KernelTrap Interviews Andrea Arcangeli 145
An anonymous reader writes "Andrea Arcangeli completely rewrote the 2.4 Linux kernel virtual memory subsystem several years ago, a surprising event during the evolution of a stable kernel series. A very intelligent 27-year-old from Italy, Andrea spoke with KernelTrap in great detail about the past, present and future of his Linux kernel efforts. An interesting interview ."
Excellent (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Excellent (Score:1, Interesting)
Surprise (Score:5, Funny)
Who'd've thunk it, eh?
Re:Surprise (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Surprise (Score:3, Informative)
I just got the occasional "Isn't it just amazing what they can do nowadays?" after that...
Most non-Geek parents are the same, I think.
Re:Surprise (Score:1)
Re:Surprise (Score:2)
Re:Surprise (Score:1)
Re:Surprise (Score:1)
Re:Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
It just isn't the same in the USA as the rest of the world. Generally the rest of the world expects kids to stay at home until they marry. The compressed locations of Europe and Asia tend to make this most practical. They also have a real good social order that tends to respect the idea that family is very important.
The USA grew up with people who had really moved out (to another country) and also with lots of space. As such we tend to view it as a requirement to move out. I think in many ways the Non US way is superior in human terms. It does have its price. The US way has its own advantages.
Re:Surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
Then in Europe, there's different expectations. Either you move out when you marry or you move out when you have to financially
Re:Surprise (Score:2)
Re:Surprise (Score:1)
I work from the top floor of my parent's house.
Re:Surprise (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Surprise (Score:5, Informative)
Who'd've thunk it, eh?
Actually, most italian men live with their parents until they get married.
Re:Surprise (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Surprise (Score:2, Funny)
Considering the fact that he spends his life re-writing kernels then I think he's going to be living at home until he's finished re-writing 2.8 as well.
Re:Surprise (Score:1)
Most American men live with their girlfriends until they get married. =)
Re:Surprise (Score:1)
Re:Surprise (Score:2, Funny)
Or even after they get married. The idea is to live in your parents house until you can live in your childrens house.
Re:Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Surprise (Score:2, Informative)
Well, in India, it is customary to live with your parents even after you get married. It has to do with family values, esp. in rural India. In the big cities, it has more to do with the fact that the cost of living by yourself is prohibitively high for most people. Software engineers are an exception. ;)
Re:Surprise (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Surprise (Score:3, Informative)
>Age 27 : lives with in parents house.
This is very, very common in Italy. 60 Minutes (I think) did a piece on it a few years ago. Profiled a 40ish executive, single, who lived with the parents. Goes home for lunch, mom does his laundry, etc. This in a guy making serious bucks (well, Lira, anyway). The article pointed out that this is a common way of life until they get married.Re:Surprise (Score:2, Funny)
But it was a good line, and I couldn't resist...
Nice to see some recognition for kernel devs. (Score:4, Insightful)
To me, they really are some sort of modern day heroes.
Re:Nice to see some recognition for kernel devs. (Score:3, Insightful)
The CEOs of IBM, RedHat, Sony, and every other company on the bandwagon that you are working for for free.
just because you mark this 'troll' doesn't make it any less true
Re:Nice to see some recognition for kernel devs. (Score:5, Interesting)
Your pov is a pretty common misconception: big business profiting from the work of hundreds of thousands of idealistic but naive developpers. The truth of the matter is that big business wants - needs - enterprise features in open source software, and you're going to get there a heck of a lot faster by paying somebody to develop them than you are waiting for some guy to decide that he personally *really needs* to support 32 parallel processors.
Re:Nice to see some recognition for kernel devs. (Score:3)
There is SOME inevitable blowback from the commercial world to OSS, but most large companies very carefully isolate the OSS parts to give back as ltitle as possible or make meaningless OSS contributions. Look! Sony's OSS'd some kernel hardware interface that enables communication with an embedded sony controller! if you just build your own chip foundry and reverse engineer sony's chips you can save on software costs!
Oh lookie! Red Hat open sources everything except the proprietary bits th
Re:Nice to see some recognition for kernel devs. (Score:2)
However, i would say that a large portion of the major developers in the Linux kernel, and by major I mean those contributing large amounts of code, are employed by the 'large companies' either to work on the kernel.
Haven't you wondered why Linux has picked up so much steam recently? Why not in '95, Linux was almost 5 then? Its the difference between actual volunteers, then those voluntee
Amazing considering no education above high school (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:2)
THis amazes you. Lets think about it. Bill Gates doesn't have a formal education. No college diploma and he is the richest man in the world. Look at the show the apprentice. The final two. Formal education vs experience of doing it yourself. THe doing it yourself won with Trump. It's all over the place.
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:2)
Once you have a lot of money making more seems to be a lot easier than when you start from scratch.
