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Torvalds on Where Linux is Headed in 2008
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Nov 26, 2007 05:29 AM
from the prognostigatory-penguin-predictions dept.
from the prognostigatory-penguin-predictions dept.
Stony Stevenson writes "In an interview at the ITNews site, Linus Torvalds lays out his current excitement about the future of Linux. Torvalds is looking forward to hardware elements like solid-state drives, expects progress in graphics and wireless networking, and says the operating system is strong in virtualisation despite his personal lack of interest in the area. 'When you buy an OS from Microsoft, not only you can't fix it, but it has had years of being skewed by one single entity's sense of the market. It doesn't matter how competent Microsoft — or any individual company — is, it's going to reflect that fact. In contrast, look at where Linux is used. Everything from cellphones and other small embedded computers that people wouldn't even think of as computers, to the bulk of the biggest machines on the supercomputer Top-500 list. That is flexibility.'"
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Technology: Is Linus Torvalds Speaking for Linux Anymore? 417 comments
An anonymous reader writes to tell us CNET is currently running a story asking 'Is Linus Torvalds even speaking for Linux anymore?' It examines both Torvalds' recent public statements on other operating systems and his current approach towards Linux. The author wonders if his utopian view of how an operating system should be viewed and used is just too alien from what the majority of users are really looking for. "if it were up to Torvalds, beauty and intuition would take a backseat to functionality. But when you look at distributions like Ubuntu or OpenSuse, it looks like no one is paying attention. 'An OS should never have been something that people (in general) really care about: it should be completely invisible and nobody should give a flying [expletive] about it except the technical people.' Sure, that statement makes some sense, but in the grand scheme of things, it's the design and usability factor that makes the operating system much easier to use. And while both Mac OS X and Windows have their issues, for the average person, it makes more sense to use those than Linux."
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Desktop Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Desktop Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Desktop Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Desktop Linux (Score:5, Funny)
No, really, I'm just happy to see you.
Parent
Re:Desktop Linux (Score:4, Funny)
No, really, I'm just happy to see you.
As shown by a related post [slashdot.org]: "It grows every year."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What about users? (Score:3, Informative)
Here is one single little feature that I wish were fixed. I want to install VMWare on a Linux distro without having to need a compiler installed. I can do this on Windows, why not Linux?
For example I bought VMWare and I am forced to upgrade because my version is old, and something in the Linux headers has changed that needs a new patch to fix up. WTF... This is a prime reason why I have given up on Linux on the desktop. It just requires too much work
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Then run a linux distribution that is supported by vmware. You can't expect to run vmware on some random linux distro, no more then I can expect to run my Windows version of vmware on Windows mobile.
(And vmware 5.5, don't have any problems with the newer linux kernels. I am runnig it on 2.6.22 right now), so how old exactly is your wmvare?
Re:What about users? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is as follows:
http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-vmware-server-workstation-under-ubuntu-feisty [debuntu.org]
I tried using the prepared binary patches with Ubuntu, but they did not seem to work for me. The only thing that worked was to go back to an old Ubuntu version and then be done with it. AND not upgrade the Linux kernel.
I am tired of this. I am tired of needing a compiler installed. Tired of doing an installation of an installation. I just want it to be installed and running.
Now talking about getting VMWare to run on some random Linux distro. Actually I can expect that. I can install VMWare workstation on Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Vista, Windows 2000 Server, and Windows 2003 server without any hassles whatsoever! I can't say that of Linux.
Parent
Re:What about users? (Score:4, Informative)
You can run VMware on RHEL 3, 4 and 5 without any hassle whatsoever. If you want to use proprietary software, use a stable platform like RHEL or SLES or Ubuntu LTS. The reason Ubuntu and Fedora are able to release frequently is that they do not put much effort into binary compatibility.
What you don't seem to understand is that there is no such thing as a "Linux" desktop. There are Fedora desktops and Mandriva desktops and Debian deskstops and they are all different.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about users? (Score:4, Insightful)
> of an installation. I just want it to be installed and running.
What's to be tired of? It's Ubuntu/Debian. There's a meta package for this. Just install the meta package.
If vmware weren't more lame, they could do this as part of their installer.
