

In-Depth Upside Interview With Linus Torvalds 96
Anonymous Coward writes "I've heard that Linus will grace the cover of the next Upside. Their site posted the interview today. It's one of those huge, future-speak filled, all-encompassing pieces. Pretty good stuff." This may be the *longest* Linus interview ever posted online. But there's enough new information in it (besides the sushi comment; I didn't make that up) that it's probably worth reading.
Money, Revolutions, and Microsoft (Score:1)
One thing I have noted often enough is that to many people who are aware of technology, revolutions are a good thing. I completely disagree. Revolution means drastic change. Change is good. Drastic is not. In any revolution in history, much was destroyed to bring about the revolution. The same implies with computers. If a new technology is revolutionary, it must change drasticly. That means incompatability and everything needs to be rebuilt. This is bad. And as often the new Amiga people say "revolutionary" I say it will fail because of it. Unless it isn't a real revolution.
And Microsoft. To far too many people, Microsoft means money. They used to mean success but they don't seem as successful anymore. So now they mean money, and to too many people, money means greed. After you see through many wicked associations like this, you begin to see it is largely unwarranted. Microsoft offers conveniance and their motivation is money. Their monopoly on operating systems is bad, but again their motivations are money. And when a company is as big as Microsoft, it can't help tramping some people. So don't ask for the end of Microsoft. Ask to make them smaller. They have some nice technologies and too many people fail to recognize this.
After you look at yourself enough, you find out where your prejudices lay. The rules are the same as anywhere else: give it the benefit of the doubt, look at it in the eyes of another, and what would you did if you were them. And then life doesn't seem as evil anymore.
(I guess you might be wondering what this has to do with the interview. Well, all three of my topics were mentioned in the interview. And I can imagine many people commenting in this thread without thinking objectably. It is difficult, especially on slashdot, I know.)
Kevin Holmes
"extrasolar"
klh@sedona.net
Re:Money, Revolutions, and Microsoft (Score:1)
Re:Editorial modifications (Score:2)
Often, answers to questions will wander off into all sorts of tangents before coming back to the point. Reading a wandering comment is no fun. Thus the need to edit a comment into something short and concise that grabs the reader's attention while being faithful to the general point.
-E
Crashing... (Score:2)
I've been an Applix Office user since 1996 (when it was first introduced), and have never had it crash.
Netscape crashes, but it crashes just as hard under Windows. That's why I erased it off my Win98 machine at home, and is why I'll erase it off my Linux/FreeBSD machine at home as soon as KDE 2.0 introduces Java and Javascript into the KDE browser (it's coming!). The KDE browser already kicks rear. It's not going to take much before I can kiss Netscape goodbye!
-E
I [like] well written [articles] (Score:1)
Re:Editorial modifications (Score:1)
---
Re:2.2.11 has 1860000 lines of code (exactly) (Score:1)
Re:[Paraphasing] (Score:2)
Or perhaps we should play it like Madlibs, figuring out what would be the funniest words to put inside the brackets.
Wonderful quote (Score:1)
Kinda sums up the whole sheebang.
Good but stupidity in Bio section (Score:1)
That Ted Lewis cheesehead made the same mistake in that ``Open Source Acid Test'' embarassement, when he claimed that Linux's million lines of code do not approach the more than ten million in a real UNIX, and that Linux will have to get that big before it can compete.
Line counts... (Score:1)
Line counts... (Score:1)
Highbrow European Art Films (Score:1)
I mean what's he going to say? That Hollywood movies are shallow, mindless trash compared to European art movies? Coming from a recent comer from the Old World it would be seen as blatant euro-snobbery, even though everyone knows that it's true.
Re:Money, Revolutions, and Microsoft (Score:1)
Yes, I'm also saddened by how often money is seen as all-important in the U.S.A. As an American who grew up in Europe (France, specifically) and is now going to college in the U.S., I have seen American culture from both the inside and the outside. And IMNSHO, Americans in general put way too much value on money. People pursue higher-paying jobs at the expense of their health, their families, their happiness. Good, but less popular, TV shows get cut in favor of low-quality (but popular) Yet-Another-Sitcom shows, because those get higher ratings and thus more advertising revenue. And so it goes...
I was talking to somebody once who mentioned, "You can make a lot of money in the field of computer science, can't you?" I answered, "Yeah, you can... If money's what you care about." He gave me a funny look. Sigh... Sometimes I'd like to stand in the middle of downtown with a megaphone during rush hour and yell at all the people going to work, "Hey! Money isn't everything, you know!" Do you think they'd lock me in the insane asylum? If you don't want money or fame in today's American culture, you're a nobody. Well, my answer to that comes from Emily Dickinson (this is from memory, so I may get punctuation or capitalization wrong...):
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody too?
