Sun refugee Bill Joy talks about greedy markets, reckless science, and runaway technology. He goes on to describe his new love of Apple’s OS X by stating that “For kids who are 20 years younger than me, Linux is a great way to cut your teeth. It’s a cultural phenomenon and a business phenomenon. Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that’s beautifully designed. I much prefer it to Linux.“
Bill Joy on Linux, Apple, and Technology
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Solaris is a server OS……many of us who run servers do run Solaris…..and we ssh to those servers from Mac OS X…..
Cheers!
– Kelson
“Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that’s beautifully designed. I much prefer it to Linux.”
I agree wholeheartedly.
sure, today. if you’ve been around long you remember the history before that. sun was in the first incarnation a workstation company, and coveted the desktop for 20+ years. they tried to build a desktop success several times. in the end Joy gives up and declares OS X the winner? maybe, but it is odd.
“All right, you win. What are you doing for fun these days?
I’m figuring out a meditation wall for my apartment in New York. Eight feet high by 12 feet wide, with an array of overlapping rear projectors, each with a tiny Linux box and connected by gigabit Ethernet. I would love to get 72 dpi but will probably settle for less – about 30 megapixels for the whole thing. [Former Walt Disney Imagineering guru] Bran Ferren and Danny Hillis [inventor of massively parallel supercomputing] at Applied Minds are building it for me. It’s very bright. Given that it’s in an apartment, the main limitation will be power availability. I’ll also need some great 30-megapixel images. Any ideas? I can always put a picture of stars on the wall. In Manhattan, you can’t see them – except, of course, in a blackout. ”
Surely, Linux must not be that bad if he uses it for his ubertech experiments. Why doesn’t he try to do that with OS X? Maybe because all components of OS X are not open source. Maybe because Linux scales up and down much better than either Solaris or OS X.
Bill Joy has a huge grudge with Linux. This is the operating system that rendered irrelevant his expensive boutique-OS. Joy is a smart guy who saw the writing on the wall and left SUN when he realized that Linux will eventually own the Unix market. Bill Joy’s displays the same ambivalent attitude that all of SUN’s management and employees have towards Linux. They like it for the technology,they hate it for what it’s done to the company. And then, they love it again when it helps them compete with Microsoft on the desktop.
SUN’s ongoing corporate schizophrenia is well documented elsewhere. I hope they grow out of it soon or the market shock therapy may eventually kill them.
oh come on, let’s face it – windows, linux, os x – they’re all wonderful. When are we going to have hardware that runs all of them at the same time?
C* and Dotnet is just a slightly newer flavor of Java –
when are we going to be able to just interchange java and
dotnet components or run them both together in a super VM?
People have their preferences, but all these things have become so functionally similar it’s hard to argue any more.
<quote>if stock price and financial problems are any indication, those solutions don’t involve Sun Microsystems.a</quote>
since when did stock price become the measure of good technology?
…who was very into Linux. He’s now a big (BIG!) OS X user. I have never used it because I really hate Apple hardware, but he says it’s Unix done right. He loves the UI with all the Apple design and polish, and love the fact that he can pop up a shell with full command line and emacs. Anyhow, this is somebody I respect, so while I run Linux, I think there is probably a lot that Linux could learn from OS X. An interesting question is, what would happen if the Gnome boys stopped chasing Microsoft and instead used OS X as a model? An interesting thought.
since when did stock price become the measure of good technology?
Oh, it never did. But solutions (you said technology, not I) or in Sun’s case, the lack thereof, would certainly contribute to an investor’s idea of how much a company is worth.
>Surely, Linux must not be that bad if he uses it for his >ubertech experiments. Why doesn’t he try to do that with >OS X? Maybe because all components of OS X are not open >source. Maybe because Linux scales up and down much >better than either Solaris or OS X.
Up and down? Nonsense. About all Linux does is scale down, and even then, only on certain archetechtures where gcc produces decent code (ie not SPARC…). I think the key word in Joy’s quote was “tiny.” If one wants to build an embedded system (embedded as in single purpose), Linux should be just fine, in the mindset of a guy like Joy. But to say that Linux scales UP better than solaris is totally untrue. Solaris and HP/UX have been just fine on 64 processors for half a decade, at least. Linux has only begun to be viable at 64 procs with SGI’s input, but remember that IRIX can run on 512 processors _out of the box_, with no SGI overlays like Linux requires. This is just one dimension of scalability where Linux is inferior to commercial UNIX’s. How about consistent I/O performance? Memory and thread management?
