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Infoworld Interview with Linus 26

Posted by Hemos from the talking-with-the-great-one dept.
Amnesiak sent us an interesting interview that Infoworld has done with Linus-questions about the kernel, which distro he prefers, Microsoft/Linux thing and how the Gnome/KDE may sort it out. Standard interview questions, but it's a well done interview.
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Infoworld Interview with Linus More

Infoworld Interview with Linus

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  • He was talking about the dynamics of people turning to open-source, not the the GNU system environment.

    Complex thoughts are hard - Barbie.
  • He's grumpy, but accurate. What you see is what you get, i guess.

    -awc
  • Come on, he is a SUPER pimp... you don't need to be happy when your that cool.
  • Getting the system to scale up to 16 processors and with clustering, I find that far from boring.
    My understanding is that NT will only scale to 4 processors and MS clustering is nothing like UNIX clustering. Though of course, other operating sytems have much slicker marketing if you're into that sort of thing.
  • The man tells it like it is, without the hype. He lets the results speak for themselves. I'll take boring over bogus any day.
  • yeah, he's kinda boring, but the thing is, it's because all the interview was simply his speculation(s) on things, his ideas of how things will happen, his take on things. it would be the same if the interviewer had interviewed any one of us. We can't expect it to be that big of a thrill because (1) he wasn't announcing anything new and (2)we aren't ga-ga over him. If we thought he was some gushy new star, we'd probably be a lot more enthralled by what he had to say. it's simple... my thoughts wouldn't be exciting either, though they may be as good as his...
  • There are two kinds of "support" being meant here.
    Linux 2.2 will run on a 16 CPU machine, AFAIK, and it will happily report all the CPU#s in /proc/cpuinfo. If it doesn't actually *work* on a 16 CPU machine that's probably a bug you can expect to see fixed during 2.2.x

    However, just because all 16 CPUs are working, doesn't mean the code was written with 16 CPUs in mind. Linux 2.2 scales poorly above say, 4 CPUs. The exact problems will vary depending on your application, but chances are that 16 CPUs won't buy you the performance it should.

    NT has some of the same problems, but in W2K Microsoft say those problems are gone in the kernel architecture for up to 16 CPUs. For now, if you want to do SMP in a biiig way (not dual-processor) then you don't want INTEL INSIDE.

    Nick.
  • Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    I found the kernel release speculation especially interesting. Next kernel: 3.0. And he's said before that the next kernel should be out in the fall. Woohoo! (yes, I realize the number mean nothing...still...)
    ---
    Put Hemos through English 101!
  • You have to admit, though, that listening to Scott McNealy (sp?) is lots of fun. Once he starts ranting, he can be one of the most amusing people in the industry.

    -awc
  • Linus talks about possibly expanding moving to a new file system, a Third Extended File System (Ext3fs) ... since Ext2fs has a lot of built in room for improvement, it could be a long way before we need Ext3fs.

    On the other hand, there is a design for a dual-disk file system called Ext4fs, which stores blocks and inodes on one partition and the actual data files on the other. The most obvious advantage to this system is the elimination of redundant superblocks and block group information in each block group, and a predicted increase in performance once all the kinks are worked out. On the other hand, this system has a long way to go before it is usable. Nonetheless this could be a good candidate for a new Linux file system.

    The abstract on this file system may be downloaded from here [twsu.edu]. Note: this is a gzipped version.
  • The reason why Linus was shocked and angry when the Mindcraft study came out is because Linus first saw the study maybe ten minutes before he was to go on stage with a Microsoft representative at an Atlanta technology conference. The Microsoft representative then used the Mindcraft study to attack Linux's performance, on stage, in front of hundreds of CIOs and other corporate tech geeks. Linus handled himself pretty well, all things considered, but it's easy to see why he'd be shocked and angry after being ambushed like that.

  • Seriously, we all knew that. I guess if you're one of the MSFT trolls wandering through /. in search of FUD targets, it might be interesting.

    And they might learn something, too.

    Will in Seattle
  • I saw Linus speak at COMDEX in Chicago a few months ago and it seems like he definatly has a "plan" of sorts concerning the direction he wants to take Linux towards. Some of his answers were very similar/same at Comdex, too. I find it interesting that there is no mention about a cataloged file system when he mentioned EXT3. I think Linux needs a high end file system in order to compete with the likes of AIX and IRIX. At least they are ramping up SMP..something I *really* can't wait to see alone with better clustering. All in all, barring some heinous tragedy (Linus "wills" Linux to M$) these are great times in the world of OS's. Watching Linux develop into a "force" is too cool.
  • Walnut Creek's website states that Slackware supports SMP for 16 processors with kernel 2.0.35.
    Is this accurate? It seemed that Linus was saying that support for just 2 and 4 processors was just added with the 2.2 kernel and that work was continuing on support for 8 to 16 CPUS. Or did I misunderstand?
  • Yes, you misunderstood. It is possible to run Linux with 8 or 16 processors right now, but I believe Linus' words were that it would "be like throwing money at a dead horse". In other words, the performance difference between say 8 and 16 processors would be negligible at best.

    So right now, 4 processors is approximately the maximum number you can have and still have a fairly decent bang for the processor.
  • Thank you for clearing that up for me. I still have to wonder though under what circumstances would someone need that kind of processing power? And I assume that like the Linux kernel any applications to be run on a 16 processor system would have to be optimized equally well to offer any advantage.

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