavours. In contrast, it would make much more sense if a sentence like that in a profile ended with "...has managed to be such a supremely effective automobile salesman;" as far as I know retail sales is not full of examples of grouchy doesn't-suffer-fools-lightly successes. But managing sharply goal-oriented organizations? Who would think that's inconsistent with what's reported about Linus here? Even the prima donna antipattern of being a loose cannon who is flakily grouchy can be somewhat consistent with success --- people will put up with irritating inefficient prima donna stuff if there are enough compensating advantages. But I don't think the article establishes that's what's going on, and as far as I know it's uncommon for knowledgeable people to think that's going on. Success always breeds some level of resentment, and some fraction of people will jump to unusual conclusions, and many thousands of knowledgeable people know of Linus, so I assume there are some knowledgeable people out there who believe that he's an unreasonable prima donna. But I can't think of any individual to nominate as particularly likely to believe this.
- soong 11y ago"Linux was once 10,000 lines of code and required part-time tending. It’s now 19 million lines of code, and changing it involves a complex hierarchy." Just wondered: 19 MLOC all driver code included, right?
- castratikron 11y agoGrabbed 4.0.5 from kernel.org and counted 19314709 lines.
- zuron7 11y agoThe most annoying part of this article is that the reporter refers to the Linux Kernel as the Linux Operating System.