Dont get me wrong, i think linux is great for a desktop, a 4 or less processor server, etc. But running it on big iron is nonsense. It is just what Joy says–reimplementaton of existing technologies. Some of the UNIX vendors are behind it, sure, but probably because they hope that eventually they will not need to spend as much money on OS development, since some of the work is done for them by joe programmer and by their competitors, with Linux. But as for Linux running their big iron as well as the operating systems the hardware was designed for, the line is always tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow…
[snip]
An interesting question is, what would happen if the Gnome boys stopped chasing Microsoft and instead used OS X as a model?
[/snip]
Honestly when dealing in some of the first Aqua skins made available to the Windows platform they were very quick to sick the Lawyers on us. Between that and the employee shareware episode I wouldn’t doubt that they would at least try and do the same. I know they wouldn’t have to use the same graphics I would say the underlying interface design would be even more important to them.
Its funny how touchy we get sometimes, the entire article is not really about Bill Joy and Linux. The sentences about Linux and OS X were passing comments, more or less. So he doesn’t like linux as much as some other OS??? Big deal!
>> He seems to think he knows so much more about sociology and politics than anybody else, but he’s just a washed-up software engineer;
>>
Washed-up engineer? Because his sociology and politics differ from yours?
>> he bashes G.W. Bush
Is that a crime too?
The man has a social conscience. You may not agree with all he says, which is fine, but you’ve got to give him credit for picking his own issues. It isn’t often you find engineers who have that much awareness.
“Surely, Linux must not be that bad if he uses it for his ubertech experiments. Why doesn’t he try to do that with OS X?”
Maybe because it’s cheap and he’s experimenting. I see nothing wrong with voting OS X the best user OS while still understandind other OSes Solaris, Linux (and even Windows) have their place. Maybe it’s you lacking perspective–trying to wedge Linux into every use. Why would you use OS X for an experiment that is a dedicated app? You use OS X when you need to use different apps, need a comfortable user environment, etc…
“Honestly when dealing in some of the first Aqua skins made available to the Windows platform they were very quick to sick the Lawyers on us.”
Skins? Who cares? If you think the most important thing to learn from Apple is simply some stolen graphical elements, you are missing the point.
OS X must be easier, I know linux is not a “rocket scientist” os anymore, but people keep pounding “linux needs more user-freindliness” in devs heads with no results. Some linux distros are “almost” there. Like why should every who uses linux, even the more user-friendly distros have to download the source to a app. they want then compile it? Atleast the windows & mac oss have software “ALREADY COMPILED” in stores on online. KDE is a great desktop. Now we just need simple frontends to apps. Like windows & mac OSX you can setup a firewall without needing CLI. You can even start a server in a “GUI”. Oh forget it, I am just a 25 year old man I am no linux expert the bad thing is if someone uses linux every other linux user expects them to be.
>Linux has only begun to be viable at 64 procs with SGI’s >input, but remember that IRIX can run on 512 processors _out >of the box_, with no SGI overlays like Linux requires.
Please note that as of kernel 2.6 the overlays are _not_ required for Linux to scale to 64P. The overlays will provide the SGI XSCSI layer and some proprietory memory management stuff.
>>Like why should every who uses linux, even the more user-friendly distros have to download the source to a app. they want then compile it? Atleast the windows & mac oss have software “ALREADY COMPILED” in stores on online. KDE is a great desktop. Now we just need simple frontends to apps. Like windows & mac OSX you can setup a firewall without needing CLI. You can even start a server in a “GUI”.<<
Wow. Where have you been hiding? This was true of most distros a few years ago, maybe you should look again?
umm, Joy is no longer at SUN, so what he is saying is hardly corporate schizophrenia
In his passing comments Mr. Joy basically said that the MaxOS X is a more mature *nix distro (thanks to years of NeXT R&D) and that he can get down to using it to create/develop. Linux is great but they are on a catch up to what the MacOS X already has. We ALL have our heads stuck up our proverbial butts.
All’s I know is I get a so much more frustrated workin’ on any version of Windows than I do on ANY MacOS. I can’t comment on Linux YET… I may in the future, we’ll see.
Jb
in order to chase apple, Gnome would have to do more than just a look. it would have to implement an app folder where all the app links are stored. then you can drop that folder into the panel and get a menu. doing it like that would make menu editing very easy because you could just reorganize the links into different folders.
Gnome would also have to take the system operations out of the gnome menu and place them in the top left button menu, and finally, to make it truly chasing the mac, it would need to have a file system overlay from the gui so that the user sees useful folders that they can enter and install to, this should be able to be accomplished with the VFS.
add all that to a package management system that automatic downloads dependancies from servers designated in the package header and you have a very easy to use system.
>An interesting question is, what would happen if the Gnome boys stopped chasing Microsoft and instead used OS X as a model? An interesting thought.<
Actually, the GNUStep project (www.gnustep.org) is trying to get a opensource NeXTStep (and I guess MacOSX) implementation.
“For kids who are 20 years younger than me, Linux is a great way to cut your teeth. It’s a cultural phenomenon and a business phenomenon. Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that’s beautifully designed. I much prefer it to Linux.”
So its the implication by the author that OsX is a geriatric Os? I have found people of all ages nationalities and even income range using Linux. I have not research the demographics of OsX although I suspect require much more deeper pockets than the free Linux distros given they high priced hardware/software and agresive upgrade opr be obsolete cycle.
Heh if you have the money but not the time use OS X. If you have the time but not the money use Linux. Simple enough
Bill Joy’s comments about software innovation not keeping pace with hardware improvements are not unrelated to his statements about Linus and open source.
As usual, I’m sure, ill-informed Linux zealots will come out of the woodwork in response to Joy’s statment tht Linux is a rewrite of Unix. But, that’s a fact. Linux has broken no new ground in software technology. As Torvalds says, he couldn’t afford to buy a Unix, so he wrote his own. The software that fills out every Linux distribution is a collection of programs that are not unique to Linux and, in many cases, predate it. (One exception might be multimedia Linux apps. But, then, turning your PC into a glorified boombox isn’t something I consider software innovation.)
To be fair, creating truely innovative software is very difficult, much more difficult than boosting the speed of an existing CPU or tweaking the menu system of a word processor. In this regard. open source hasn’t been any more innovative than Microsoft or other proprietary system. In fact, it is easy to argue that open source has been less innovative, since it is rooted in operating systems that are clones of Unix and since it is still populated by egotistical elitists who think that applications like emacs are perfectly fine, if only the “masses” were smart enough to use it.
Open source has much to offer, but it has proven to be no more innovative than the proprietary code it abhors.
Kelson, the difference between Solaris and most any Linux distribution is much smaller than, oh, let’s say, between a cafe au lait and a latte. Unix is Unix.
I’m guessing you might be inclined to judge an OS by it’s ability to deal with mp3’s and such. Trust me, those of us who are not college students and who have spent more on speakers than they have on PC’s cold care less about listening to music reproduced by their compuuter.
Solaris is a server OS……many of us who run servers do run Solaris…..and we ssh to those servers from Mac OS X…..
Do it every single day! Bought my powerbook specifically for that task!
“…and since it is still populated by egotistical elitists who think that applications like emacs are perfectly fine, if only the “masses” were smart enough to use it.”
I think we know who the egotistical elitist is here. When you come with your own OS, you can compare and contrast it with others.
But it is kind of funny that Bill Joy would say that about Linux, considering BSD (his project) was also a rewrite of Unix. As if he was somehow better despite doing the same thing…
” open source hasn’t been any more innovative than Microsoft or other proprietary system. In fact, it is easy to argue that open source has been less innovative, since it is rooted in operating systems that are clones of Unix and since it is still populated by egotistical elitists who think that applications like emacs are perfectly fine, if only the “masses” were smart enough to use it”
I agree. Bill Joy mentioned several commercial programs like Mathematica that could have been OS but when it comes down to it, pay a programmer well to write a program full time and his motivation will be a lot greater than open source programmer doing it whenever their time permits. Especially if the programmer has a lot of ownership and recognition for their efforts.
