Linus Torvalds started a revolution of sorts in the computer industry when he created the Linux operating system and decided to share it with fellow programmers on the Internet. He discussed via e-mail his move to Portland, the state of Linux and Microsoft.
Q&A: Linus Torvalds, inventor of Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Creator would be more fitting IMHO…
Interviews like these make me really like Linus the person (as far as someone can be known through an interveiw) as well as liking Linux. But you know, I detect a small amount of California influence on his English. It’s, just, like so not what I envisioned :p
I learned yesterday that my University (the University of Hawaii) was the birthplace of the Fedora Core project. I suddenly feel prouder of a University I am already proud of!
Erik
(thinking about what cool project he can do at UH to make Linux even better — I was thinking about maybe a update/install program that used an existing p2p network and protocol (or multiple p2p networks) as a back-end — making Linux the first OS to make software updates truly community-supported… whatdya guys think?)
I don’t personally care who this person is, adapting minix code does not make someone a ‘god’.
Better design and actually caring about them. Having the guts to really fixing fundamental design mistakes, rather than trying to work around them.
Easy to say when you don’t have a gigantic customer base that whines when they can’t run their 5 year old software they payed $100K for. Hence the reason there are very few large software vendors producing software for Linux.
You are a pratting troll – where does it say anywhere that he adapted minix code? go here and read <http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/codecomparison/>
Not a big fan of facts, are you?
From the “inventor” of Minix himself:
Linus used MINIX as his development platform. There is no dispute about that. He also used some ideas from MINIX. But MINIX wasn’t original either. Here is a little bit of the history
Linux used ideas from MINIX
MINIX used ideas from UNIX
UNIX used ideas from MULTICS
MULTICS used ideas from CTSS
CTSS used ideas from FMS
In science, all work is based on what came before it. Nothing unusual here. What Linus didn’t do was steal the MINIX code. That has been well documented.
“Better design and actually caring about them. Having the guts to really fixing fundamental design mistakes, rather than trying to work around them.”
i love this part
how did tannenbaum say it: “the best evidence that linus wrote linux himselve is that he messed up the design” or something like that.
whenn will this be taken care of?
and isn’t the whole module stuff a workaround for the monolithic concept of linux?
I love linus.. lets invest in a linux system to keep him alive forever.
-DaMouse
Did u say he smokes mary-juana, shame on him, what a criminal he is.
But he still was able to help in developing emacs & GCC. That nasty pothead.
“Send him to Siberia for that!!!!”
I think for emacs alone he should be sentenced to life in Siberia.
When Andrew Tannenbaum said Linux messed up the design, I thought, at least from his tone, or what he actually said I can’t remember, that he was specifically talking about Linus making a monolithic kernel, unlike Minix which was a microkernel. And that is not actually something that is fact, but rather opinion. On the face of it, he was right, but sometimes the proof of the pudding is in the eating. For all their claimed benefits, microkernels are still not IN. They remain mostly an academic curiosity.
I don’t personally care who this person is, adapting minix code does not make someone a ‘god’.
On the contrary. Scientifically speaking, I believe it does.
Sure as hell influenced by “Multics” and so is the majority of OS’s, including “Minix” and prior to that even “CTSS”.
All of the designers get influenced by some earlier invention.
Cheersh.
Darl Fud stupid cousin of Elmer. Apologies to looney toons.
That was one of the better interviews I’ve seen with Linus. He actually sounded a bit forceful, whereas he usually sounds pretty apathetic, like “yeah Linux is okay, use it if you want to, I don’t care”. But what’s with all the flames and trolling? Not a inventor, just a copier definitely deserved to be modded down if anything ever did. I’ve been modded down for far less, and that’s bullshit.
ASAIK no one else has started and continued with a similar OS project as successfull as Linux. (That includes IBM(OS2) and HP(HPUX)) If anyone here has, I sure would love to hear about it. Linus didnt do this on purpose, it was his hobby but fortunatly lots of other people thought it was a good idea too and joined in. Now its looking like even M$ consider Linux to be good enough to be considered a ‘threat’ (competition) Any person with more than a few grey cells knows that competition is good for the consumer. What I would like to see is people encouraging new ideas and the ethos that sharing is helping people, not just slag anyone off because they had a good idea and made it work. Thats very negative IMHO.
Linus does not want anybody to treat him like a god. If some treat him as such, it’s not his fault.
He created the linux kernel “to scratch his itch” then invited other coders to pitch in. Over the years they produced a very useful product. And they gave it away for free, only with a restriction in distribution (the GPL license), not in usage. . Now, Linus is not forcing the people to use the kernel, if they like it, then feel free to use it. If not, then use another, as there are many around — propriety or open source.
What Linus and the Linux kernel developers deserve is gratitude, a pat in the back. Not many people would have done what he did and gave to linux. They used their brains and time to bring back choice and competition to the computing environment. I doubt those who bash Linus and his team are capable of such a feat.
So, for Linus and the Linux developers, THANK YOU.
It may not be your goal for Linux to beat Windows and Microsoft, but if it did — wouldn’t that be sweet!