But hey, look at the GWB. Even if you are a C student you can become president. Well at least if your daddy is the president.
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:1)
Those don't cost nearly as much as you might think they do. My nephew has a IV after his name, and his son has a V. He didn't even have to take out a mortgage for those.
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:3, Insightful)
It always amazes me how stupidly ignorant white-boy can seem to be about his fantastic education system and how it seems you can't do 'anything' in the world without a certificate from some organized education front
Please. "Higher Education" is fine and dandy, but it is a luxury that many people, striving hard to survive and live another day, just simply cannot afford.
Many times, striving hard to educate oneself is si
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:1)
I agree! Unfortunately, the years of hard work and study I put into memorizing every piece of Star Trek minutiae just isn't getting me a job or a chick. Damn!
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:3, Funny)
It always amazes me when people, without formal education, can accomplish so much.
Yeah, mostly high achievers [cnn.com] graduate from Yale and Harvard first and then distinguish themselves by serving their country selflessly before going on to make the world a better, safer place.Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:1)
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:1)
Higher education yes, degree no (Score:5, Informative)
A degree gets you an interview. What you learned gets you the job. AA skipped the interview step
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:2, Insightful)
IMHO the reason you hear about people like Bill Gates is because they are the exception not the rule. It's a story of success over odds and people love that stuff, gives 'em hope.
What about all the advances made by people who did get a higher education. How many advanced medical procedures come out of some college dropout that was working in his parents basement.
Do you need to go to college
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:1)
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:1)
IMHO the reason you hear about people like Bill Gates is because they are the exception not the rule. It's a story of success over odds and people love that stuff, gives 'em hope.
Exactly! Couldn't have said it better myself.
Education != Trivial Route Learning (Score:1)
i think there's a big diffrence between an education and going to school and being told 'insert slot a into slot b.' First and foremost, if the only raeson you are in school is too learn a trade then you are better off with a deploma from a technical institute or teaching yourself (though self taught and fast learner is on everyone elses resumee too).
At the college i attend, as with most, there is a certain amount of breadth one is expected to overcome, and one is encouraged to take classes that are vari
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:1)
Someone, I forget who, had a great quote on the topic:
"A degree will get you into an interview, but won't get you through interview. Intellegence may get you through a job, but may not get you a job."
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:1, Interesting)
Slide 12 says "Is it critical to learn in university? 1) A good question. Most students really just want a degree not an education. 2) Remember that a degree will get you an interview and maybe a job but what you learn determines whether you are successful."
Of course, being something of a autodidact [reference.com] myself - I
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:1)
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:1)
i forget that most ppl on slashdot are from the USA.
BND = btec national diploma
HND = highter national diploma
FE = further education (BND)
HE = higher education (degree, HND)
The reverse should be amazing (Score:2)
It always amazes me when people who have spent so much time in our horrible education system (and it is pretty bad in all countries) are able to create good software or to think at all. In my experience, good minds stay good in spite of education rather then because of it.
Re:The reverse should be amazing (Score:2)
Part of that process is learning a bunch of stuff that you probably would never learn otherwise because it just didn't seem interesting. Sure, 1% of my class mates may still have learned that because they are just really bright. But the rest of us wouldn't. And while all may not be the best developers in the world they are still very useful and can at the very least earn enough to pay back what it cost to educate them.
Now if we relied on auto-didacts then only 1% of those peo
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:2)
Re:Amazing considering no education above high sch (Score:1)
Out of what? Where I went, 4.0 was the highest possible GPA.
I am in no way an extremely intelligent person
Or maybe you're just modest.
EEK! (Score:5, Funny)
If you understand this sentence you know you're a geek.
Re:EEK! (Score:5, Informative)
Mod Parent Up (Score:5, Insightful)
Live off the land
Modify our cars
Hack computers
Understand personal finance
Write contracts
Defend ourselves in court
Defend ourselves physically
Handle a gun safely
Think critically
Change our government for the better
It seems to me that too much focus is given to understanding the past and not enough to understanding the present. Don't get me wrong, knowing the past is valuable, but I think that if we teach people about the present, people are naturally going to be interested in the past.
In general, people don't need to know how to calculate the area under a curve. But everyone needs to know how to think critically and not be manipulated.
Re:Mod Parent Up (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mod Parent Up (Score:1)
I think its also funny that American high schools (at least the ones I've seen) can push all this b.s. on students, requiring them to do this or that, but they don't provide a way for you to register to vote as soon as you're of age. That just doesn't make any sense to me, it seems like EVERYONE sh
Re:Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
Re:Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
Canadian schools cover all this (Score:4, Interesting)
# Live off the land
If your high school is in a (sub/)urban area, how useful is this? Or possible?