I am not saying that OS is bad but closed source pays the bills.
“pay a programmer well to write a program full time and his motivation will be a lot greater than open source programmer doing it whenever their time permits.”
If that’s the case, and money is root of all successful software engineering….. Microsoft pays better than other companies, so theirs should be the best product. They pay better than Apple, do they not? So do they make a better OS than Apple?
“I don’t need to see the source code. I just want a system that works.”
Unfortunately, the prevailing ideology of the open source community seems to be something more along the lines of “You don’t need a system that works if you have the source code, because you can fix it yourself!”
>> “When you come with your own OS, you can compare and contrast it with others.”
Frankly, that’s bogus. Why do I need to write an operating system before I can comment on software? If that was the price of admission, no one would show up.
To its detriment, the open source community is burdened with some number of misguided fanatics who will countenance no criticism of Linux at all, attributing users’ reluctance to use capable but neolithic applications like emacs to stupidity. By implication, of course, they obviously have the smarts that lesser mortals don’t. Sounds like classic elitism to me.
It’s common to see assertions that no one has the right to criticize Linux or open source unless they willing and able to puit their code where their mouth is. And that certainly qualifies as a rite of passage for initiation into a cult.
“but people keep pounding “linux needs more user-freindliness” in devs heads with no results.”
Can you proof this? It doesn’t seem logical when you continue with
“Some linux distros are “almost” there.”
Has this according to you stayed the same past years?
“Like why should every who uses linux, even the more user-friendly distros have to download the source to a app. they want then compile it?”
Who says they have to? It isn’t mandatory with say Mandrake Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, RedHat Linux. It’s partly mandatory with user-friendly DIY GNU/Linux distro’s like Gentoo Linux, but one can chose a non-mandatory distro.
” If that’s the case, and money is root of all successful software engineering….. Microsoft pays better than other companies, so theirs should be the best product. They pay better than Apple, do they not? So do they make a better OS than Apple?”
What I said is that Closed Source or Commercial programming pays better than Open Source which is a given. Your motivation is higher if you receive a tanglible reward.
As far as MS is concerned. They make a lot of products. They provide 10 to 100X the software solutions that Apple provides. Then you have the NT code base. Apple started off on a clean slate with MacOSX which is what MS seeks to do with Longhorn using VPC.
And I like it a lot! Bill (Joy not Gates if you wonder
) sounds very interesting and intelligent (though Gates is also)! I didn’t know the name Bill Joy as first, so I was wondering if it is a joke or something.
You exaggerate, and it is you that started with the labelling of people as “elitists”. My point remains the same. Who are you to spell it all out for the rest of us? What special qualifications do you have to inform us on what innovation is and isn’t, as well as who’s doing it and who’s not. You’re calling it FUD?
“By implication, of course, they obviously have the smarts that lesser mortals don’t.”
Do you think that this sentence don’t apply to you? Maybe you ought to re-read your original post where you begin lecturing us all on how it is, and think about whether you sound just like one of these elitits you enjoy ranting about so much.
It doesn’t matter what the thread is, there’s always one person who wants to come in lecture all assembled, and this time it’s you.
“If that’s the case, and money is root of all successful software engineering….. Microsoft pays better than other companies, so theirs should be the best product. They pay better than Apple, do they not? So do they make a better OS than Apple?”
Not necessarily. And once you start making this comparison you can factor in alot of other factors: living in Silicon Valley/Bay Area vs. Seattle (primarily); benefits; corporate culture; campus amenities, etc…
Remember Apple pioneered the liberal, create-your-own-workspace mentality, have lots of cushy benefits (professional sushi chef in the cafteria, anyone?), fun events, smaller developer teams, cooler projects, etc…
My original post asserted that open source has proved to be no more innovative than proprieatry development. (And I do’t think proprietary development is at all innovative.) Certainly, open source efforts that garner fans and media attention — KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice, Gimp. Linux itself — exist because someone wanted to mimic capabilties already provided by proprietary software. I wold not label that as innovation.
