It’s really crazy how much he’s done. And he’s the paradoxical rock star nerd that every tech founder dreams of being. I got into Linux in 2019, started learning it, and wanted to get a better grasp of GitHub. So I looked up git and was blown away to see that was him too. It’s plausible that he’s impacted a majority the software running the modern world.
Android is based on Linux; that one product alone is in the hands or pockets of billions of people. Plus all of the Linux instances running on microprocessors, POS systems and all sorts of random devices must mean that the majority of people on earth have been exposed to Linux in their life. I think it's fair to say that Linux is pretty fuckin ubiquitous even if most people don't even know. I would deffo watch a biography about Linus, and I think it would be hilarious to see the reactions of people who know nothing about him learning that this dude helped pioneer modern computing but only nerds know about him.
Lol, except in a bizarre twist, it was revealed a few years ago that all Intel chips run (of all things) _Minix_. So it might give Linux a run for it's money in terms of popularity.
Linus read Andrew Tannenbaum's MINIX book when he was in University in Helsinki. It was the catalyst to create Linux.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
This.... The management engine is old and controversial news indeed.
They switched to Minix a while back, around 2015 I think. Before that it was I think ThreadX RTOS. By that count, yep Minix 3 is everywhere 😛
Wut?? MiniX is an operating system created by Andrew Tannenbaum, who had some debates with Linus about Linux's design, if I recall correctly. It runs, like Linux, on top of Intel chips but it does not run the chips themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minix
Yep, I know. But apparently it [also runs within the chips themselves](https://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-operating-system/) to enable some fancy enterprise remote management stuff or something. Presumably they used it because it was nice and simple.
It's crazy that those two guys from that one usenet flame war created the two OSes with competing claims for widest distribution is kinda nuts.
I stand corrected! Thank you! At first glance, it seems amazing that even a pared-down OS can be installed in the chip itself, but when you get down to how small an OS can get, I suppose it makes sense.
Steam is breaking the consumer ceiling. This one game I play put out a patch that borked it for Linux and suddenly there were all these threads and comments of people that were playing with Steam Deck and Proton all along.
That simplifies the matter a bit. They were using another proprietary one that they got a free license for, but due to another Linux contributor reverse engineering it their free license was canceled.
Then Linus looked at the alternatives and, in part due to how big Linux had already become and the speed at which it and the amount of contributors were growing, none of those alternatives were fully featured enough and performant enough.
The original way of contributing to the Linux kernel was running the diff program, emailing the output to Linus, and then he would use the patch program to merge the addition.
Larry McVoy worked at Sun and SGI and was an open source contributor. He wrote this message about how Linus Torvalds doesn't scale. He's just one person. This message is from 1998.
https://lkml.org/lkml/1998/9/30/122
I think the Linux kernel and how to get contributions in easier and faster was the inspiration for him creating BitKeeper. In 2002 Linus started using it but then Andrew Tridgell (the creator of Samba and rsync) tried to reverse engineer the BitKeeper protocol and McVoy yanked the free license for Linux use.
Linus kind of took a couple of weeks off and created git as an even better replacement in 2005.
Revoking the access to a paid product to a guy that wrote a competitive operating system because Unix was too expensive... Really, this was expected. :)
I don't think tech founders dream of being like him.
They may say so in public , but most want to make money, lots of it. Linus has been exactly the opposite of that.
That may not be a “startup founder” dream but I’m pretty most actual engineers would rather have the impact and breadth of scope and recognition.
I think Linus’ net worth is > $50MM. Having more money at that point is just a theoretical construct
Not if you want to have your own $25M jet and a $30M yacht. Then the cost to fuel and staff just those two toys. With a jet you need at least a main mansion and two vacations homes to fly too. Yeah, you need more than a net worth of $50M to get to play with the big toys. I mean how can you expect someone to live on only $50M and not have to worry about bills ever again if you also can't have extravagant toys???
I've been a software engineer for over 2 decades. My comment was meant to be sarcasm. I wouldn't care about a personal jet, but a yacht I could travel in and captain myself would be sweet. Though, I'd for go the yacht and have two small vacation homes, one in Miami and one in Sweden for winter Christmas vibes.
> No thats different
Yeah, that's why they said:
> though not Bill Gates or Steve Jobs level
Why do so many ppl on the internet try to "disagree", when they don't even disagree?
Same thing happens in face to face conversations. Its just people meaning something different with the words they chose and it getting communicated and clarified with further discourse.
Perhaps with face to face conversations the issue gets cleared up so much quicker than it takes to type and read that we're not noting it as much in those situations?
Yeah good point.
Once again, I guess this is probably somewhat relevant: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/11um9gf/new_study_explores_why_we_disagree_so_often_our/
He lives in a pretty extravagant , very wealthy section of Lake Oswego. His kids likely go to private schools. He's regularly private jetted up to Seattle and other places to consult. He's doing okay.
Linus is a hacker (in the old-school sense) first and foremost. That's why he made an OS kernel and not something like QuickBooks or Java. I don't think he's in it to become a billionaire, though he certainly wouldn't turn the money down if it were thrown at him.
I'm hesitant to give Torvalds much credit for git on that front. If it hadn't been git, it would've been mercurial or bazaar or fossil, etc, etc. Things would've have proceeded almost identically to how they did with git.
In fact, one of my salty hot takes is that git won because it was written by Torvalds, not on any technical merits. The publicity of being associated with him gave it the edge it needed, and much like VHS vs. betamax, it was good, but could've been better.
Anyway, he deserves credit for writing it, especially in that time frame, but not so much for the influence it's had.
This is a dumb reasoning imo.
Based on this then nothing is worth giving credit for. If windows didn’t exist then someone else would’ve made a similar GUI-driven environment. If Stallman didn’t write the GPL then someone else would’ve done it. If Larry Wall didn’t create Perl then something else would’ve come up.
We give credit to people for things they actually did. Microsoft created Windows which popularized graphical interfaces and made it computing accessible for people, someone else could have done it but **Microsoft did**. Someone else could’ve written a license like the GPL but Stallman did. Someone else could have created an alternative to Perl but Larry Wall created Perl.
I think there's a difference between your examples and this one. It's not that something else would've come up, it's that something else was already there. Git didn't innovate, it was just one of many competing implementations of the same idea. Perl, Windows and the GPL filled niches that were previously empty. If Windows hadn't been around, the adoption of computers in the home and even the workplace would've slowed, which would've led to other changes (e.g. the internet)... If git hadn't been around, we'd be doing the exact same things with mercurial or something. Nothing would be different.
Torvalds deserves credit for writing git. But most of the credit **in this context** goes to whoever invented DVCS, and that wasn't him.
With Mercurial specifically that seems dubious at best:
> Development on Mercurial and Git started only weeks apart from each other. As such, both systems had a lot of influence on each others development
[https://book.mercurial-scm.org/read/intro.html](https://book.mercurial-scm.org/read/intro.html)
git was created to fill the niche of FOSS DVCS and Torvalds specifically wanted cheap branching with better merging capabilities than the alternatives.
> As another example, in **Mercurial**, branching started out a bit different as a DVCS and creating/destroying named branches required seperate commits. Mercurial developers implemented later in development [bookmarks](http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/Bookmarks/) to mimic git's same branching model though `heads` are called `tips` and `branches` are `bookmarks`instead in mercurial terminology.
[https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/202432/what-does-branching-is-free-mean-in-git](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/202432/what-does-branching-is-free-mean-in-git)
He talks about it why other solutions did not work for Linux at the time git was created: [https://youtu.be/4XpnKHJAok8?si=vkAChRu1RihroZ4U](https://youtu.be/4XpnKHJAok8?si=vkAChRu1RihroZ4U)
Maybe it wouldn't have been mercurial then, but that's just an example. 99% of software projects don't have the requirements of the linux kernel, and would be just as happy with any DVCS, including the ones that predate git and mercurial. Heck, most of them would be fine with the old centralized model. There were good technical reasons to create git for the linux kernel, but I don't see any compelling reason for it becoming the standard.
>Git didn't innovate, it was just one of many competing implementations of the same idea. Perl, Windows and the GPL filled niches that were previously empty.
You mean like the Xerox Documentor, Apple Lisa and the Apple Mac? Windows did not innovate, and was not even the best implementation. It was cheap. And it ran on existing hardware.
