DebConf 14: QA with Linus Torvalds

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Strong rec dottrap · 2014-09 · on “Why osx sucks and you should use ubuntu instead”

And to really drive the problem home, distributing binary packages for Linux is a complete nightmare. Linus Torvalds just laid out a whole bunch of the problems at DebConf14. [this video] Go watch it. But some of the highlights: - .deb vs .rpm misses the whole point. The problem is application writers just want to ship an application binary for "Linux", but it is a nightmare. - Except for the kernel which strives for ABI stability, everything else in the Linux distros constantly break binary compatibility, including the most important library, glibc. - Package maintainers are forced to use shared libraries for everything, even packages that are unstable and not well used which means apps will bre

Strong rec stiray · 2020-05 · on “How to disable the built-in Windows 10 ads”

Just listen to this. I bet you will recognize the speaker. [this video] It is 100% to the point and nothing has changed in 6 years since (and not only on debian), except that the mess is being solved by docker. Which is crazy. And windows is heading into same direction (when I have seen the manifests the first thing I have said was... omg... .dll.1.4.3) Just additional info, to help you get into my mindset - system level developer for linux AND windows for 25 years. (anyway, I have thrown tomatoes into directions of two largest fanboy camps, guess what will happen? =/ )

Strong rec NavinF · 2021-04 · on “Tiny Container Challenge: Building a 6kB Containerized HTTP Server”

It is best practice and I wish it was common practice, but there's a lot of friction in the way and some people will actively work against you. Static linking glibc is painful because the former maintainer has some strong opinions: [LINK] Most distros force you to dynamically link every dependency if you want them to package it. So the default build for most projects is dynamic You've stumbled on a holy war between distros and guys like you, me, and Linus Torvalds[1] that want to deploy a binary and just have it work everywhere. 1: [this video] (Highly recommend watching Linus's answer ~6 minutes in)

Recommends belorn · 2015-02 · on “GCC, LLVM, Copyleft, Companies, and Non-Profits (2014)”

Because he doesn't like the anti-tivoization clause for his own code. I suggest watching [this video] as it gives a up-to-date view which all the necessary qualifiers in one single talk. I especially like the (paraphrasing quite a bit) "GPLv3 is a fine license, GPLv3 is a horrible license, and I like to overstate things if you haven't noticed. For my own code I just want changes back. GPLv2 is a license that does this and nothing else, which is why I use it for my own projects.".

Recommends probonopd · 2016-02 · on “AppImage: Linux apps that run anywhere”

Linus Torvalds addresses some core issues in his "DebConf 14: QA with Linus Torvalds" talk starting around 5:40 [this video]

Recommends adnzzzzZ · 2018-03 · on “Linus Torvalds Rants”

[this video] What he's talking about is on the video above and it's a very reasonable point. I just released a game with Linux support and most of the bug reports I got were from people running the game on different distributions and random libraries not being the version you would expect it to be. This is not to mention that I got way more bug reports from Linux users than Windows users, despite Linux users making up 2%-3% of the playerbase. His point is absolutely valid and not at all a "serious idiocy".

Recommends gpm · 2021-02 · on “The modern packager’s security nightmare”

> your compiler Compilers of languages like C, C++, Rust, Go etc go above and beyond to maintain backwards compatibility. It is extremely likely that you will still be able to compile old code with a modern compiler. > your processor Hardware is common enough that people go out of their way to make backwards compatibility shims. Things like rosetta, qemu, all the various emulators for various old gaming systems, etc. > your hardware Apart from your CPU (see above) your hardware goes through abstraction layers designed to maintain long term backwards compatibility. Things like opengl, vulkan, metal, etc. The abstraction layers are in widespread enough use that as older ones stop being outdate

Cites michaelmcmillan · 2014-11 · on “Mean People Fail”

I always find these essays interesting, not necessarily because I agree with them, but rather because Paul has a very special way of looking at things. [...] being mean makes you stupid. Linus Torvalds is definitely not stupid, but I would not hesitate to call him mean [1]. But you can't deny that he's successful and certainly he's not stupid [2]. Business and open source seem to both center around the same things: creating something people want [3] and surrounding yourself with other smart people. I would imagine that the latter is hard if you're mean - but not impossible. Take Linus or Steve Jobs, none of whom are very nice. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK]