Mr Linux basks in the limelight (WINDOWS BEWARE?)

BBC News ^ | October 5, 2002 | BBC News

[MadIvan]

Linus Torvalds has revealed he is happy to be the poster boy for the anti-Microsoft campaign but would not know what to say if he met Bill Gates.

Talking to BBC World ClickOnline at his home in Silicon Valley, the inventor of the Linux operating system admitted that he has never been in the same room with his arch-rival.

"We have been at the same conferences but never in the same room. I wouldn't know what to say to him," he told ClickOnline.

Mr Torvalds enjoys the notoriety he has achieved as the man that challenged the Microsoft empire with his open source alternative operating system.

Rising to the challenge

"In a way it is fun. I'm pleased to be a poster boy. It gives me some self-importance," he said.

He would not, however, want to become personally involved in the dispute with Microsoft.

"I've tried to stay out of the Microsoft debate. If you start doing things because you hate others and want to screw them over the end result is bad," he said.

The main reason he developed Linux in the first place had as much to do with wanting a challenge as being fed up with an operating system that would not do what he wanted it to.

Like most technology projects it ran way over the time allotted to it and, to this day, is not truly finished.

"It was a lot harder than I expected. I thought, like most of my projects, it would talk half a year and then I'd lose interest," he said.

To the relief of his legion of followers he did persevere and eleven years on is still working on it.

Reluctance to change

While Linux is gradually gaining ground on Microsoft it might well not be suitable for everyone, Mr Torvalds admitted.

"Most people don't want to change. They may hate Windows but they run it despite that because, quite frankly, they don't care about computers," he said.

And even those that do care, often install Linux without much idea of what they want it to do, he said.

Mr Torvalds is not convinced that the open source movement, which has radically altered both the operating system landscape and the mindset of Microsoft itself, will ever entirely topple the Gates empire.

"I think, in the end, Linux will be a big part of why it happens but Microsoft is not going to shrink into nothingness in the foreseeable future," he said.

Instead it is more likely that Microsoft will become like IBM - "still huge but not the dominant force anymore", he said.

The world of coding is beginning to lose importance as Mr Torvalds, ubergeek, admits he has finally found a balance between work and play.

Uber-geek grows up

"I have a life too. I have kids now. Linux has been a big part of my life but now I want to have my own time," he told ClickOnline.

He revealed that he is more likely to have childrens' parties with bouncy castle and candyfloss than to have a bunch of programmers round.

"Part of doing Linux was that I had to communicate a lot more instead of just being a geek in front of a computer.

"It has made me more used to talking to people. I still like coding but I have other things to do," he said.

Although his followers would dispute it, Mr Torvalds is not convinced the phenomenon of Linux has made him entirely cool.

"No-one has ever called me a cool dude. I'm somewhere between geek and normal," he said.

[MadIvan]

I use Windows on my PC, but I wouldn't run my web servers on anything else.

Regards, Ivan

[MadIvan]

Bump!

[Crispy]

I use Linux for everything except games. Most the games I like are only available on Windows. I switched to linux when I got fed up with MSVC++ and MFC. It is much more pleasant developing applications on Linux. But, it took me several months to get good at using all the various development tools productively.

[snopercod]

How painful would it be to try and "operate" a home PC using Linux.

How would I operate a modem dial-up connection, for instance. Would my Netscape browser work? Would cut and paste still work?

Could I still use MS Word and Excel?

[MadPenguin]

Not to give the Linux-Window$ debate more weight than it deserves...

I look at Window$ as the Dimocrats. As do the Dims, Redmond tells the sheeple what's good for them, what they can do, and even how they can use the software. (Read an M$ license agreement lately?)

Linux can be looked at as the Republicans. The power is in the hands of the user. You have complete control of your own system and you don't have to pay ever increasing license fess (read: taxes) for something that doesn't work the way it should.

With Linux, if something doesn't work right, someone fixes it or figures out a better way to get the job done. In Window$, they simply build on to the same bad design. (Sound like the way the Dims refuse to truly fix the public school system and refuse to try new ways to address the problem?)

The great OS debate isn't religious and shouldn't be political; although, we can learn some lessons from it. Just my 2 cents.

FMCDH

[thisiskubrick]

Linux can be looked at as the Republicans. The power is in the hands of the user. You have complete control of your own system and you don't have to pay ever increasing license fess (read: taxes) for something that doesn't work the way it should.

Interesting statement. I think that most of the Linux developers work at government funded Universities, schools, etc. (Yes some are at IBM and other big companies).

I briefly considered the Gnu Public License for my sofware. Then I laughed myself silly and decided to make money instead. I'm a small business developing an app, and I'd like to sell it, instead of giving away the store with the GPL.