This is strictly a packaging and engineering issue. Vmware insists on
making software that needs to engage in kernel level shenanigans and
won't bother to take the extra packaging effort that entails.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been waiting for over 10 years for this moment but I've finally been able to use Linux not just as a techo curiousity and plaything, but on my primary work and home machines. I can print with whatever I want, I can run just about any hardware, I can play any video or DVD, I can listen to any music, I have a decent Office competitor (The only thing I miss is a good Outlook clone - whatever you think otherwise, Outlook and Exchange is highly compellin
Re:Desktop Linux (Score:5, Funny)
*Are* there other options? Off the top of my head, I don't even know of any other enterprise-class fully automated virus retrieval and installation systems.
Parent
Re:Desktop Linux (Score:5, Informative)
The same Linux kernel, admittedly often configured in different ways and with different userland apps, runs on all these devices...
The mobile versions of windows are completely different, and have very little in common with the desktop and server versions.
I have a Nokia N800, which runs an embedded linux, i can compile all the same programs i use on my desktop linux machines. Even if you have the source, it's not easy to just recompile a windows program to run on windows mobile, and most programs dont come with source anyway.
As for supercomputers, windows is pretty laughable in this area, it's only used in fairly low end clusters and is horribly inefficient (all your cluster nodes need a videocard and local hd?), most of the serious supercomputers are running linux these days. As for performance, last time i saw a windows cluster in the top500 it consisted of 660 2.8ghz dual cpu dell poweredge servers, a machine using 600 dual cpu 2.8ghz poweredge servers of the same model and running linux was 50 places higher.
Parent
Re:Desktop Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Task Manager reports anything which is backed on disc as page file usage. This means any program you run contributes, because the executable and DLLs are already on disc, and Windows treats them as if they're part of the paging file (i.e. it can drop the program or library from memory if need be, because it knows it's still on disc).
You can prove this by disabling paging altogether, and then amuse yourself by looking at how much of the "page file" is in use.
Also, Windows does aggressively page stuff out, which in theory should boost performance by making more memory available for useful things like disc caches, but in practice does annoy me a bit as well.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oh yes, you're definitely right. I'm glad to see someone on slashdot who actually knows the windows operating system!
There are several consequences for treating executables and DLLs as page files and use them for swapping:
Re:Desktop Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Desktop Linux (Score:4, Informative)
At the risk of being pedantic, files are really anchored to inodes, and that's why you can delete or copy over an in-use file. Opening the file returns the inode to the opening process. From that point, you can "replace" or "delete" the file by pointing its directory entry to a new file/inode, or deleting the directory entry. But the filesystem code keeps track of the fact that someone is still using the inode, and doesn't let its space be reclaimed until it's unused.
OTOH, this introduces a new risk, especially where people brag about their uptimes. Let's boot our machine in January, and start all of its services after it's booted. Pretend for argument that one of those services is OpenSSH, and for instance it uses libwrap.so. Now let's have a fiasco like we did about 10 years ago, where someone put a compromised tcp-wrappers out there, and assume that this machine was installed during that timeframe. (I know that would be tough, because the evil tcp-wrappers was discovered and corrected within a few days, maybe even 1.) At this point sshd has attached the bogus libwrap.so to it's process. Now let's discover the evil tcp-wrappers and replace it with a good copy. At this point, we now have a good libwrap installed. All is well, right?
Wrong. At this point, any new code that starts will get the good libwrap. But any code that has been running since before the update is still pointing to the now-anonymous inode that contains the evil libwrap.
In order to propagate a library fix, services that depend on that fix need to be restarted.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The bit of the VMM which decides when to push out something to the page file only looks at pages that are in the CPU's translation lookaside buffer. This is somewhat odd since pages referenced by the TLB are going to be recently or frequently used ones. The upshot of
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Gimp runs on the N800, tho it's quite short of ram:
http://net9.blogspot.com/2007/04/gimp-running-on-n800.html [blogspot.com]
I couldnt find openoffice for it, tho there is aparrently a non maemo specific version for linux/arm available in debian repositories.. There is a version of abiword for the n800 tho, as well as gnumeric.
gnumeric -> http://www.mail-archive.com/maemo-users@maemo.org/msg04128.html [mail-archive.com]
abiword -> http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5423 [internettablettalk.com]
Don't think
Re:Desktop Linux (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't been able to find information on the smallest Windows CE system, but Linux has been stuffed on a wristwatch with only 19MHz of CPU power and 8M of RAM.
