Linus Holds Forth On the Future of Linux

colinmc151 writes "As part of Geekcruises' Linux Lunacy cruise to Alaska, Linus Torvalds was interviewed and answered questions about where he sees the future of Linux with a particular eye towards developers. Great stuff."

Re:Linus about Mac OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

from here: [geek.com]

On Apple and OS X
I never much liked Macs. All the interesting stuff is hidden away. They made the base of the house open source, but all the rest of the stuff, the wiring, is their own stuff. I don't want that to happen with Linux.

[Mac OS X] doesn't give me the warm-and-fuzzies. I actually dislike Mach a lot. I think they made a lot of bad design choices.

Re:Linus about Mac OS X?

[axxackall]

From the book review [mach-linux.org]:

Linus discusses why he continues to use a standard kernel as opposed to a microkernel. This discussion basically says that microkernels are not as efficient or easy to use as a standard kernel. The driving force behind Linus not using a microkernel approach is because he believes the parts are bigger than the whole, essentially saying it is more difficult to understand/develop a kernel with a modular approach as opposed to the standard kernel. Microkernels spend lots of time communicating from one piece of the kernel to another where a standard kernel has shared pieces so the communication doesn't have to take place. This specific piece is where the developers of microkernel implementations differ from Linus.

Space Image

[InsaneCreator]

One of the questions in the interview is:
Q: (Something about somebody rendering an image in space using Linux on an IBM laptop.)?

I believe this is the image: Reach for the stars [oyonale.com]

Re:Linus about Mac OS X?

[ae]

There is at least a comment on the hardware in TFA:

I actually find Power to be very interesting now that they've made the 9070. And you can actually buy them in reasonable machines. And you can buy a Macintosh G5 and get a real 64-bit CPU. And I think that may actually be enough, too. There is enough of a user base for normal people that I suspect a lot of Linux developers would love to have one of those. And are ready to switch away from X86 entirely. While I don't see that happening on IA64. Because there is not any nice boxes you'd switch away to, if you were to switch away from X86.

Re:Linus about Mac OS X?

[Trurl's Machine]

I'll defend my statement. Take the chapter XII, especially passages "Intellectual Property" and "An End to Control" (pages 204-219 of the hardcover edition). I'd say that Linus says there that yes, you can do something proprietary and maybe even have a temporary success, but in the long run it is The Wrong Way. Or, in Linus' own words, "a bad, short-sighted decision that ends up in disaster or near disaster". For example, Linus cites the European success of the GSM technology and the relative American backwardness on mobile phones as the triumph of open (GSM) versus proprietary (American multiple standards).

Re:Linus about Mac OS X?

[Trurl's Machine]

This is like saying that a husband is against the very idea of vacuuming, rather than simply doesn't want to vacuum.

But this particular husband says - for example - that "one of the arguments against vacuuming, pardon, mcrokernels has always been performance" (page 130 of the hardcover edition). There are also other anti-microkernel rants scattered all over the book, but I hope this example is enough. It's not that Linus says "I don't want to do this", he also says that it's the wrong idea.

Linux needs automatic configuration.

[MtViewGuy]

I think one of the big issues that is holding back Linux for desktop users is the fact the OS still does not completely support automatic configuration of hardware, especially hot-docked devices through the USB and IEEE-1394 ports. This is something that Windows has done pretty well, especially with Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP Home/Professional.

I'm hoping that Linux will incorporate the Open Source equivalent of the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) which has been used since Windows 98.

Re:coherent distributed filesystem

[ComputerSlicer23]

Intermezzo and GFS/OpenGFS are two I know of.

Intermezzo sounds like it wants to be the end all be all of every feature you could ever want in a filesystem. Hence I think it won't work.

GFS is by Sistina (the people behind LVM and Device Mapper in Linux, but not ELVM) and uses SCSI3 locks as it's locking mechanism (the locking mechanism defined at the bottom of the SCSI layer, in version 3 of the standard).

Sistina did it GPL'ed thru the beta, and then took it propriatary after the beta. Thus OpenGFS was spawned. I haven't seen much out of that. Never used it really.

Kirby

Re:Linus about Mac OS X?

[JamesKPolk]

Torvalds against anything proprietary? Where have you been since Torvalds has begun using Bitkeeper (a proprietary RCS) for all his kernel development?

Re:Geekcruises

[Sri Lumpa]

Tove Torvalds (Linus's wife) was a Finnish Karate champion so I don't think the Groupies would stand the challenge of going past her.

Re:Desktop

[Haeleth]

Linux is already easier to install than Windows...

Not so.

Installing Windows XP is a matter of putting the CD in your drive and clicking "Next" a few times. The easiest-to-install Linux distros are slightly harder to install on a PC with Windows already present, because they require you to make _some_ sort of decision about what to do with Windows, and they don't migrate your Windows applications and settings for you like a new version of Windows does. For installing on a fresh PC, the two operating systems are about equal.

And you're right, of course, that preinstalled Linux would reverse the situation. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most of the non-game-playing public wouldn't even notice...

Re:Linux needs automatic configuration.

[Bollie]

Wrong, wrong, wrong. When last have you installed a Linux distro? USB/Firewire hotplugging works better under Linux than under Windows for me. Try any modern distribution with a kernel later than 2.4.22 and you'll have support for ACPI. In fact, kernel 2.6.0-test8-mm1 on Gentoo supports all devices (including the Zoltrix Genie-Wonder-Pro that Windows XP doesn't support) on my system without a single glitch. USB 2.0 works fine. Firewire runs perfectly and my motherboard's sensors get reported via gkrellm2. If you really want some shenanigans, try to load Windows 95 on some newer motherboards. Guaranteed to make you wince. Can you believe it that some motherboards aren't backwards compatible? At least Linux can now run on old stuff and new!