Then that makes two of us -- don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be Somebody!
How public, like the frog,
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
-----
Re:Wonderful quote (Score:1)
Hell, he has hand-jive consultants!
(very inside unless you know politics)
Not a good sign. He plans to do that.
It WILL happen. Bill wants power. Badly.
Maybe we can run him against steve forbes for global benevolent dictator.
You scared yet?
Re:Money, Revolutions, and Microsoft (Score:1)
Torvalds: Even the people who can't imagine doing something just for the love of doing something--they're sad people,
Damm, that almost brought a tear to my eye!
Re:Linus' Degree (Score:1)
"Design of a portable Operating System."
Ie: linux.
It was on a page of the title list of graduate papers at the Uni of
I Wonder what grade he got, be interesting to know.
Re:Editorial modifications (Score:1)
Sentences get broken up with mumbles, hand gestures or references to multiple 'it's 'them's and 'thingumajig's which make perfect sense to both parties but would be meaningless out of context.
Therefore, it is often necessary to alter the quotes either by the insertion of the correct pronouns, etc. or by the use of square-bracketed references.
I doubt if the interviewer changed the sense of anything Linus had to say - if he did then would be trivial for Linus to spot it & issue a correcting statement given that the interview is online.
Re:How much was personally written by Linux? (Score:1)
Next book (Score:1)
"The Penguin Dominance"
or a Dale Brown,
"Flight of the Penguin"
Re:Linus is just a cool, well-rounded guy (Score:1)
Jesus O' Nazereth: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto your" [Um, but what if I'm really into S&M??]
Bill S. Preston, Esq: "Be Excellent To Each Other."
Re: Linus' Degree (Score:1)
I'd give him an "A"
(anyone know for sure?)
Re:Transmeta (Score:1)
positive (Score:1)
Editorial modifications (Score:1)
Not that I think there is any deception, just that I want to KNOW what slang Linus used.
All in all, kudos to Upside, though.
Ethan
Re:Did anybody notice... (Score:1)
Re:Editorial modifications (Score:1)
Ethan
Re:good quote (Score:1)
It is better the way every Unix is better than NT.
That's a server side.
But if talk about workstation ( or should I say desktop) side then things are radicaly different.
Come on, have you ever used desktop apps on Linux ?
They crash, crash hard , much more often than anything on Windows.
This author is a little biased of the USA (Score:1)
Hollywood would have to be THE Monopoly of the film industry!! Hollywood is driven by capitalism and a love of money, rather than any love of story telling or making films. In comparison European films run on budgets far lower, because they realise that millions of dollars of special FX + Overpaid American actors don't necessarily make a good film.
Cough. I think we can see a little bias in this author here.
Re:Description of Tove? (Score:1)
Re:Editorial modifications (Score:1)
(Or maybe the interviewer had a lousy tape recorder, and when he went back to his office to transcribe the tape, he discovered that many of the words were inaudible.)
Re:author (Score:1)
It broke (Score:1)
--
Re:Yes Way! (Score:1)
author (Score:1)
That's pretty cool.
I can see his next book-The Penguin Hour:The story behind the OS (now a made for tv movie!)
-Lisa
[Paraphasing] (Score:1)
good quote (Score:1)
If Microsoft can change and compete on quality, I've won.
Linus' Degree (Score:1)
Does anyone happen to know what Linus wrote his Master's Degree thesis on? (Or would he be the guy to email about that?)
I'm curious because he's the closest thing to a hero that computer science students have. Most of the other big names in the computer industry are either managers, advocates, crackers, or profs -- there's no reason why any of those shoes must be filled by a talented programmer. Linus is a nice guy, a good (if not exceptional) programmer, and still young enough to be trusted. :) He's a far better role model than any sports star, why do journalists never think of him as such?
Linus as Rolemodel (was: Re:Linus' Degree) (Score:1)
I'm not saying he's a rolemodel because of Linux's technical aspects, but of how he's changing the way people use computers. Some obscure researcher with papers that have titles that can't be understood by 1st-years is not a good rolemodel.
To recap, Linus is a good rolemodel because:
Re:Money, Revolutions, and Microsoft (Score:1)
Re:Linus' Degree (Score:1)
If you want to find some REAL computer science role models, I suggest you start by looking in the back of your text books for widely and recently (since 1960 or so) referenced computer scientists/mathematicians. Then track down that authors web page at whatever university s/he is at and take a gander at their "Family Tree" (of doctoral students). And while you're at it, download a few of their papers (if available) or at least find a few of their tech-reports in your library. If you want to see some impressive work, this the the only way to go. You may be able to find some papers written by people in industry, but so much of it tends to be proprietary. Fortunately, this seems to be changing (IBM research and Bell Labs/Lucent publish a lot of their material online also).
-NooM
Re:Editorial modifications (Score:1)
I thought it was a good interview (more actual content than any other I've seen, I think), but I was a little perturbed at all the [editorial] modifications.
No kidding. Particularly when a lot of the modifications appear to have been from an acceptable English phrasing to a different, more verbose English phrasing... I mean, it's fine if the editing serves to explain some unfamiliar jargon, or gloss-replace a one-off slang term, but when the editing is just nitpicking his grammar? When it's perfectly good to start with?
(from a different post)
When people are, you know, talking to an interviewer, a journalist, not, ummm, writing something where they can, er, edit, change what they wrote, make it compact, er, compact and clear, ummm, they often use a lot of words, more words than they really, uh, need to make their point, you know what I mean?
I'd agree with you, except that it's standard practice to abridge all that without even marking its loss. Especially things like "um" and "er", but even (perhaps to a lesser extent) "you know", "like", &c.
breaking monopolies? (Score:1)
how does bying cheap books and watching mainstream hollywood movies help break monopolies?
exactly the opposite is true:
cheap books and hollywood make it hard to create and sell high-quality products that only have a small audience. why do you think microsoft gives away IE? and once you pushed everybody else out of business then you can raise prices and enjoy your monopoly
note: i do not want to criticize linus' choice of books and movies, but the interpretation of it.
Linus is just a cool, well-rounded guy (Score:1)
Regardless, I have to say that Linus just seems like one cool guy.
In every interview that I've read, his opinions seem well-balanced. He appears just plain nice, in the best sense of the word. I also liked his comments about "behave towards others as you'd like them to behave to you". He's right, it doesn't have to be a Christian thing (I couldn't call myself one), it just makes sense (IMHO).
OK, enough hero worship.
Re:good quote (Score:1)
They crash, crash hard , much more often than anything on Windows.
1. Everyday, for at least a couple hours a day.
2. Really? That's news to me. The only thing I can remember crashing is netscape (which crashes on every platform). And even that is reasonably stable, other than occasionally it tries to suck up 200 megs of memory.
I imagine it has to do with WHICH applications you're running. I really haven't noticed Linux applications as being any worse than NT apps. Could you please tell us what you're running that sucks so much?
Church of St. Linus, anyone? (Score:1)
Should he be made a saint or something?
did he call em Lusers??? (Score:1)
maybe he called em Lusers *grin*
Re:Gotta love that Finn.... (Score:1)
:-)
Actually, I think it comes from being married -- in my highly-nonscientific study of married geeks (myself included), I've found that every one has packed on the pounds since settling down. Though being a dad also burns them off -- it's hard to swat a toddler away from a keyboard!
Re:Gotta love that Finn.... (Score:1)
I saw Linus in a finnish TV interview from -95 and he was at least 20kg (sorry, don't know what it is in lbs :-/) smaller :) Looked like a real geek then... But I guess those Guinnes' have made a difference. Btw. he spoke his mother tongue, Swedish, then.
2.2.11 has 1860000 lines of code (exactly) (Score:1)
Sorry if I forgot any extensions, I didn't check the whole tree.
Re:2.2.11 has 1860000 lines of code (exactly) (Score:1)
inglisch (Score:1)
Not to be redundant, of course, but I thought he spoke english well (I've never heard him in person, of course). And it is often that non-native english speakers, once trained in the "full" depth and breadth of english, speak it better than native speakers, who often relax the language into their dialects, and distort it with their regional accents, etc.
Re:Money, Revolutions, and Microsoft (Score:1)
OTOH, if we maintain full backwards-compatibility, we get that OS where you can run WordStar 1.0 if you really want to. (cough.) Maintaining backwards-compat. is usually a Good Thing, but it can be taken too far and can break things later on. Support:
Anyway, you're probably right in saying that revolutionary all-at-once change is bad for most of those involved. As someone pointed out down this thread, though, most change tends to be evolutionary--"let's just stick this new feature in here..." Thing is, after 10-15 cycles of that, the final product bears no resemblance to what you started out with. In computers, apparently, enough micro-evolution leads to macro-evolution and/or "speciation." (Look at Solaris vs. HP-UX vs. IRIX vs. AIX... all Unix at core, but verry different in so many things.)