So I guess Linus' point is that Linux runs a greater range of systems, from the top supercomputers in the world (the top ten all run Linux), to the very smallest of devices. Windows doesn't scale quite as well.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason why Linux is so scalable is because there is a distinction between the kernel and everything else. Furthermore the kernel is designed to be modular so that you don't need to compile in support for everything from all and sundry different file systems to PCI plug and play support if you're just going to install the thing in a router or wristwatch.
What would you consider to be "full blown" anyway? I would a
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you want fair comparison, you should be cramming a full blown GNU/Linux into that 19Mhz or CPU and 8M of RAM, not just the Linux kernel. Maybe Damn Small Linux or similar.
According to this article [freeos.com], they'd even managed to stuff X Window on the watch as well.
There's also picotux [picotux.com], which crams Linux, Busybox and a webserver all in 8M of RAM and 55MHz of processor.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Out of the 500 top supercomputers, 6 use Windows, and 426 use Linux...Windows doesn't scale quite as well.
Out of the entire desktop market, 95% uses Windows and a negligible percentage uses Linux. Apparently, Linux doesn't handle the midrange very well.
What portion of that 95% is due to technological superiority vs. vendor lock-in, and monopolistic practices? I'd definitely be surprised if Linux didn't have a higher market share if all those Windows apps and drivers were based on portable APIs rather than MS's proprietary libs.
-metric
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I can virtually see him now with his black cape, sleep-deprived eyes and a sinister grin, pointing at Bill Gates and screaming: "KILL HIM, MY ROBOTS!!"
Cue to cell phone ringing (Nokia Tune ring), suspense music stops, killer robots halt mid-attack, the screen splits in half, Tove (karate-champion Linus' wife) at the phone in the other half: "Dear, would you please bring some whole milk home after you're done conquering the world? I want to make you some victory chocolate cake." Linus: "Ok, honey, luv-u." Mayhem restarts, killer robots resume attacks.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh boy, I'm waiting for the day you discover emacs !
Quick Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Interviewer: Where is Linux going.
Linus: Its going where it wants to.
Games, and the next generation. (Score:5, Insightful)
The day I see in a game forum "Use Linux, n00b." as the usual reply to "OMG! Low fps! Getting pwned! HALP!" will set the ten year count to Linux victory over Windows.
Re:Games, and the next generation. (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically, Linux could be the undisputed ultimate gamers platform, but I don't see why that would translate to "Linux victory over Windows" unless you have a significantly inflated sense of the importance / population % of gamers.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, Linux could be the undisputed ultimate gamers platform, but I don't see why that would translate to "Linux victory over Windows" unless you have a significantly inflated sense of the importance / population % of gamers.
The point is, children are gamers; they spend quite a lot of time gaming and are the ones who'll do all kinds of stuff to get an additional FPS, especially if it's free.
Thet's why GP mentioned the ten-year frame: while the children's parents would still use Windows for work, the kids would play on Linux. And then they'd do other stuff on Linux as well.
Ten years later, former children would be quite used to Linux, probably even defaulting to it.
So in OS selection, just like in religion, just give me a c
Let's examine his earlier claims (Score:5, Interesting)
2008 will be the year of cheap laptops (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista alone is almost more expensive than the hardware !
Microsoft was a good alternative when computers did cost $1500, but now the price is just too heavy.
But they really can't win when the hardware is cheap.
If they keep remaining in the high performance market (which seems their belief, see DirectX 10), they'll lose their market share in 2 years, along with Dell !
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And if you have just one killer app that only runs Windows, it unfortunately becomes worth it. One reality we have to face is that some major publishers will have to start writing for Linux before most people completely shake off Windows.
I misread SSD..... (Score:5, Funny)
Also, when you buy an OS from Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with the business platform is that it was built for the sole purpose of selling services, therefore when it eventually works and there's less demand for services (data recovery, repairs, etc.) it must be tagged as obsolete and replaced by something newer and shinier but still defective in order to generate again a strong demand for services.
