
Linux at 25: Q&A with Linus Torvalds - Jerry2
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/linux-at-25-qa-with-linus-torvalds
======
doctorpangloss
> 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.

~~~
Anderkent
>Who actually believes things like inbound sales will actually save the world?
Containerization? Restaurant reservations? Ad mediation?

What's this obsession with 'saving the word'? You don't have to 'save the
world' to be doing something useful. Restaurant reservations make the world
better for people; that's what actually matters.

Unless you're working on something like AI safety, or something that helps
people make correct decisions in high-impact positions (military? politics?),
you're not saving the world.

~~~
digi_owl
Seems to be part of the "social justice" culture that has been taken root in
universities as of late (though i have also seen it labeled "victim culture").

You can't simply exist to make good products, you have to have some kind of
life altering/improving purpose behind every breath you take or you are part
of "the problem".

~~~
Tenhundfeld
I respectfully disagree. I remember hearing that phrase when discussing career
options in the late 90's. It probably goes back further. People rarely mean it
literally. It's typically shorthand for the idea of making the world a better
place, often as a contrast to focusing solely on material compensation. Also,
if you do an ngram search on Google Books, you'll see similar phrases spiking
in use in the early 90's.

To your point though, you do see an awful lot of articles about how
millennials are placing more emphasis on "personal fulfillment" than previous
generations. I don't know how true that actually is, but I think it supports
your point of people now talking more about doing good, not just building
something valuable.

I don't think that's entirely bad though. If you have the luxury of choice,
it's good to think about how you and your career focus impact the world. It's
good to want to leave the world better than you found it.

However, my problem with the idea is that people approach it at such a shallow
level. For example, I did a chunk of consulting work for a major vendor to
pharmaceutical companies. My team helped them streamline a bunch of business
processes and optimize software systems, saving them (low) millions of dollars
per year. On the one hand, you could describe that as us just helping a giant
corporation improve its bottom line. On the other hand, our improvements had a
direct impact on clinical trials getting bid out and approved significantly
faster with better end-to-end reporting and more automated safety checks
during the trial. So, was that "saving the world"? Meh, not really. I was
doing it for the money and joy of working on a solid team. But I did like the
fact that in a small way our work was improving the efficiency of a global
system that creates new live-improving, life-saving treatments (and admittedly
some bad ones too).

I think I kind of lost the thread of my argument. :) My point is just that
people have been considering the personal fulfillment part of their careers
for a very long time, e.g., see Maslow's 1943 hierarchy of needs, and I think
talk of saving the world is just a specific flavor of that general idea.

~~~
Anderkent
I definitely agree personal fulfilment is important. But this argument doesn't
really apply to the disparaging way OP talked about people working on
'restaurant reservations' or containerization.

------
e19293001
> 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-
Fascic...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Computer-Programming-Volume-
Fascicle/dp/0201853922) (Chapter 1.4.1 page 64)

~~~
munificent
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
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.

------
VeejayRampay
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
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
> 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
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.

~~~
ktRolster
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.

------
pcote
> 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.

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

~~~
gkya
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.

------
dcdevito
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.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "I just wish there was a bit more commercial support for a true polished,
> seamless desktop Linux experience "

You may be interested in Elementary OS, it could be just what you were looking
for:

[https://elementary.io](https://elementary.io)

~~~
dcdevito
I've used Elementary exclusively for a month. I found it lacking many built in
tools and utilities, and the UI an OSX ripoff and also rather stripped down
and limited.

~~~
rhodysurf
What built in tools and utilities did you find it missing?

------
verbify
> 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
"We're going to build a firewall, and make Microsoft pay for it"

------
frozenport
>>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!

------
known
Thank you, Linus.

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

------
cm2187
> 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.

~~~
sliekasbekelniu
My grandfather (85 Years Old) is using linux for 5 years now. Never got a call
to fix or do something.. (Installed KDE based distro)

My Parents (55) share a laptop at home (about 1 year now), installed Fedora
(default GNOME) - never got a call.

My Youger Brother (18, finishing High-School this year) uses Ubuntu, for 4
years I think, I've convinced him that he could still play games there if
wanted.. I get calls from him only when he wants to run some game that needs
some advanced Wine tweaking and it involves command like (otherwise he is just
using Play On Linux I think or whatever - I just don't game).

None of them is computer savvy or computer literate...

They all use different major Linux DE.. And they all seem to just be fine!

My Wife (27) currently uses Elementary OS (With Pantheon DE, which is not a
major DE as we call them) - she's also nor computer literate nor savvy, and
also using the Linux just fine!

The only problem I see, which rises from my wifes experience, there is no
simple Paint alternative, were you'd have very basic options (cropping,
rotating and maybe some brush/text) with a decent UI to make changes to a
photo/image.. Same goes for easy PDF editing, but I already made her master
Inkscape, but still - something easier and more straightforward would be
awesome.

So the lack of software is still true for linux in 2016 in certain areas. I
could convert a lot of audio/video editing people to linux, but there is just
not enough professional grade software for them on linux..

In the end - apparently average Joe can use Linux today for browsing internet,
viewing pdfs and doing Libre Office stuff just as well as on any other
operating system (Windows, OS X)..

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "The only problem I see, which rises from my wifes experience, there is no
> simple Paint alternative, were you'd have very basic options (cropping,
> rotating and maybe some brush/text) with a decent UI to make changes to a
> photo/image"

How about Krita? It's more powerful than a basic Paint app but the UI looks
just as intuitive.

[https://krita.org/features/highlights/](https://krita.org/features/highlights/)

~~~
Rezo
The webpage looks fantastic! Let's give Krita a shot.

I'm running arguable the most common Linux distro on this planet, Ubuntu 14.04
LTS. Let's follow the instructions, I like that they explicitly support
Ubuntu. All right, three easy commands I'm familiar with (add PPA, update &
install). That was easy! Let's launch it...

> krita: Critical Error Essential application components could not be found.
> This might be an installation issue. Try restarting, running
> kbuildsycoca4.exe or reinstalling.

I'm sure I'll figure it out, but a great first impression it isn't.

~~~
majewsky
If it's ksycoca4-related, try

    
    
      kbuildsycoca4 --no-incremental && sudo kbuildsycoca4 --global --no-incremental
    

Ugly, but it gets the job done. I don't seem to have needed that with KDE 5
applications, so maybe they fixed that, and Krita just needs to update (which
AFAIK they're already working on).