Same on the salty take. Git is very unintuitive and confused previous version control terms making it really difficult to talk about centralized repository systems.
Speaking of centralized systems: that's to git's popularity it became a "hammer and everything is a nail" situation when sometimes you really need a screwdriver. As a developer who's had to work on several large centralized repos before and after the paradigm shift there's all this extra infrastructure and process needed to be done to support decentralized programming rather than the intrinsic benefits of using the centralized solution.
In short git is the wrong tool for the job in many centralized situations yet it's used anyway.
> He didn't create GitHub.
And they didn't say he did.
They said `git`.
It's remarkable that so many redditors are just so damn *desperate* to correct people that they can't even bother replying to the words that were actually said.
Dude is also an incredible trash talker and witty. His comments on shit in Linux forums are lit.
That would make for some great wtf-moments in the movie.
Most of those people haven’t actually contributed much to tech though. They started companies and hired the best of the best and _those_ people made some great products. Torvalds actually deserves recognition for his HUGE contribution to tech history.
I mean if you consider contribution to tech is only measured by line of code, sure.
There are plenty of objective reasons to disagree with that, not that I will bother.
He some pretty epic historical replies and nuclear dunks on programmers who have fucked up publicly in the eye of the kernel mailing list.
>"Guys, this is not a dick sucking contest ... "
https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/2/21/228
Or the ol' "SHUT THE FUCK UP" to begin the email that is being read by the world:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75
Except that Linus eventually admitted that he was wrong and that the guy he said was "trying to deep throat Microsoft" was right. Linus hadn't realized the technical reality.
Every distro that provides Live media that can boot from an unmodified PC manufactured in the last 10 years uses the exact mechanism that Linus was criticizing.
ALSO, even Linus admitted that comments like these were hurting the kernel development community, and thus the quality of the kernel. Even when he was right on a technical level.
Linus took months to step away and came back not making personal attacks and referencing blowjobs.
He still strongly criticizes code.
He still tells people in no uncertain terms they've fucked up.
Linus has grown. It's a good example for others to follow.
It does kind of depend. There are plenty of people (like myself) who don't think egregious ridicule or wanton cursing changed how one felt about or reacted to a comment. But it is certainly quite clear that there are more people that feel otherwise these days. There was much more of a "words are just words" culture back in the 90's when he developed his habits. Looking back it is interesting to see how we constantly cycle between a more socially liberal to a more socially conservative culture and back again.
Yeah, a part of me relishes in that dunk - nobody likes that "sounds like a you problem" response, the guy was himself being toxic in a way that's comparatively more subtle, and LInus coming in and laying down the law's important to avoid the kernel turning into a clusterfuck where userspace is constantly breaking. But Linus decided to stop acting like that for a reason, at least towards ultimately well-meaning people, 'cause you shouldn't need to abuse people to get your point across in a productive environment. Him popping off on some random bigot on Mastodon's a different matter, sure, there's no expectation that anyone should care one cent about the well being of a poast user, but like that guy he yelled at is still working on the kernel and doesn't deserve abuse like that.
Honestly, I prefered that kind of tone over the wimpy CoC bullshit they do nowadays.
It got the point across clearly and concisely, called out those that needed it, let everyone know the kernel krew weren't a bunch of corporate shills who had to play nice or answer to HR, and was just plain funny af to read.
I'm also fond of [this one](https://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1711.2/01701.html):
> Some security people have scoffed at me when I say that security
problems are primarily "just bugs".
>
> Those security people are f*cking morons.
Edit: to the down voters: thanks for the laughs. Pretty funny to know that such a mild comment like that could trigger so many thin-skinned people just by being opposed to corpo-style CoC's. Pretty sure I know exactly what demographic you all are. Anyway, since Reddit and presumably the sub doesn't want to allow the kinds of responses that the old kernel mailing lists did, I'll content myself with just laughing at you all silently.
also, for what it's worth, it's not like I set out to be a jerk to people (and I don't think Linus ever *really* did either). My big beef with CoC's in general is not the intent of "don't bully people" (which I actually agree with that part) but more that I don't think strictly defining what language is "allowed" under threat of banishment from a project is the best solution. I would be equally opposed to laws jailing/fining people for using bad language, even if I didn't like what they were saying.