This is the exact reason why Microsoft stopped developing XP the moment it started being a decent OS, pushing instead the adoption of that Vista crap, and also explains why anybody who cares for his/her data or systems should consider Linux, BSD and other operating systems built to work with no strings attached.
WTB new PR headline (Score:4, Insightful)
The above has been in use since 1999. It needs to be retired. "We're not Microsoft," alone isn't going to cut it for much longer. If Linux advocates keep trying to use that line to the exclusion of all else, they'll eventually find that it isn't Microsoft they'll be competing with...it's Apple. That is one battle that they can't hope to win. OSX is both UNIX based, and with close-to-mainstream user friendliness. Next to that, people have no incentive to use Linux at all.
SSD vs. RAM (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing I find my computer quite often busy doing is swapping. With only 512MB of RAM, and many bloated programs running, it can't hold everything in RAM all at once. But worse, I find, is when a program is doing a lot of I/O output, which gets buffered in RAM more than it should. If the data being copied is a 40GB HD video file, the assumption that I might be reading the file back in soon (so it should be cached in RAM) just doesn't cut it. An SSD dedicated just for swapping might be faster (eliminates the seeks, but still uses I/O bus bandwidth). And it won't prevent existing pages from being swapped out, requiring them to be swapped back in again (usually a lot sooner than I would be reading those large files back in, which obviously cannot be read in whole).
But is SSD the answer for this (swapping)? If it were significantly cheaper than regular RAM, I might think so. For other uses (live copies of /usr, and such) it certainly could help. What I think is the answer for my case is to go overboard on RAM. My current estimate of normal RAM usage I need for my next computer build (in progress ... 1/3 of the parts already purchased) is 2GB. But what I plan to do in this case, however, is go with 8GB of RAM ... and not enable any swap space at all. Normally, the amount of swap space I would allocate is the lesser of 1: 2x the RAM ... and 2: the amount of data that can be transferred in one direction in 30 seconds. I'm switching to SATA so the latter figure will be larger. Still, the 8GB figure well exceeds the 2GB I expect to need for a while.
Suppose with that 2GB of RAM I deploy 6GB of swap space. That gives me a total of 8GB of space for dirty pages (not counting I/O output buffers which have a destination elsewhere). But during the course of normal use, dirty pages often get forced out to swap because of things like I/O output buffering, which also in turn slows down that I/O (more so if it's in the same disk as the swap space, due to head seek times). Now compare that to 8GB of RAM with no swap space at all. The capacity for keeping dirty pages is the same. But when heavy I/O starts to get pushy, there's no where else for those dirty pages to go (to make room to needlessly overbuffer the I/O). The end result should simply be that the I/O can do nothing more than be written where it belongs as fast as it can (and it can be faster since swapping isn't using up any I/O bus bandwidth nor tying up the disk heads into other locations in the case of non-SSD).
So what else is SSD good for? Maybe for /usr if the price is right. But if SSD is just RAM, bottled up through a SATA/SCSI/IDE/etc, how is that any better than RAM? Is 16GB (high end of what /usr needs for nearly everyone) of SSD cheaper than 16GB of RAM by enough to make it worthwhile? I suspect not, unless the SSD is just using cheap RAM.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1) With properly designed controllers, bank interleaving, etc., Flash based SSDs are rapidly approaching RAM based SSDs in performance. In any case, the performance (particularly in latency) of either one will be so much better than hard disks that minor performance differences are virtually irrelevant. The major differences is that RAM based SSDs are expensive, power hungry, volatile, and have poor packaging density. As a result, RAM base
Re:I thought Linus was just an engineer...? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not about politics, and this story has absolutely nothing to do with licensing, so let's not drag that dead horse up again. Sure, it's a valid debate, but there's a place and time for it, and this isn't it.
Parent
Re:I thought Linus was just an engineer...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you were reading first and insulting people later, you would know, that the 1.8GB zip archive does not contain sources for modules in question. But the knee-jerk reaction is much more easier, right?
Re:Desperate sounding.. (Score:5, Interesting)
All the cards I use are Atheros based, and work perfectly with Linux... I used to use Prism2 (802.11b only) based cards which also worked well.
I've also found Intel's cards work very well.