Innovation in software is hard, not the least because of the constant requirement to avoid breaking existing installations.
That said, even a cursory look at sites like Slashdot will turn up ample evidence of any number of posters who have gone on record as believing that Linux should remain difficult in order to keep the intellectual riff-raff out of their so-called community. That meets my definition of elitism.
But, my stating an opinion on this forum, even if it contradicts your opinion, is not elitism, nor is it lecturing. It’s simply my opinion, buttressed by a few examples. (That’s the purpose of this forum.) If you have examples of true innovation in open source software, feel free to enlighten us.
still populated by egotistical elitists who think that applications like emacs are perfectly fine, if only the “masses” were smart enough to use it.
I’m sorry but you must be stupid if you cannot figure out Emacs. There is a tutorial included with Emacs. I am by no means a rocket scientist and it took me all of 5 minutes to learn Emacs and another 10 minutes to start writing Lisp functions. Is it necessary for you to use it? No, it isn’t. You can have your preferences, but to claim something is wrong with Emacs because you couldn’t take 5 minutes to read a tutorial is ludicrous. You can call me and others elitist all you want but you are just a stubborn fool.
“I don’t need to see the source code. I just want a system that works.”
Unfortunately, the prevailing ideology of the open source community seems to be something more along the lines of “You don’t need a system that works if you have the source code, because you can fix it yourself!”
*****************************
Speak for yourself, most of the linux users i know, including myself, can’t understand a line of source code, much less, program. What are you talking about? They have a tough time understanding the system itself, that’s why the ngs are chock full of people. I use Debian because i can’t afford a mac, windows is worthless, and don’t have time to deal with rpms and dependencies. But if i had money…
It’s unfortunate that OSnews often ends up on slashdot, because I’ve noticed a sickening, growing trend of bunches of brainwashed slashdotters spouting unthinkingly. I hope that OSnews doesn’t go that way.
First of all, abraxas, I don’t really believe you when you say it took you only 5 minutes to learn to uses emacs and another 10 to start writing Lisp functions. Five minutes to learn how to launch it, open a file, and move the cursor up and down, maybe. But, you can’t learn eamcs in 5 minutes. And the only way you’d write elisp functions in ten minutes is if you already knew elisp. (I own a copy of Stallman’s manual; 5 minutes is a good time for the introduction.)
It’s no wonder there’s so little innovation going on if developers really think the only reason mainstream users aren’t flocking to emacs is their lack of intelligence (compared, of course, with those developers).
But that’s all irrelevant. What’s relevant is this: emacs, like most other vintage Unix tools, isn’t marketable as a software product. If they were, someone would have done it years ago.
YOur assertion is a prime example of the elitist snobbery that infects a portion of the Linux community. First, you jump to the conclusion that I’ve never used emacs. Wrong conclusion. Then, you jump to the conclusion that I must be “stupid” if I can’t learn to use it. Wrong conclusion. Then you assert I said something is wrong with emacs. Wrong conclusion. (I cited it as a prime example of the lack of innovation in open source software. After all, emacs is older than many of its users, and every software developer who says “Why write another editor? Emacs is good enough” is holding back innovation.) And, finally, you pat yourself on the back telling us about your prowess in learning emacs. Again. wrong conclusion.
I’ve used Linux since 1995, because Unix was the first OS I learned, some years prior to that. I think it’s a great piece of work. But, there’s more behind its failure to make serious inroads into mainstream use than the Evil Bogeymen of proprietary software. So long as Linux doesn’t offer any new software concepts to users, so long as it uses Windows as the measure of its success as a desktop, the more the mainstream will see it as a “me, too” platform.
What editor do you use that is better than emacs? For most text editing tasks, I am far more productive in emacs than in any other editor. (In some others, I’m faster in vim.)
Many people think that in the Windows era, all applications should be graphical and use the mouse. That is not necessarily true. I find that using the mouse to navigate menus and so forth for editing text simply slows me down.
I liked reading what Bill had to say, but what was with those flaky interview “questions”? Ick.