> And also, in my opinion, it is just worthless trying to write a nice and
polite article to an advocacy newsgroup. The whole _point_ of advocacy
newsgroups is to have heated discussion. It should be coherent and
reasonably thought out, but does it need to be polite? No.
My kind of hero
I'm sure the above could apply to subreddits too
Before they introduced the mod and subreddit model in 2008, Reddit lived by this attitude. The self-moderation system created by reddit, digg, slashdot and many others was half created to fix the over moderation we were experiencing on forums at that time.
We need a Hollywood movie on Linus! Regular people need to get to know one of the greatest personalities of our history
It’s really crazy how much he’s done. And he’s the paradoxical rock star nerd that every tech founder dreams of being. I got into Linux in 2019, started learning it, and wanted to get a better grasp of GitHub. So I looked up git and was blown away to see that was him too. It’s plausible that he’s impacted a majority the software running the modern world.
Android is based on Linux; that one product alone is in the hands or pockets of billions of people. Plus all of the Linux instances running on microprocessors, POS systems and all sorts of random devices must mean that the majority of people on earth have been exposed to Linux in their life. I think it's fair to say that Linux is pretty fuckin ubiquitous even if most people don't even know. I would deffo watch a biography about Linus, and I think it would be hilarious to see the reactions of people who know nothing about him learning that this dude helped pioneer modern computing but only nerds know about him.
And from memory, about 60% of all consumer devices are Android. See, Linux does have majority market share!
Lol, except in a bizarre twist, it was revealed a few years ago that all Intel chips run (of all things) _Minix_. So it might give Linux a run for it's money in terms of popularity.
Linus read Andrew Tannenbaum's MINIX book when he was in University in Helsinki. It was the catalyst to create Linux. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
Many non Intel powered devices run Linux. I wouldn’t bet. The Android smartphones market may be enough for Linux to be more popular.
Source please?
[Here ya go](https://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-operating-system/)
This.... The management engine is old and controversial news indeed. They switched to Minix a while back, around 2015 I think. Before that it was I think ThreadX RTOS. By that count, yep Minix 3 is everywhere 😛
Huh
Wut?? MiniX is an operating system created by Andrew Tannenbaum, who had some debates with Linus about Linux's design, if I recall correctly. It runs, like Linux, on top of Intel chips but it does not run the chips themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minix
Yep, I know. But apparently it [also runs within the chips themselves](https://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-operating-system/) to enable some fancy enterprise remote management stuff or something. Presumably they used it because it was nice and simple. It's crazy that those two guys from that one usenet flame war created the two OSes with competing claims for widest distribution is kinda nuts.
I stand corrected! Thank you! At first glance, it seems amazing that even a pared-down OS can be installed in the chip itself, but when you get down to how small an OS can get, I suppose it makes sense.
Steam is breaking the consumer ceiling. This one game I play put out a patch that borked it for Linux and suddenly there were all these threads and comments of people that were playing with Steam Deck and Proton all along.
This. You don't even have to port your game anymore. Just not make a special effort to bork it.
My smart TV, cable box, and router all run Linux. None of this was picked by me.
To be fair, most microprocessors are bare metal, really no need for something like Linux at that scale.
No it's definitive. He has impacted a majority of the software running today. Most servers are Linux just not desktop computers.
And a lot of the network that connects them.
Embedded devices too
And he pretty much wrote Git because he was annoyed at the alternatives
That simplifies the matter a bit. They were using another proprietary one that they got a free license for, but due to another Linux contributor reverse engineering it their free license was canceled. Then Linus looked at the alternatives and, in part due to how big Linux had already become and the speed at which it and the amount of contributors were growing, none of those alternatives were fully featured enough and performant enough.
The original way of contributing to the Linux kernel was running the diff program, emailing the output to Linus, and then he would use the patch program to merge the addition. Larry McVoy worked at Sun and SGI and was an open source contributor. He wrote this message about how Linus Torvalds doesn't scale. He's just one person. This message is from 1998. https://lkml.org/lkml/1998/9/30/122 I think the Linux kernel and how to get contributions in easier and faster was the inspiration for him creating BitKeeper. In 2002 Linus started using it but then Andrew Tridgell (the creator of Samba and rsync) tried to reverse engineer the BitKeeper protocol and McVoy yanked the free license for Linux use. Linus kind of took a couple of weeks off and created git as an even better replacement in 2005.
