Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think Stallman himself would like to waste his time on HN :p
Pretty hard to use HN through wget.
you can use lynx: http://lynx.isc.org/
Profile of Linus Torvalds
41–50 of 71 posts
Re: Profile of Linus Torvalds
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, we changed the title to something generic. Suggestions for a better title are welcome, as always.
I'd go so far as to say this is too generic, but what do I know? In any case I thought the original title was better.
It is too generic, but I can't think of anything better. The original isn't accurate. Suggestions are welcome.
Re: Profile of Linus Torvalds
#43Re: Profile of Linus Torvalds
#44As an aside, how does Linus come across as a grouch? Like any other normal human being that expresses a range of emotions, he might have exhibited an imperfect control on his temper/tone. People are way too judgemental / thin skinned these days.
I don't like working with people who are unpleasant to work with.
Of course, if you are really good, he isn't unpleasant to you.
I'm not that good, so I suppose the fact that I wouldn't want to work with Linus would be a success story from his point of view.
Re: Profile of Linus Torvalds
#45Re: Profile of Linus Torvalds
#46I have the same model keyboard as in the video! Just thought I would share.
Which model is it?
Re: Profile of Linus Torvalds
#47"It's weird that a person who can come off as a real grouch has managed to be such a supremely effective dictator."
It's weird that a writer at the level of Bloomberg would be so weirdly dogmatic about this. To the best of my knowledge there is nothing weird about capable people being attracted to a leader who is good at identifying actual problems and is grouchily intolerant of those actual problems attracting capable people. Nor anything weird about such a leader motivating the people who are attracted; nor anything weird about such a leader getting high performance out of the organization. Supposed examples are not exactly scarce in business, military, scientific, sports, and entertainment off the top of my head, and as far as I know they're mostly true, not misleading legends. In most cases I only know second-hand, and I could be mistaken or misled. But the most straightforward interpretation of the evidence seems to be that successful doesn't-suffer-fools-lightly leadership is a pretty common pattern in sharp results-oriented endeavours.
In contrast, it would make much more sense if a sentence like that in a profile ended with "...has managed to be such a supremely effective automobile salesman;" as far as I know retail sales is not full of examples of grouchy doesn't-suffer-fools-lightly successes. But managing sharply goal-oriented organizations? Who would think that's inconsistent with what's reported about Linus here?
Even the prima donna antipattern of being a loose cannon who is flakily grouchy can be somewhat consistent with success --- people will put up with irritating inefficient prima donna stuff if there are enough compensating advantages. But I don't think the article establishes that's what's going on, and as far as I know it's uncommon for knowledgeable people to think that's going on. Success always breeds some level of resentment, and some fraction of people will jump to unusual conclusions, and many thousands of knowledgeable people know of Linus, so I assume there are some knowledgeable people out there who believe that he's an unreasonable prima donna. But I can't think of any individual to nominate as particularly likely to believe this.
Re: Profile of Linus Torvalds
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once upon a time, before RMS re-defined the term for his benefit, the phrase "Operating System" meant what we now call the kernel. You can see the legacy of this in Computer Science departments around the country where they teach an "Operating Systems" course which covers implementing schedulers, file systems, device drivers, etc... Maybe if the GNU folks could have made a usable kernel, they wouldn't have had to sto…
What about Unix, CP/M, DOS..? None of those are kernels yet they were said to be operating systems and before GNU was announced. My question is has Linus ever considered Linux to be the operating system rather than just the name of the kernel?
Depends... if the conversation is a short coming in any part of Linux that isn't the kernel, then Linux means the kernel. If it's something positive, then Linux is the kernel, boot code, userland, and anything else that can be fit under the umbrella.
Re: Profile of Linus Torvalds
#49My main criticism of the linux ecosystem is this: The many eyes theory is broken due to complexity and amount of code, and hence the primary way to the future is in reduction of both (loc and complexity thereof). At over 10 million loc these days, linux has become unweildy for even the most experienced kernel hacker to really understand. This is why I think microkernels like Minix 3 have a bright future as their deve…
Here's the problem: At what rate do microkernels like Minix 3 progress? Compared to Linux, they progress glacially.
And, when Minix 3 has as much functionality as Linux does, how many loc will it have? I grant you that you might have some efficiency from the (assumedly) better architecture, but how much? Would Minix 3 have 5M loc? Would it be really understandable at that point? (Perhaps more than Linux, because of more modularity. Still, you're essentially comparing a robust product to a nowhere-near-production-ready proof-of-concept. It's very much not apples-to-apples.)
Re: Profile of Linus Torvalds
#50Misleading title. I'd say click bait. It talks about Linus and Linux but not about the "future without him" part.
Actually, it does talk about the future without him, though that is perhaps not the primary focus of the article.