{simpsons comic book guy} Worst interview style … *ever*. {/simpson’s comic book guy}
“I’m sorry but you must be stupid if you cannot figure out Emacs. There is a tutorial included with Emacs. I am by no means a rocket scientist and it took me all of 5 minutes to learn Emacs and another 10 minutes to start writing Lisp functions. Is it necessary for you to use it? No, it isn’t. You can have your preferences, but to claim something is wrong with Emacs because you couldn’t take 5 minutes to read a tutorial is ludicrous. You can call me and others elitist all you want but you are just a stubborn fool.”
Yeah, that statement wasn’t egotistical and elitist at all.
Why do people get so bent out of shape whenever there is an article where someone says that they tried MacOSX out and they like it or they prefer MacOSX over Linux or Windows?
Believe it or not people who like Apple products are not mindless Mac zealots, if that is the case then chalk up Microsoft’s CTO as one of them.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/mobile/0,39020360,39117914,00.htm
Because osnews has the nasty habbit of featuring users who switch to Macs but neglect the users who switch from Mac to Windows, or Mac to Linux, or Linux to Windows or Windows to Linux. No, I’m a switcher too. I switch from Mac to Linux. And I ain’t going back.
In one breath he talks about how just providing clean water would take care of so many of the worlds problems. In his next breath the jerk off is talking about his wall sized LCD picture frame thats probrably gonna cost $100,000 to build. I really cant stand elitist white tower liberals like this asshole who dont have to pound the street to eat every day.
If this is the case then why don’t we hear from anyone writing in that has switched from Mac to Windows or Linux? I am sure they are out there.
Anyone can submit an artice for submission and a lot of these switcher articles are written by OS News readers.
I tend to be skeptical of any wealthy American that defines democracy as a social structure where one *gives up* their right to do whatever they want. Fact is, most Americans are effectively barred from participating in the social problem solving process, and the 51-percent of “citizens” that no longer vote have more or less figured that out.
Apparently, according to SCO and other seeming friends of M$, you don’t have to right to use Linux or to participate in the democratic problem solving society surrounding it. M$ is the “prime contractor” for DHS, so that’s what Joe American will be forced to use and pay for, technical merits are not relevant, privacy invasions and social controls are. Multi-media pro’s apparently can put-up the money for OSX and justify it as a cost of doing business, else suffer.
If people like Bill Joy have the intellect to cook-up technologies with potential toxic side effects, then they can very well shoulder the responsibility for cleaning-up the messes, because when the corporate ruling class takes over, (they call it democracy) the masses stop caring.
Yeah, that statement wasn’t egotistical and elitist at all.
Since when did learning to read become elitist? There is a very simple tutorial that will allow you to edit files in a matter of minutes. I own the gnu manuals for Emacs and within 10 minutes I was writing functions. It’s not very hard at all. I’m not claiming to have become an expert in 10 minutes, just that I understood the concepts of simple functions enough to replicate them.
——————
still populated by egotistical elitists who think that applications like emacs are perfectly fine
Tell me how that statement does NOT say that there is something wrong with Emacs. If egotistical elitists think Emacs is fine then you certainly do not. Emacs is a great editor although some will prefer to use others. It is very powerful and basic editing facilities can be learned in a matter of minutes. If Emacs isn’t your style then you have hundreds of other editors to chose from. You are making an issue out of something that is not an issue at all.
You want to hear about innovation? Ok,let’s talk innovation.
Find me a proprietary application that can do what Plone does. http://www.plone.org
Along these lines,find me something as feature-full as the Zope web application server.
Find me a program made by Microsoft that has robust support for the IMAP email protocol. I can list many FLOSS programs here that do
Find me a web server that is as good as Apache or an FTP server that is as good as VSFTP or ProFTP.
Find me a sound server/sound architecture as robust and feature-full as ALSA.
Why is it that Apple uses CUPS? Because it rocks and yes it is open source and it is the best printing system around.
How many file formats does Windows support out of the box?
Find me a clustering solution that is as advanced and as featurefull as those available on Linux? Moreover, find me a piece of proprietary software that matches what a distribution such as ClusterKnoppix offers by allowing you to create a cluster in minutes without having to load any software to the machines themselves?
Find me a faxing system as versatile and robust as Hylafax?