“Linus Torvalds started a revolution of sorts in the computer industry when he created the Linux operating system…”
Linus Torvalds did NOT create the Linux OS but only the Linux kernel, the mising piece.
The GNU project (Stallman and foes) create the “Linux” Operating System. Why nobody remember that???
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux
“The history of Linux is closely tied to that of GNU, a prominent free-software project led by Richard Stallman. The GNU project was started in 1983 for developing a complete Unix-like operating system, including software development tools and user application programs, entirely of free software. By 1991, when the first version of the Linux kernel was written, the GNU project had produced all the necessary components of this system except the kernel. Torvalds and other early Linux-kernel developers adapted their kernel to work with the GNU components to create a fully functional operating system. The kernel is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) but it is not part of the GNU Project.”
For all their claimed benefits, microkernels are still not IN. They remain mostly an academic curiosity.
Hardly a curiosity nowadays – the biggest desktop operating system in the western world is a microkernel-based BSD Unix.
(Yeah, I did say operating system
)
Hardly a curiosity nowadays – the biggest desktop operating system in the western world is a microkernel-based BSD Unix.
(Yeah, I did say operating system
)
Can you be more specific. If you are talking about OSX then it is using mach, but it is not using it in the way microkernels are envisaged to be used. It is more of a hybrid system, and the same could be said of Linux in a way.
Personally I have been a windows admin for years and continue to be. However my frustration with Windows has increased dramatically over the past two years. I am quite thankful to Linus for Linux call it what you want but he created Linux for himself as an alternative to accomplish a couple of tasks for himself and then he didn’t go price shopping to sell like a lot of us would have he gave to the developers a platform. A platform that possibly if developed by someone esle woulod be as proprietary as MS. Now we can innovate create our own products without some surcharge to corporation. Requiring the users we develop for to pay that same surcharge.
“A platform that possibly if developed by someone esle woulod be as proprietary as MS. ”
I dont beleive this to be true at all….
What about GNU? the BSDs ?
Real drag sharing a name with the putz. The least he could do is learn to pronounce it right. You’d think nobody had ever read a Peanuts cartoon or seen, “How the west was won”, Jimmy Stewart won an oscar for his portrayal of Linus Rawlings before he was born for chrissake, I personally have 4 years of prior use. It’s LIE-NUSS not LEE-NUSS.
!@#$%
I’m constantly surprised that no-one has yet forked Linux kernel. Linus must be doing something right. 🙂
“Tannenbaum is pretty arrogant and condescending for a guy who teaches at a rinky dink university and has produced a primitive OS with only educational and no practical value.”
We’re not allowed to criticize Tannebaum here? Which part of this is offensive, the part about Linus making a better OS than the professor, or the fact that the guy teaches at a, yes I said rinky dink, university?
you seem to forget that minix’ sole purpose is to be an educational os. nothing more, nothing less.
No, I didn’t forget. Let’s face it, at the time it might have been good, but now BSD and Linux and pretty soon an open Solaris will make better teaching aids than Minix.
Go learn a bit Swedish, OK?
> For all their claimed benefits, microkernels are still not
> IN. They remain mostly an academic curiosity.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Digital UNIX was based on the Mach Kernel from CMU. The mach Kernel was a micro kernel.
Jim
Windows NT (and 2000, and XP) is also based on a micro-kernel. Over the years, though, MS has moved more and more services (like the graphics system) into the kernel, making it less and less like a true-microkernel.
Appart from True64 and OSF/1 (Digital Unix)… Some popular microkernels might be: AIX, BeOS/MorphOS, Amiga karnel. Further more RTOSs like: VxWorks, QNX, and most uITRON interfaced stuff.
Later incarnations of Linux have some microkernel-like characteristics through LKM (which links-in or removes blocks of code at runtime) and separate threads for swapping, etc.
This ofcource doesn’t make it *a* microkernel, as all that stuff runs in ring-0 , but then NT and Darwin (Mach) aren’t all alone in their privilege-space. Hence not running as true microkernels either…
@Bismarck
MINIX is not the only thing AST wrote, have a read about (or try) Amoeba if you think he isn’t an authority in OS design: http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/
I’m constantly surprised that no-one has yet forked Linux kernel. Linus must be doing something right.
Sorry to continue my own line of thinking (which no-one seems to be interested in), but the fact is that the original BSD code was at some point forked to FreeBSD and NetBSD. Then the NetBSD was forked to OpenBSD, and later on FreeBSD was forked to DragonFlyBSD.
Forking is a quite usual method of development under OSS, especioally under GPL’ed software.
So, while this has happened under *BSD, Linux appears to remain un-forked. Has anyone got any idea how to explain this? Also, does Linus Torvalds possess some trade mark rights for all Linux products?
don’t you agree with me that distributions like secure linux or the various realtime versions qualifie as forks?
they are just not called forks.
and the whole linux-area is more fragmented than the bsds (imho).
@windows
afaik with longhorn the grafics system will be removed from kernel-space.