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Open Source Operating Systems Programming Security Software Linux

Linus Torvalds No Longer Knows the Whole Linux Kernel and That's OK (eweek.com) 119

darthcamaro writes: In a wide-ranging conversation at the Open Source Summit, Linus Torvalds admitted that he no longer knows everything that's in LInux. "Nobody knows the whole kernel anymore," Torvalds said. "Having looked at patches for many years, I know the big picture of all the areas in the kernel and I can look at a patch and know if it's right or wrong." Overall, he emphasized that being open source has enabled Linux to attract new developers that can pick up code and maintain all the various systems in Linux. In his view, the only way to deal with complexity is to be open. "When you have complexity you can't manage it in a closed environment, you need to have the people that actually find problems and give them the ability to get involved and help you to fix them," Torvalds said. "It's a complicated world and the only way to deal with complexity is the open exchange of ideas."
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Linus Torvalds No Longer Knows the Whole Linux Kernel and That's OK

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  • He probably just has too many search tools, so now he's more stupider.

  • Linus steered clear of toxic community issues and the interviewer softballed him on it, or actually completely glossed over it. Can't see that as a good thing, it looks a lot like the ostrich defence.

    • by guruevi ( 827432 )
      What toxic community issues? The Linux kernel is going well regardless of small skirmishes in the political arena. It's good that Linus steers clear of them because nobody wins.
        • by guruevi ( 827432 )
          All those articles point to one idiot that quit because he couldn't take criticism. Being criticized is not toxic.
          • All those articles point to one idiot that quit because he couldn't take criticism.

            First, that is an easily falsified lie (just read the links) and second, you outed yourself as one of the toxic assholes who helped ruin the Linux kernel community's reputation. Now you are being a toxic ass here. Sucks to be you.

            • by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31, 2018 @11:55PM (#57235672)

              I read them, they all concern Sarah Sharp, the looney feminist substandard kernel dev who tried to inject herself into a linux kernel ml thread she wasn't even a part of and bait Linus into saying something nasty to her and failed miserably do it. Standard SJW ploy targeting male leadership who aren't cowed by feminist bullshit. In shame, she had to leave the project. Not even sure if she's still employed by Intel anymore. Probably not.

              OMG, they is hilarious!!

              Sage Sharp @_sagesharp_Diversity & inclusion consultant at @ottertechllc. @outreachy organizer. Explorer of the kyriarchy. Hufflepuff. Non-binary (agender trans masculine). They/them.

              Not even a programmer anymore. Pathetic.

              • I read them, they all [lie] concern Sarah Sharp, the looney feminist substandard kernel dev...

                Your filth speaks for itself.

            • by guruevi ( 827432 )
              I think it's you and your leftist marxist fascist kind that is the toxic one. Read the links, follow up on the person, they are the toxic ones that destroyed the left and the mainstream media. The fact you don't realize this means you are just as toxic.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Every single person who uses the term toxic in this way is an absolute fucking moron. I'm glad you people use it, though, because it makes it easy to identify and ignore you wankers. You'll probably need to find a safe space to deal with this.

    • He said in the Altoa talk that "People who are offended should be offended." In other words he is well aware that it keeps people like you away, and that is a good thing ... a very, very good thing.
    • He doesn't let political crap into the kernel. One example here [freedesktop.org].

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @09:26PM (#57235218)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Anonymous Coward

    "When you have complexity you can't manage it in a closed environment, you need to have the people that actually find problems and give them the ability to get involved and help you to fix them,"

    And that's how backdoors can be slipped into the Kernel by the big bad guys who are pretending to be fixing something or updating its drivers.
    Complexity (in software) is indeed the enemy of security.

     

  • by Anonymous Coward

    "When you have complexity you can't manage it in a closed environment"

    Try working in a manufacturing environment some time, Linus, because we manage the complexity all the time. For example, solar panels - HUGE amounts of detail you need to pay attention to (even one bad solder joint destroys a panel during lamination) and yet we manage this all the time, with all of our documentation very much closed off to the outside world. Hell, we even manage our constantly-changing crew, and there's not much of a prob

  • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @11:41PM (#57235644) Journal

    "Performance is not really doubling every two years and that's good," Torvalds said. "It means we'll maybe go back to the time when you cared more about performance on the software side and you had to be more careful and couldn't just rely on hardware getting better."

    He's wrong: it means we'll just get slower and slower software because hardly anyone knows how to do anything besides paste libraries together.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      He's wrong: it means we'll just get slower and slower software because hardly anyone knows how to do anything besides paste libraries together.

      Except when they write massive kludges of spaghetti code that should have been a library or used the standard library. It's not that libraries are inherently bad, I mean you couldn't even write print( "Hello world!" ) without something interpreting letters to bitmaps and defining what a "standard output" is. The problem is often that these libraries grow because there's always one more use case to cover until they become huge and complex. At which point somebody decides fuck it, I don't need this let's just

      • . It's not that libraries are inherently bad,

        It's not that libraries are inherently bad, but a lot of the ones powering the 'modern' web are bad.

    • Now that is hilarious. I guarantee you that anyone like that has *never* had their code make it into staging, never mind mainline.
  • Gates and his "640k ought to be enough for anybody" proved he didn't know what was happening within his OS.
    • He denied ever saying such a thing. And to be fair, that was a lot back then. Most 1980s home computers maxed out at 64 KB.

    • It was Paul Allen's OS actually. Gates was the Jobs at Microsoft. Allen was the Wozniak.
      • by Megol ( 3135005 )

        Gates wrote code, did Jobs?

        • 6 year olds write code. Trying to say writing code makes you someone that at one point understood a whole OS - even one as relatively simple as DOS - is absurd. I have seen an interview with Gates where he himself states that he was never a good coder. Remember when Gates told stories about his many technical interactions with Wozniak? No, that is right ... every time there was an interaction between Gates and Apple it was Gates talking to Jobs. Are there any other brilliant rhetorical questions or assertio
  • The Linux kernel has consisted of millions of lines of code for many years. It is doubtful that anyone can understand, really understand, all the ins and outs of more than a few tens of thousands of lines of code.
  • Linus quote (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheDarkener ( 198348 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @01:25PM (#57237742) Homepage

    "It's a complicated world and the only way to deal with complexity is the open exchange of ideas."

    This is a quote that Mr. Torvalds should be known for, forever. It applies to much more than just software.

    • You are correct. The quote should go down in history as the turning point towards more "individual friendly" governing systems. But then, the architecture of the kernel itself says that we will never see these systems materialize. *sigh*

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