So don't ask for the end of Microsoft. Ask to make them smaller.
Amen. If they had, say, 60% of the OS market, they'd make a heck of a lot of cash, and they might actually have to compete, and people might be happier because they had a choice. Seems like they want it all, though. Another part of the American Dream, I guess--"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and UNLIMITED POWER!"
Re:Money, Revolutions, and Microsoft (Score:1)
The term "revolutionary" is thrown around way too much, for things that are really evolutionary. On a technical level, at least, Linux was definitely not revolutionary.
---------------------------------
Paraphrasing (Score:1)
Upside: You think Linux may challenge on the desktop in three or four years.
Torvalds: In three or four years, I hope Linux will be there as an alternative for [nontechnical computer users].
Hmmm... Lots of paraphrasing was done in this article!!! /:)
Re:positive (Score:1)
Re:Crashing... (Score:1)
Re:shut up and code (Score:1)
Regardless of the debate on the quality of the kernel point releases, I think a few of the big open source names (ESR, Linus) are a little drunk on their 15 minutes of fame.
Just my
Re:Crashing... (Score:1)
Re:Description of Tove? (Score:1)
Re:Gotta love that Finn.... (Score:1)
On earth one Kilogram weights approximately 2.25lbs
Gotta love that Finn.... (Score:1)
Gotta say it's fabu to see yet another flattering press piece on Da Man. Wish they would say more about his wife n kids though.
Also, I mean, really...he looks 10 lbs. heavier every time I see him in print!
Otherwise though it is a wonderful, wonderful interview. Shows the man's intellect and soul and all that.
Re:Description of Tove? (Score:1)
It seems like no matter WHAT a woman accomplishes, it will NOT get written up in the US media if her hubby is famous also.
Re:Money, Credentials, Reputation, it's all the sa (Score:1)
Thanks for you post. Although I completely disagree with you, I liked it. Just because it discovers the difference and gives a chance to find its roots for better understanding in the future.
It's wonderful to see how different people, reading the same text, tend to emphasize different things.
In general, ordinary Europeans, Asians and even many of us, former Soviets, believe in reputation. Money won't buy you the name. One can be enormously rich but noone will say that he is a nice, kind and respectable person.
Many people still believe that having just alot of money is a start- not the end. Why do they think so? Because they know that money is an extremely powerful tool. The one having extra funds stops surviving and begins bringing his dreams to reality. This person becomes a creator and changes the world we live in. What are his dreams, are they light, nice and kind? Or they are weird, cruel and mean?
This is where upbringing acts as a regulator of vertical mobility. Ignorant, wild person doesn't deserve to posess the power of money. Ability to achieve a classical higher education (I mean Education, not just a set of technical facts) is a filter that makes moving up harder. On the other hand, there should be nothing that stops us from falling down. Nothing except our knowledge and reputation.
People acquire knowledge while they are studying. Knowledge as understanding of things. This helps them later to gain their reputation and make their money to serve themselves and the community.
If this is not achieved, money flows to people with dirty hands and minds, like in many places here. We are tired of their power.....
Re:shut up and code (Score:1)
I wonder why those fine guys from debian, or redhat, or suse, or whatever linux
distribution dont start doing their distros based on the freebsd
As to me, I wonder, where is _your_ distro? And probably you can show us the lines in kernel written by you? Or any of your lines?
I think you should have expected such replies- just wondering whether you have a joker in a sleeve, kinda you are a lead developer for M$
Re:Money, Credentials, Reputation, it's all the sa (Score:1)
What about
the brilliant student who fell 1 point
behind and had to settle for a 3-tier university?
Brilliant stdent won't miss a point. Otherwise he's not that brilliant.
You know what I see? I see jealous Europeans on their high-horses out-gunned by cowboy
Americans who dropped out of school to follow their dreams and scored big time.
I see no cowboys around here. Should I pick a microscope?
Europeans still view themselves as better than everyone else.
Well, not being a cowboy, I'd stop this thread. You are listening only to yourself. I never said Europeans are better, I said we are different.
Your screams are neither informative, nor they make any sense to me. You make me yawn.
Buh-bye, Mr Cowboy. When you grow up, we'll meet again. Probably....
PS And yes, before you take your gun out, would you please, get your visor up? Being AC ain't any good if you intend to flame the whole continent just because you missed a point on exams.