31–40 of 43 posts
The Alcatel-Lucent 5ESS switch code is larger, more mature, has probably had more developers over its lifetime, and still, pretty much, runs the whole phone network.
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The Linux kernel is a complete unknown to the vast majority of people on the planet, yes. But it runs so much of the Internet behind the scenes that I don't think it's fair to say that it only touches the lives of "a small percentage" of the people. Not everyone, to be sure, and depending on how many levels of indirection you consider to be valid, perhaps not even half. But undoubtedly more than can really be called…
>The Linux kernel is a complete unknown to the vast majority of people on the planet, yes. But it runs so much of the Internet behind the scenes that I don't think it's fair to say that it only touches the lives of "a small percentage" of the people I encourage you to reconsider your position on this. Look for yourself here: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm There are 7 billion people on the planet. Of that…
I'm trying to come up with a pithy response, but I'm kind of speechless. Sure Linux is a triumph, but... Seriously? Is the author trolling?
As I ponder it though, I think it becomes more challenging. Linux' emergence has changed the psychology of the software industry and other industries. You really have to ponder before Linux and after Linux to start to capture the magnitude. Before linux, when you bought a computer you paid a company to make it boot and make it usable. If you wanted to seriously program your PC, you had a relatively small set of options: C, Pascal, Assembly, maybe BASIC and then some like databasey type programming platforms of sorts. You had to pay money to get those tools, not a small amount. You want to look under the hood? Go to a university and maybe that'll scratch that itch. Programmers were the nerdiest of the nerds, now they have a degree of coolness in society (a small one but still some and they make movies about Hackers and stuff.) Things were just very different, Linux and GNU and others have had and made a gigantic and revolutionary impact that really has changed the way software dudes think. Maybe GNU would have done this if Linux didn't show up. Maybe something else would have come along, seems like there is a social component and people were ready for it to happen.
That being said, they barely had computers and landed some dudes on the moon, that was some real fucking cowboy shit. Strapping dudes on to a bomb, controllably blowing it up and launching them to the moon and then bringing them back? Alive, with relatively low casualties. That's really big, a whole lot of people making careers out of that work and a whole lot of luck. The luck makes me think of it as bigger, if we did it 100 more times, I know we would have killed a lot more people in the process and it would have maybe looked a bit more reckless in retrospect.
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>The Linux kernel is a complete unknown to the vast majority of people on the planet, yes. But it runs so much of the Internet behind the scenes that I don't think it's fair to say that it only touches the lives of "a small percentage" of the people I encourage you to reconsider your position on this. Look for yourself here: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm There are 7 billion people on the planet. Of that…
But they're still affected by people who do use the Internet.
Frankly, I don't understand this position at all. A poor person in India who has never used the Internet and has probably never heard of the Internet is not in any way affected by people who use the Internet. And anyway, that's a shift of the goal post. The point is that such a person is not touched by the Linux kernel.
No offense, I think people trying to say the Linux kernel is as important as the moon landing are suffering from delusions of grandeur.
Multiple people died in the pursuit of landing a man on the moon (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1). Saying people creating a competing offering to something that had been created dozens of times before is as monumental of an achievement as landing on the moon is frankly preposterous.
Some would say that "The Linux kernel" is a bloated monstrosity and not a good example of technological wizardry.
To state that The kernel is the largest, most complex collaborative effort in the history of the species, while failing to note that the typical jet fighter aircraft uses systems which nearly double the SLOC of a Linux kernel, also serves to illuminate the author's scope of knowledge.
*The latest F-35Bs, including Yuma’s copy, are also flying with a temporary software suite known as Block 1B. The Marines have said the jet won’t be capable of flying and fighting in real combat until it has the Block 2B software that is only now entering testing. With 24 million lines of code — 9 million more than originally envisioned — there’s no telling how long testing could take.*
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But they're still affected by people who do use the Internet.
>But they're still affected by people who do use the Internet. Frankly, I don't understand this position at all. A poor person in India who has never used the Internet and has probably never heard of the Internet is not in any way affected by people who use the Internet. And anyway, that's a shift of the goal post. The point is that such a person is not touched by the Linux kernel. No offense, I think people trying t…
Anyone in a money economy is deeply affected by the Internet.
> No offense, I think people trying to say the Linux kernel is as important as the moon landing are suffering from delusions of grandeur.
Nobody is obligated to acknowledge people whose mode of communication includes insults.
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I agree with you. Linux is possibly a bad example, there's nothing special about writing it. That said, we have made major progress in many fields and I disagree that nothing important is done anymore. Consumer aviation comes to mind. The safety standards they have met is truly mind boggling. Wireless and Internet Connectivity is another - wimax has a huge impact in developing countries. IMO, just these two things ha…
I agree with you. Linux is possibly a bad example, there's nothing special about writing it. Are you sure about it? Wasn't it one of the first really large software projects with the distributed development model? (Were there any predecessors to that?)
Can't cosign this one, I think its a grave underestimation of the import of a species being able to escape however briefly from their home planet. 100 years from now, linux will probably have gone the way of the doodoo bird, certainly by 500 years from now it will have... 500 years from now the question of whether or not man has ever set foot on the moon, and when that first occurred will still have impact
Erm...author isn't taking into account like any of the spinoff tech from the space race, are they? Linux was a hobby OS that popped up right as legal concerns starting hurting the BSD folks, right? Had that not been the case, it probably would've been as interesting a footnote as Minix or Hurd is today. Are they just feeling insecure about the kinds of problems their generation is solving?
Yeah! Figuring out the ad you are most likely to click on next is the best way forward for mankind. This is obvious.