I could go on and on and on.
But all of the above misses the true point of free software, which is that we are enriching humanity by making the tools of tomorrow available to everyone. Our true innovation is at the social level. We remove all boundaries and allow anyone to contribute to the betterment of society. We just ask that if you want to build on our efforts, you share your own and that you play nice.
“But it is kind of funny that Bill Joy would say that about Linux, considering BSD (his project) was also a rewrite of Unix. As if he was somehow better despite doing the same thing…”
It’s a minor issue, but the Bekeley Software Distribution in Joy’s days was not a rewrite of UNIX, but an extention. First he added new programs (that had no previous UNIX equivalents) and then he went on to add many of the things that UNIX became famous for.
He certainly was (and is) “somehow better” than perhaps you could ever understand.
Berkeley. I can’t spell. (he’s better than me too
The lone sheriff swaggering out of the sunset to save
humanity.Oh please! Give me a community product anyday. No more heros.
…. calling people who can’t figure out emacs in 5 minutes stupid…. yeah yeah yeah ….. not so elitist…. so were you able to learn the ins and outs of emacs in 5 minutes? that is great!!!!
From http://www.sgi.com/features/2003/nov/nasa/index.html
“Just weeks after attaining record levels of sustained performance and scalability on a 256-processor global shared-memory SGI® Altix™ 3000 system, the team at NASA Ames doubled the size of its Altix™ system-achieving 512 processors in a single image, by far the largest supercomputer ever to run on the Linux® operating system. (NASA announced its technical feat at the SC2003 supercomputing conference.) NASA’s effort is part an intra-agency collaborative research program between NASA Ames, JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to accelerate the science return for large-scale earth modeling problems.”
From what i’ve read on LKML SGI are using 2.6kernels for the 512proc Altrix box. Of course they are adding their own patches, but hopefully alot of these will get added back into mainline quickly. According to Ted Tso IBM are pushing for hot plugable ram in Linux, he’s expecting the feature by next year.
Linux mighten be an innovative OS, but for a project that started in a university students bedroom it’s come along way.
Now i need to start saving so i can buy a secondhand SGI Origin 2100 to add to my Octane 😀 lol
Of course you are now reading news about computers. However I wonder why no one alludes to Bill Joy’s anxiety. He did not gave a so much flattering hope for the future, meaning he maybe understood he expected a lot of the people on earth but finally resigned himself to admit no one really cares.
Clearly, it’s far from the battle Micros~1/Sun/GNU/Linux/Apple/Sky/F/DFsf:/sjlqme… and so on.
Boris.
All the programs you name are fine examples of open source development, but they do not represent true innovation, expecially in the desktop arena. None of the applications you list deliver fundamentally new capabilities to users.
Content management systems predate Plone; apache is a great web server but a web server is not a new idea and is certainly not a desktop application. Ditto for imap. CUPS make printing easier, but being able to use a printer is not innovative. Likewise, clustering and faxing tools have existed for a long time.
Open source may have made incremental improvements to these tools, but none of them enable users to do something fundamentally new and different.
Please note that I’ve applied this criticism to proprietary software, as well. But, since I’m interested in the growth and success of open source software, not proprietary code, I think it’s important to understand the opportunities open source can exploit to increase its presence. For me, the biggest opportunity is giving users new capabilities they can’t find elsewhere. Mimicing Windows, or shortsightedly condemning users for their lack of interest in 20-year old Unix tools, or leaning on the ideological stick, will never get Linux onto PC’s in living rooms and dens.
Find me a web server that is as good as Apache?
Zeus, Resin
Find me a clustering solution that is as advanced and as featurefull as those available on Linux?
Ha ha, Tru64, VMS, for god’s sake S/390…
And so on. The point is, open source provides workable facsimilies of these things at a low price. If Zeus and Tru64 were free, why would one use Apache on Linux, philosophical (open/closed) concerns aside?
As for Altix scaling beyond 64 procs on linux, yes, it is possible. However, this is essentially an experimental configuration, if one demands a single system image. SGI’s site still specifies 64 procs max for standard configurations. Origin/IRIX was at 512 at least 2 years ago. The point is not that Linux can’t do it, the point is that its still a ways away for general product availability. Running 2.6.0 when it becomes available on a multimillion dollar, 5-nines machine might not be terribly responsible. 2.6.10…maaaybe.