# Modify our cars
My high school had auto courses (my school was in Southern Ontario, Canada)
# Hack computers
I took 4 or 5 computer courses in high school. Basic application use, programming in Turing and C++, graphics in 3D Studio, large projects.
# Understand personal finance
I believe there were business courses along these lines, I didn't take any, though. I think this was also covered in the general stream of math.
# Write contracts
# Defend ourselves in court
We had grade 12 and 13 law. I'm not sure how much time was given to contracts (I only took half of the grade 12 course), but we even went on a visit to court in both mandatory grade 10 history and optional grade 12 law.
# Defend ourselves physically
In grade 9 gym we covered wrestling. The upper gym courses covered more defense.
# Handle a gun safely
Not really a big deal in Canada. I know a lot of people who learned this in cadets or the reserves, though.
# Change our government for the better
History (Canadian, Ancient, American, 20th Century), Politics, Law...all covered this. Your comment about understanding the past rather than the present is missing the point entirely. But we did always talk about current elections in classes, even in elementary school.
# Think critically
In general, people don't need to know how to calculate the area under a curve. But everyone needs to know how to think critically and not be manipulated.
Doesn't calculating the area under a curve require critical thinking?? Regardless, Calculus wasn't taught till grade 13, and anything past grade 10 math was optional. If you're school taught you anything at all you probably learned to think critically. Didn't you have to write essays? Solve problems? Every single one of our grade 13 classes had an "independent study unit" which we had to do something on our own, requiring critical thinking.
We even covered media bias in our english classes (I didn't take the full english media class, but we did cover it in the required grade 13 english class). We took stories and advertisements from different newspapers and looked at their political bias. Then we watched some Chomsky videos.
As far as I can tell most Americans seem to need to move to Canada to actually get their American values.
Re:Mod Parent Up (Score:3, Insightful)
The high school my siblings graduated from only offered one history class, and it was an optional class only available to seniors.
How is that too much history?
If anything, schools are not teaching enough anything. They're simply going through the motions of 'education'. You're absolutely right in what schools should be teaching, though.
Re:Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
Im assuming you mean *safe for YOU* here..
"/Dread"
Re:EEK! (Score:1)
Re:EEK! (Score:5, Informative)
The hardest part is eliminating the circuit noise for millivolt readings. In larger waveforms (5v and higher) the noise is mostly drowned, but at the millivolt range, any circuit noise, or any unmatched grounding, causes jitters in the waveform being read. Calibration to the range is essential for any serious reading.
And for fun, hook an unamplified output from a portable CD player to the scope, and viola, instant waveform display of the sound signal. Great way to relax on a lazy sunday, listen to and watch the music. Of course, this was in the pre winamp days, so it was a Walkman.
[/Meandering off]
Nah... (Score:2)
Nah, he's a pampered geek. Most of us still use analog. No fancy menus, just turn a knob if you want to change anything.
Re:EEK! (Score:3, Funny)
Perfectly clear. Which part don't you understand ?
j/k
Re:EEK! (Score:2, Insightful)
If you live in the US. If you live in Italy, it could just mean that you graduated from high school.
I think he likes "free as in beer" more then... (Score:1, Interesting)
Although, the license to use bitkeeper is really anti-competitive and agree when he said, "if no open source project could ever beat bitkeeper in the long run, Larry wouldn't need this weird licence in the f
That Sheila's a he! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Andrea IS a male name!! (Score:1)
Re:That Sheila's a he! (Score:1)
Maybe Andrea would fix PCIPCI DMA for us? (Score:3, Interesting)
Currently this isn't possible. For our application we had to make a very nasty hack to our SCSI driver.
What we would have liked to do would have been something like:
Get physical address from libpci
mmap region to user process
open a rawio device
read()/write() the rawio device to-from the mmap()'d buffers to effect DMA transfers directly to the PCI device.
In our case (a streaming media server) we have no need whatsoever to bring the disk buffers into main memory.
Programmed transfers from main memory to PCI memory are expensive.
hm (Score:4, Funny)
Re:hm (Score:1)
I'd better let the furries know about this. We...er, they will all be wanting to yiff him.
Trusted Computing? (Score:1)
Re:Trusted Computing? (Score:1)
hmm... (Score:1)
Re:hmm... (Score:2)
Yup. But then, that's a (heated) discussion which has already taken place / is already taking place in plenty of other forums. No need to bring it in here too.
(As an aside, I use Arch [gnuarch.org]).
Andrea likes TCPA (Score:5, Interesting)
I found this bit really interesting (and insightful, actually, more on that below):
I bring it up because this is so contrary to the common opinion on /., which is that TCPA is unabashedly evil and has no utility. Andrea is obviously one very smart guy, and a person who feels the need to have complete control over his machine, but who likes TCPA in spite of the risk of misuse. Contradiction?