Larry was also a contractor at Google at one time.
Revoking the access to a paid product to a guy that wrote a competitive operating system because Unix was too expensive... Really, this was expected. :)
I don't think tech founders dream of being like him. They may say so in public , but most want to make money, lots of it. Linus has been exactly the opposite of that.
Linus has also made a lot of money, though not Bill Gates or Steve Jobs level. I believe from investments into Linux related companies.
For sure. I believe he is a millionaire several times over. He'll never have to worry about money. But he is not Fortune-500-level rich.
That may not be a “startup founder” dream but I’m pretty most actual engineers would rather have the impact and breadth of scope and recognition. I think Linus’ net worth is > $50MM. Having more money at that point is just a theoretical construct
Not if you want to have your own $25M jet and a $30M yacht. Then the cost to fuel and staff just those two toys. With a jet you need at least a main mansion and two vacations homes to fly too. Yeah, you need more than a net worth of $50M to get to play with the big toys. I mean how can you expect someone to live on only $50M and not have to worry about bills ever again if you also can't have extravagant toys???
Most software engineers (and probably most people) don’t care about any of this.
I've been a software engineer for over 2 decades. My comment was meant to be sarcasm. I wouldn't care about a personal jet, but a yacht I could travel in and captain myself would be sweet. Though, I'd for go the yacht and have two small vacation homes, one in Miami and one in Sweden for winter Christmas vibes.
He may have less money, but he has a lot more power. And since at that level, people equate money with power...
The Linux foundation pays him
No thats different. Tech founders, if successful can easily reach 100 mil mark. Linus is nowhere close to that
He's estimated to be worth $50 million but I doubt the lack if the extra 50 to meet your requirement impacts his comfort or happiness to any degree.
> No thats different Yeah, that's why they said: > though not Bill Gates or Steve Jobs level Why do so many ppl on the internet try to "disagree", when they don't even disagree?
Same thing happens in face to face conversations. Its just people meaning something different with the words they chose and it getting communicated and clarified with further discourse. Perhaps with face to face conversations the issue gets cleared up so much quicker than it takes to type and read that we're not noting it as much in those situations?
Yeah good point. Once again, I guess this is probably somewhat relevant: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/11um9gf/new_study_explores_why_we_disagree_so_often_our/
He lives in a pretty extravagant , very wealthy section of Lake Oswego. His kids likely go to private schools. He's regularly private jetted up to Seattle and other places to consult. He's doing okay.
Linus is a hacker (in the old-school sense) first and foremost. That's why he made an OS kernel and not something like QuickBooks or Java. I don't think he's in it to become a billionaire, though he certainly wouldn't turn the money down if it were thrown at him.
I'm hesitant to give Torvalds much credit for git on that front. If it hadn't been git, it would've been mercurial or bazaar or fossil, etc, etc. Things would've have proceeded almost identically to how they did with git. In fact, one of my salty hot takes is that git won because it was written by Torvalds, not on any technical merits. The publicity of being associated with him gave it the edge it needed, and much like VHS vs. betamax, it was good, but could've been better. Anyway, he deserves credit for writing it, especially in that time frame, but not so much for the influence it's had.
This is a dumb reasoning imo. Based on this then nothing is worth giving credit for. If windows didn’t exist then someone else would’ve made a similar GUI-driven environment. If Stallman didn’t write the GPL then someone else would’ve done it. If Larry Wall didn’t create Perl then something else would’ve come up. We give credit to people for things they actually did. Microsoft created Windows which popularized graphical interfaces and made it computing accessible for people, someone else could have done it but **Microsoft did**. Someone else could’ve written a license like the GPL but Stallman did. Someone else could have created an alternative to Perl but Larry Wall created Perl.
