Super Volatile

Apr 22, 2012 / 1:49pm

An Interview With Linus Torvalds

So my model is kind of a reverse “end result justifies the means”. Hell no, that’s the stupidest saying in the history of man, and I’m not even saying that because it has been used to make excuses for bad behavior. No, it’s the worst possible kind of saying because it totally misses the point of everything.

It’s simply not the end that matters at all. It’s the means – the journey. The end result is almost meaningless. If you do things the right way, the end result *will* be fine too, but the real enjoyment is in the doing, not in the result.

Desktop Linux: Difference engine: Free is too expensive

That said, even the latest KDE distributions are proving just as annoying to set up as Gnome versions. Your correspondent blames the rapid upgrade cycle for leaving too many features with rough edges, too many wonky drivers and utilities, and too many unchecked regressions (bugs caused by changes) in the kernel. All that Linux developers seem to want to do these days is add cool new features, rather than squish existing bugs and make the software more useable.

The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop

I remember the first time I used Linux. A friend of mine installed Fedora 2 on my personal computer and there was a glitch in GRUB that prevented me from booting in Windows. My ethernet card wasn’t supported so I was left without Internet. I asked my friend can I at least watch a few movies while he brought me a patched version of the buggy GRUB. He told me - you need to compile MPlayer from sources with several optimization, you need windows video codecs, etc. At the time this excited me a lot - adventure, excitement. I learned A LOT by using Linux non-stop for so long time. But at some point you stop learning exciting things and are just stuck with tedious things you have to keep doing over and over again. And as I already mentioned - I don’t want my time wasted, I want to get the job done with minimum hassle.

On the scalability of Linus

The Linux kernel development process stands out in a number of ways; one of those is the fact that there is exactly one person who can commit code to the "official" repository. There are many maintainers looking after various subsystems, but every patch they merge must eventually be accepted by Linus Torvalds if it is to get into the mainline.

a/esr-sharing

You are a brilliant implementor, more able than me and possibly (I say this after consideration, and in all seriousness) the best one in the Unix tradition since Ken Thompson himself. As a consequence, you suffer the curse of the gifted programmer -- you lean on your ability so much that you've never learned to value certain kinds of coding self-discipline and design craftsmanship that lesser mortals *must* develop in order to handle the kind of problem complexity you eat for breakfast.

Krzysztof Szafranek's link blog

linux

An Interview With Linus Torvalds

Desktop Linux: Difference engine: Free is too expensive

The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop

On the scalability of Linus

a/esr-sharing

Tags

Get Updates