If you run some rare type of wireless card you may find that the windows drivers aren't too great for it either, and might stop receiving any updates rather quickly. You're also more likely to have other issues, like drivers breaking when you update windows (how many older types of card don't work at all with vista? and how many of these are no longer supported by their manufacturers and so will never work?).
And don't get me started on manufacturers who sell the same model of card with different chipsets, that's wholly irresponsible. They should change the model number if they change the core chipset, as it effectively becomes a whole different card.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
One card can do anything the most expensive access point you can find can do.
The most amazing thing I can think of is its ability to do multiple things with a single card seamlessly.
You can sniff networks on one channel and surf the net on another, you can have virtual access points and surf the net (while monitoring) and so on.
Absolutely amazing.
Re:Desperate sounding.. (Score:5, Informative)
I hope that makes it clear for you.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nvidia's drivers are very good (although proprietary), we have libraries like SDL, OpenAL etc...
Games which have native Linux versions tend to beat the windows versions by a small margin, and vista has made this gap somewhat bigger. Some games running under wine also outperform native windows in some areas, tho the results are very much variable with some games being slower or behaving erratically.
The foundation is there, what we need are the actual games.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you want the majority of gaming on Linux, convince the game developers!!
Re:2008 : Year of the Death of Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
I take it you don't shop at Wal-Mart?
I didn't see anyone in my office switched to Linux.. or any of my clients.
And you probably won't, as most office PCs fall under the jurisdiction of IT overlords who dislike users replacing OSes.
Sure.. they have nothing else to do other than wrestling with Linux.
I'll take that as sarcasm, and agree with you. The biggest stumbling block to widespread Linux adoption on the desktop is that it usually does take some 'wrestling' to get it to work, whereas Windows generally 'just works'. Yet that's not a fault of Linux, it's a fault of hardware makers who decide to release a driver for Windows and NOT for Linux.
I was going to mention the lack of GUI tools for some tasks, requiring users to manualy edit init files, but then I remembered how many times I've had to open regedit and manually change registry entries. In that sense I've had to wrestle with Windows as much as Linux.
See.. how many distros ??
Actually, a good point. There are a significant fraction of Windows users who don't know which version they're running, and in order to support them you need to know that. Same with the various distros, as they all are different enough so that you need to know which you're dealing with. I was recently at an acquaintance's house and saw their computer. "Hey, you run Linux" I said.... "No, it's Ubuntu" they said. They could have just as easily said "No, it's KDE". Sadly, as much as most
how many kernal updates every week ???
Less than the number of Patch Tuesdays in a month, apparently.
Linux sure got some momentum on academia. Well... to be frank.. its not because they really like. Only because they want to escapre from paying volume-licenses.
Actually, it *is* because 'they like'. $300 is nothing when you've got research grants in the million$. Academia likes it because they can whittle away and tweak Linux until it does *only* what they need it to do, and do it efficiently and fast. Faster than Windows. And when you only need half the computers to get the same speed, or can get twice the speed with what you've got, you use Linux.
But if you really want to argue cost, then don't forget the electricity bill. The $300 spent on a license costs more when you need to buy and power more computers to get the same results in the same time.
Furthremore, there are linux idiots who worship linux OS, who monopolize linux-OS in their domain.
There are Apple fanboys too. And yes, sometimes Windows actually *is* a better choice, although thankfully those special cases are becoming fewer and fewer as time goes on.
Linux community should give up their efforts and must try to learn some lessons from M$ and either help Windows to be better OR do something like Windows for FREE.
I think they *did* learn some lessons... lessons in what NOT to do. In fact, looking at Vista, I think MS has a few lessons that *they* need to learn from the Linux community.
As for 'doing something like Windows....for free', isn't that *exactly* what Linux is?
Afterall.. true power of linux can not be executed without being a linux-geek.. who knows all the command line commands and some degree of linux kernal modding... that's pathetic.
And the true power of Windows can not be executed... FULL STOP. Can't streamline the kernel, must know all the registry tweaks which may or may not be published anywhere. THAT is pathetic.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell that to my dv2315nr laptop. The one with barely functioning broadcom wifi drivers and non-functioning audio (conexant 20459).
If you aren't knowledgeable enough to keep the fanboyism down, how about not adding another useless comment to the discussion?