Linus Torvalds was recently interviewed by OSNews. These are his answers to some of the questions:
What do you think of the FreeBSD 5 kernel and WindowsXP's new features from a clearly technical point of view?
Linus Torvalds: I don't actually follow other operating systems much. I don't compete - I just worry about making Linux better than itself, not others. And quite frankly, I don't see anythign very interesting on a technical level in either.
What is your opinion on Hailstorm, .Net and the rest of the technologies Microsoft is preparing to roll out in the years to come? Can these releases have an impact on Linux and if yes, in what way?
Linus Torvalds: See my answer about not caring what the competition does, but doing my own thing as well as I can..
What is your opinion on RMS insisting calling Linux as GNU/Linux?
Linus Torvalds: I don't mind what rms calls the system. I don't think his arguments for the naming are very valid, but hey, at the same time I really couldn't care less.
How do you see the future of Linux for the next 5 or 10 years from an engineering but also a marketing eye?
Linus Torvalds: I don't use a marketing eye, I simply don't care. There are others who do, I'll let them worry about it.
From a technical standpoint, I believe the kernel will be "more of the
same", and that all the _really_ interesting stuff will be going on in user space. That's not to say that there aren't problems to keep us occupied in the kernel too, I just don't think they make for all that interesting reading ;)
My thoughts:
How often have we, as developers, built our tools based on what the competition does? How often have we measured our systems against our competitors and not as the tool itself? Linus' philosophy is basically, don't bother about what the others are doing, just make your own stuff better today than what it was yesterday. Most of us started out with that philosophy (at least I did), but somewhere down the line the marketroids got to us. Maybe it was done in school and college, maybe it was done at home. It's the whole concept of getting measuring success by money earned that tends to screw up developers. This, is possibly just one of the things that seperates hackers from the rest.
Hi Everyone,
How can I debug an svgalib application ?
I used gdb but the display got stuck, I was able to change my tty's but couldn't see anything as the screen turned blank. I had NUM lock ON in the second tty, so when I pressed ALT+F2 I could see the NUM Lock LED on and in when I pressed ALT+F1 it turned off.
Finally I had to kill the application blindly by typing "killall appname", and then the display restored, but I wasn't able to get any suggestions from gdb for debugging purpose.
I tried debugging in X using xxgdb, but the case was worse, I had to reboot using "ctrl+alt+del".
Thanks,
Bye, Bhushan Tiwari.
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----- Original Message ----- From: Philip S Tellis philip@konark.ncst.ernet.in
My thoughts:
How often have we, as developers, built our tools based on what the competition does? How often have we measured our systems against our competitors and not as the tool itself? Linus' philosophy is
basically,
don't bother about what the others are doing, just make your own stuff better today than what it was yesterday. Most of us started out with that philosophy (at least I did), but somewhere down the line the marketroids got to us. Maybe it was done in school and college, maybe it was done at home. It's the whole concept of getting measuring success by money earned that tends to screw up developers. This, is possibly just one of the things that seperates hackers from the rest.
I think its important to be aware and informed about what the competition does - just so that you can learn from it - they make some mistakes and do some things better than you - so why not learn 'em both? concentrating on just ur work, and "not caring" about what the competition is doing, is kinda myopic. Probably the point that Linus is trying to make is that the direction of the Linux kernel development is not _driven_ by market needs/competitor moves. That is not to say it is not _influenced_ by technologies developed by others.
my 2paise kishor PS: i've been incommunicado for the last ten days.Did the meet on 7th happen?
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Hi, IMHO the interview seemed a bit conceit(Hey don't flame me, I concede that Linus has every right to be conceit, I would be also if Microsoft ever fears me ;) As kishore rightly points out that one has to be aware of the compition and ready to learn from them. I think GNU Herd should learn somthing from OS X ;) as later had been one of the longest running project and former is still hasn't stabilised ;)
Still Linux has a long way to go, forget about the desktop, I am yearning to hear when will they enable the multithreaded kernel? Linus says he is satisfied with the kernel core and no less than 10 years he is going to change it. So seemed to me I have to wait for another 10 years.
Jai ho maiyan ki, Aditya N.
--- Kishor Bhagwat aaaaarrrgghhh@yahoo.com wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: Philip S Tellis philip@konark.ncst.ernet.in
My thoughts:
How often have we, as developers, built our tools
based on what the
competition does? How often have we measured our
systems against our
competitors and not as the tool itself? Linus'
philosophy is basically,
don't bother about what the others are doing, just
make your own stuff
better today than what it was yesterday. Most of
us started out with
that philosophy (at least I did), but somewhere
down the line the
marketroids got to us. Maybe it was done in
school and college, maybe
it was done at home. It's the whole concept of
getting measuring
success by money earned that tends to screw up
developers. This, is
possibly just one of the things that seperates
hackers from the rest.
I think its important to be aware and informed about what the competition does - just so that you can learn from it - they make some mistakes and do some things better than you - so why not learn 'em both? concentrating on just ur work, and "not caring" about what the competition is doing, is kinda myopic. Probably the point that Linus is trying to make is that the direction of the Linux kernel development is not _driven_ by market needs/competitor moves. That is not to say it is not _influenced_ by technologies developed by others.
my 2paise kishor PS: i've been incommunicado for the last ten days.Did the meet on 7th happen?
_________________________________________________________
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===== rgds, Aditya N. ---------------------- Junior Research Fellow, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Powai, Mumbai, 400076.
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aditya newalkar -
Bhushan Tiwari -
Kishor Bhagwat -
Philip S Tellis