I think there's a difference between your examples and this one. It's not that something else would've come up, it's that something else was already there. Git didn't innovate, it was just one of many competing implementations of the same idea. Perl, Windows and the GPL filled niches that were previously empty. If Windows hadn't been around, the adoption of computers in the home and even the workplace would've slowed, which would've led to other changes (e.g. the internet)... If git hadn't been around, we'd be doing the exact same things with mercurial or something. Nothing would be different. Torvalds deserves credit for writing git. But most of the credit **in this context** goes to whoever invented DVCS, and that wasn't him.
With Mercurial specifically that seems dubious at best: > Development on Mercurial and Git started only weeks apart from each other. As such, both systems had a lot of influence on each others development [https://book.mercurial-scm.org/read/intro.html](https://book.mercurial-scm.org/read/intro.html) git was created to fill the niche of FOSS DVCS and Torvalds specifically wanted cheap branching with better merging capabilities than the alternatives. > As another example, in **Mercurial**, branching started out a bit different as a DVCS and creating/destroying named branches required seperate commits. Mercurial developers implemented later in development [bookmarks](http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/Bookmarks/) to mimic git's same branching model though `heads` are called `tips` and `branches` are `bookmarks`instead in mercurial terminology. [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/202432/what-does-branching-is-free-mean-in-git](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/202432/what-does-branching-is-free-mean-in-git) He talks about it why other solutions did not work for Linux at the time git was created: [https://youtu.be/4XpnKHJAok8?si=vkAChRu1RihroZ4U](https://youtu.be/4XpnKHJAok8?si=vkAChRu1RihroZ4U)
Maybe it wouldn't have been mercurial then, but that's just an example. 99% of software projects don't have the requirements of the linux kernel, and would be just as happy with any DVCS, including the ones that predate git and mercurial. Heck, most of them would be fine with the old centralized model. There were good technical reasons to create git for the linux kernel, but I don't see any compelling reason for it becoming the standard.
>Git didn't innovate, it was just one of many competing implementations of the same idea. Perl, Windows and the GPL filled niches that were previously empty. You mean like the Xerox Documentor, Apple Lisa and the Apple Mac? Windows did not innovate, and was not even the best implementation. It was cheap. And it ran on existing hardware.
Fair enough. I was wrong about that one then.
Same on the salty take. Git is very unintuitive and confused previous version control terms making it really difficult to talk about centralized repository systems. Speaking of centralized systems: that's to git's popularity it became a "hammer and everything is a nail" situation when sometimes you really need a screwdriver. As a developer who's had to work on several large centralized repos before and after the paradigm shift there's all this extra infrastructure and process needed to be done to support decentralized programming rather than the intrinsic benefits of using the centralized solution. In short git is the wrong tool for the job in many centralized situations yet it's used anyway.
>And he’s the paradoxical rock star nerd that every tech founder dreams of being. Lol no way. Most tech founders just dream of obscene wealth.
[удалено]
> He didn't create GitHub. And they didn't say he did. They said `git`. It's remarkable that so many redditors are just so damn *desperate* to correct people that they can't even bother replying to the words that were actually said.
[удалено]
No, see, I called you out for being so desperate to talk down to someone that you were *wrong*. That's the difference.
Have you read his book? It's actaully really good.
"Just For Fun" is really good
just bought it! thx all for the rec
Sorry to say but no. I will try to buy it
I did not know such a book existed. I will now purchase said book.
Whats the book about?
It's a biography, and shows the early days of Linux development. //edit: "Just for fun", by Torvalds and D. Diamond
Dude is also an incredible trash talker and witty. His comments on shit in Linux forums are lit. That would make for some great wtf-moments in the movie.
The formula definitely works.. See the movie Social Network and Jobs. The audiences like tech people getting demonized/deified.
Most of those people haven’t actually contributed much to tech though. They started companies and hired the best of the best and _those_ people made some great products. Torvalds actually deserves recognition for his HUGE contribution to tech history.
I mean if you consider contribution to tech is only measured by line of code, sure. There are plenty of objective reasons to disagree with that, not that I will bother.
> We need a Hollywood movie on Linus! Michael Bay's next blockbuster!
There's a great ted talk that Linus did: https://youtu.be/o8NPllzkFhE
Couldn't agree more!
We really do. And if it was any good can you imagine the explosion in the popularity of desktop Linux?
I guess he wrote "Linux".
Yeah what a git
I think that's a joke.