The fact is that TCPA *is* an extremely useful and valuable technology for systems that require a high degree of security. It's not clear to me that the average home PC benefits from it, but it's very valuable for cheap, high-performance key management systems and cryptographic accelerators, systems that contain valuable data (like many businessmen's laptops), and systems at critical points in network infrastructure. I'm sure there are other valuable, and non rights-eroding, applications as well.
In my work as a designer and developer of high-security systems, I'm extremely excited about the fact that we can now buy low-end computing equipment that has TCP hardware. It enables so much. The next step is TCP hardware that is tamper-resistant, or even tamper-reactive, but still cheap. For now, really high-security systems still require something better [ibm.com], but TCPA can fill the niche between systems that require serious security and those that can get by with purely software-based security (or no security, which is fine for the majority of desktops and laptops).
To be clear, DRM is a bad idea, in general. The business applications (self-destructing documents, confidential documents that cannot be printed) do have potential utility, but I doubt they're worth the complexity they'll create. And Palladium aka NGSCB aka whatever-it's-called-today is an unquestionably evil notion, focused on removing the ability of people to control their own hardware, in an effort to allow a couple of declining business models to prop one another up.
IMO, what geek activists need to focus on is not killing the development of tools [againsttcpa.com] like TCPA, but rather on legal and social means of ensuring our rights [digitalconsumer.org].
Tools are not evil. Only users are evil.
Beware the slippery slope! (Score:3, Informative)
Once it is widespread some evil corporation might try to influence the government to mandate that it be present in all computer hardware sold in the USA. While this in itself wouldn't be bad, it is just a hop, skip and a jump from mandating something such as Palladium and full DRM on all computers, since the trusted hardware will already be there!
If you don't think it could happen just look at recent b
Re:Andrea likes TCPA (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see what hardware can do that software cannot.
Hardware can keep keys and policies secure. Although general-purpose computing hardware is perfectly capable of performing cryptographic operations and executing security decisions, there is no way to prevent an attacker from getting hold of the keys used or subverting the decisions made.
As an example, suppose you're a bank, and you need to encrypt transactions that you exchange with other banks. These transactions are worth hundreds of millions o
Re:Andrea likes TCPA (Score:2)
I still don't see why this can't be done in software. Just take any computer, and create the appropriate software with a simple user interface that will simply not give any oppurtunity to get those keys. Then lock the computer in a safe and only give access to a monitor and keyboard that are attached to it.
What happens when the hardware needs to be repaired?
Also, even if the safe were welded shut to ensure that no one can ever open it, that's still not as secure as a tamper-reactive crypto device. To
Re:Andrea likes TCPA (Score:2)
Of course, the TCPA chips currently being put in laptops don't provide that level of security; but they're probably more secure than using a typical safe with a combination that might be known by someone, and might therefore be compromised.
Oh, and they're a whole lot more portable, too.
My how he has come along in 8 years... (Score:4, Interesting)
The parallel port ZIP drive maintainer asked them to provide a function prototype of this thing that they were talking about, of them (Phil/Tim) quickly whipped up a rough 50 line C header file which was turned into a working parport driver + parport enabled ZIP and printer driver (removing the infamous "printer-on-fire" message in the process). There were bugs in the parport driver (it was the first pass but you could print and use the ZIP drive together which was something that previously could not be done) but Phil/Tim/Andrea quickly pounced on the driver and straighten it out. Some of the routines for supporting NatSemi and SMC chipsets are there due to the ZIP drive maintainer not being able to use EPP mode on his Dell desktop.
When Andrea first appeared on the parallel port scene he was lacking a little confidence (appologising for his poor english which was far better than my italian :-) but once he got his feet wet with kernel hacking there was nothing stopping him.
Unfortunately I dropped out of the parallel port group around 2000 due to work commitments (linux hacking was one of those phases that I went through).
I congratulate Andrea on where his life has taken him.
ZombieEngineer
Formerly-the-hacker-who-maintained-linux-zip-drive rs.
RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, looks like she's a he. I was really hoping it would turn out to be a chick - chicks that can rewrite Linux components are extremely sexy.
Re:RTFA (Score:3, Funny)
Modded wrong should be (Score:1)
Re:RTFA (Score:1)
Unfortunately, chicks like that also mostly imaginary. You've seen The Matrix, Swordfish, and Hackers too many times, my friend.
Re:RTFA (Score:4, Funny)
Well, at least until they reject your request for a kernel modification because they "have a headache".
Re:Not a girl? (Score:2)
Someone with a bit of more knowledge on Latin please correct me if I am wrong.
AFAIK the reason "Andrea" is used as a male name in Italy is that it has the latin root of the word "Andros", which means "male". Keep in mind that in most italian schools you still have to study Latin