As I see it there is only one pragmatic reason to run Linux, and that is cost. Quality and number of features _in the here and now_ will suffer. I’m all for low cost. But on technological merits, give me a commercial UNIX any day.
Can you proof this? It doesn’t seem logical when you continue with
“Some linux distros are “almost” there.”
As in the companies like SuSE, & Mandrake. The devs that just code for no companies most don’t care.Forget Red Hat they are ditching the desktop. The install process needs to get better, & linux needs some standerds.
Okay, he’s better than I understand. I can accept that.
“It’s a minor issue, but the Bekeley Software Distribution in Joy’s days was not a rewrite of UNIX, but an extention. First he added new programs (that had no previous UNIX equivalents) and then he went on to add many of the things that UNIX became famous for.”
But here’s my question.. When he was a kid at Berkeley doing his thing with BSD, no doubt he wouldn’t have been pleased with people calling his project just a clone of Unix, right? So why is he is so flippant over Linux, especially considering that the company he co-founded sells it? Why does he not appreciate that they are doing some similiar to what he did? When he says, “Re-implementing what I designed in 1979 is not interesting to me personally”, does that mean that he thinks the Linux kernel team spends all their time cutting and pasting his code and the rest of their time playing a lot of Doom? I think he forgets where he came from, and ought to respect that the Linux developers are on a similiar path that he once on.
Because osnews has the nasty habbit of featuring users who switch to Macs but neglect the users who switch from Mac to Windows, or Mac to Linux, or Linux to Windows or Windows to Linux. No, I’m a switcher too. I switch from Mac to Linux. And I ain’t going back.
Oh jesus, don’t you people ever shut up? Here’s a Linux switcher story that was posted today:
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=5183
If you think OSnews has a bias, you’re obviously reading the articles selectively. This is much more indicative of your own bias…
You are going flippant over Bill Joy’s remark more than he is going flippant over Linux. After all, he just said that he is not personnallyinterested in reimplementing something he has done some 20 years ago. I understand this as a matter of “been there, done that”. He didn’t say that Linux was bad, or useless, or that the Linux developers were doing a stupid or bad job. Hey! He is using Linux in his project. That’s not enough respect?
“But here’s my question.. When he was a kid at Berkeley doing his thing with BSD, no doubt he wouldn’t have been pleased with people calling his project just a clone of Unix, right?”
To be honest, I don’t think that he would have cared one way or the other.
“So why is he is so flippant over Linux, especially considering that the company he co-founded sells it?”
I didn’t see him as being flippant personally, I mean he is using Linux for one of his new projects as stated in the article. I do think you’re over reacting. (We all do sometimes)
“Why does he not appreciate that they are doing some similiar to what he did?”
I believe that he does appreciate it, but as was pointed out earlier, it’s not interesting to HIM personally. He was the first to do many of those things. It’s simply a case of “been there, done that,” and not a personal grudge against Linux, it’s users, or developers.
“I think he forgets where he came from, and ought to respect that the Linux developers are on a similiar path that he once on.”
He strikes me as more aware of his past and the possible near term developments than most people I know or read about. I certainly would never accuse him of ‘forgetting where he came from’ as you put it.
I believe that diversity is good, as does he. (I recently read another interview with him, from shortly after he left Sun in which he said something to that effect, as soon as I find the link I’ll post it
BSD is good, Linux is good. But from his perspective, it’s been done.
When Bill Joy says that “Re-implementing what I designed in 1979 is not interesting to me personally”, I don’t take it to be flippant. I take it at face value. It makes sense to me that, as someone who helped to implement BSD Unix more than 20 years ago, Bill Joy wouldn’t be excited about the efforts of the Linux community to do essentially the same thing today. From a technical point of view, I’m sure it is very much a “been there, done that” situation for Joy. That doesn’t mean he lacks respects for Linux developers. It means, as he said, that he isn’t interested.
Impression on OsX can be had at:
http://www.macobserver.com/comments/commentindivdisplay.shtml?id=26…