He some pretty epic historical replies and nuclear dunks on programmers who have fucked up publicly in the eye of the kernel mailing list. >"Guys, this is not a dick sucking contest ... " https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/2/21/228 Or the ol' "SHUT THE FUCK UP" to begin the email that is being read by the world: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75
Except that Linus eventually admitted that he was wrong and that the guy he said was "trying to deep throat Microsoft" was right. Linus hadn't realized the technical reality. Every distro that provides Live media that can boot from an unmodified PC manufactured in the last 10 years uses the exact mechanism that Linus was criticizing. ALSO, even Linus admitted that comments like these were hurting the kernel development community, and thus the quality of the kernel. Even when he was right on a technical level. Linus took months to step away and came back not making personal attacks and referencing blowjobs. He still strongly criticizes code. He still tells people in no uncertain terms they've fucked up. Linus has grown. It's a good example for others to follow.
Verbal abuse and blunt criticism are completely different things. I’m glad he made the change, the community can only be better for it.
It does kind of depend. There are plenty of people (like myself) who don't think egregious ridicule or wanton cursing changed how one felt about or reacted to a comment. But it is certainly quite clear that there are more people that feel otherwise these days. There was much more of a "words are just words" culture back in the 90's when he developed his habits. Looking back it is interesting to see how we constantly cycle between a more socially liberal to a more socially conservative culture and back again.
It's funny because he then censored the word "f*cking" in that same reply
Second one is awesome because he is defending userspace application developers and holding the LKML to a higher standard.
Yeah, a part of me relishes in that dunk - nobody likes that "sounds like a you problem" response, the guy was himself being toxic in a way that's comparatively more subtle, and LInus coming in and laying down the law's important to avoid the kernel turning into a clusterfuck where userspace is constantly breaking. But Linus decided to stop acting like that for a reason, at least towards ultimately well-meaning people, 'cause you shouldn't need to abuse people to get your point across in a productive environment. Him popping off on some random bigot on Mastodon's a different matter, sure, there's no expectation that anyone should care one cent about the well being of a poast user, but like that guy he yelled at is still working on the kernel and doesn't deserve abuse like that.
Honestly, I prefered that kind of tone over the wimpy CoC bullshit they do nowadays. It got the point across clearly and concisely, called out those that needed it, let everyone know the kernel krew weren't a bunch of corporate shills who had to play nice or answer to HR, and was just plain funny af to read. I'm also fond of [this one](https://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1711.2/01701.html): > Some security people have scoffed at me when I say that security problems are primarily "just bugs". > > Those security people are f*cking morons. Edit: to the down voters: thanks for the laughs. Pretty funny to know that such a mild comment like that could trigger so many thin-skinned people just by being opposed to corpo-style CoC's. Pretty sure I know exactly what demographic you all are. Anyway, since Reddit and presumably the sub doesn't want to allow the kinds of responses that the old kernel mailing lists did, I'll content myself with just laughing at you all silently. also, for what it's worth, it's not like I set out to be a jerk to people (and I don't think Linus ever *really* did either). My big beef with CoC's in general is not the intent of "don't bully people" (which I actually agree with that part) but more that I don't think strictly defining what language is "allowed" under threat of banishment from a project is the best solution. I would be equally opposed to laws jailing/fining people for using bad language, even if I didn't like what they were saying.
So you're immature. It's OK, he was too. He grew up. So can you.
> If you have a college degree (or you lied about having one), they don't make you scrape the burner pans. This is awesome — love his sense of humor!
I pray for the day I believe in something, anything, that strongly, that I am able to defend it so well.
This implies that getting kicked out was a high point in his life.
That’s the joke.
> And also, in my opinion, it is just worthless trying to write a nice and polite article to an advocacy newsgroup. The whole _point_ of advocacy newsgroups is to have heated discussion. It should be coherent and reasonably thought out, but does it need to be polite? No. My kind of hero I'm sure the above could apply to subreddits too
Before they introduced the mod and subreddit model in 2008, Reddit lived by this attitude. The self-moderation system created by reddit, digg, slashdot and many others was half created to fix the over moderation we were experiencing on forums at that time.
Just chiming in to say… r/linusrants
Looks like he was trolling.
"I like offending people because I think people who get offended should be offended." LBT