But I'm not religious/political about the Linux vs MS debate, they are two approaches for different environments..

Stan Kubrick

[Brad C.]

It's not painful at all, depending on the distribution you buy and the system you have. I recently bought the Suse professional package for a cost of about $80. Their advertising states 30 minutes to a fully operating system. It took less then 20 minutes on mine.

The package has every kind of program you could want, but it does not run Microsoft products. I am finding that I don't need them because the software included handles everything I need to do and more. What's more, I set it up as a dual boot system, so I can start either Windows or Linux.

I believe I am well on the way toward never having to spend another dollar on MS products. While they are fine and dandy programs, I am tired of having to buy upgrades everytime I turn around.

[mykej]

You aked:
"How painful would it be to try and "operate" a home PC using Linux."

Not painful at all. Really. Everything is pretty much point and drool these days.

"How would I operate a modem dial-up connection, for instance. Would my Netscape browser work? Would cut and paste still work?"

Using a modem is as easy as clicking on an icon and hitting the "dial" button. The first time you will need to put in a phone number, but you'll be typing into a nice friendly graphical app.

Netscape absolutley works. In fact much of the development of the newer versions is done on linux.

Cut and paste work, but differently.


"Could I still use MS Word and Excel?"

Yes and no. You can run Word or Excel under Linux if you set up windows emulation. VMWare is excellent at this (it actually emulates a complete computer, not just windows), and many windows app will run under WINE.

On the other hand, there's no need to. I haven't touched Word or Excel for almost a year. OpenOffice does everything I need, and I trade files back and forth with Word users all the time. I also use it on my windows PC, not just my linux box.

I'd suggest getting a beginner friendly distribution, and if you have an older computer sitting around you don't use much, try it out. Mandrake is an excellent distro, very user friendly and will grow with you.

If you have a broadband connection you can download the entire distro (3 cds), or you can buy it for about $30 at CompUSA/MicroCentre/Best Buy/etc. For the price you get the CDs, a book, and technical support. If you don't want the book or support you can buy the CDs alone from CheapBytes online for $3.99.

If you use the KDE environment you might not realise you're not using windows.

[AppyPappy]

Not painful. Dialing and using Netscape works flawlessly. You shouldn't use Word and Excel because there are free alternatives.

I dual-boot between Windows2K and Linux.

[AppyPappy]

Many people are using "free copies" of Windows products. That will change soon as MS becomes able to verify ownership.

[fporretto]

The requirements of one's applications dictate everything.

I'm a military software engineer. Just now, I'm trying to design a simulation lab, whose various pieces will run on an array of rack-mounted and single-board computers. After reviewing the options, I chose to use Red Hat Linux as the OS for both the development and target computers, because I like Linux performance and the Unix programming environment.

My wife is a consulting financial planner. Her little network of computers runs Windows 2000, because the applications she needs are all Windows programs, so nothing else would make sense.

There's little virtue in deciding on an environment on any other basis. Software doesn't respond to loyalty or worship.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

[Glenn]

"I've tried to stay out of the Microsoft debate. If you start doing things because you hate others and want to screw them over the end result is bad," he said.

That's what I call a class guy. Some of the anti-MS crowd could take a lesson.

[snopercod]

Thanks. I may try it. I'm just so sick of my Win95 just crashing for no reason in the middle of something.

[William McKinley]

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[RayChuang88]

Personally, Linux is great for a server operating system (where ease of use and easy configurability are not major issues) but terrible at a desktop operating system.

Linux won't be easy to use until 1) they standardize on a single user interface (no more KDE vs. Gnome) and the OS gets Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) automated configuration support.

[Salo]

I'm in the early stages of implementing some linux where I work to replace some Netware servers. I've got a mixed environment of Netware, OS/400, AIX and Windows in all of its variants. So far our small tests have worked out well for us and I am looking forward to using it more. I think we'll save money by dumping the Netware and by converting what desktops I can to linux.

[Fresh Wind]

Is there a reasonably priced Linux HTML/web authoring tool equivalent to (hopefully better than) Front Page?

[Salo]

That's what I call a class guy. Some of the anti-MS crowd could take a lesson.

Some of the pro-MS crowd could take that same lesson. Let's face it, when it comes to obnoxious name-calling, bush2000 is in a lack-of-class by himself. Even when he's right, you end up not wanting to agree with him because of his "Apple users are homosexuals" and "linux users are all communists" postings.

[mykej]

Honesty I can't think of a good gui html editor off the top of my head (which certainly doesn't mean they don't exist).

Bluefish is a decent html editor, but you work in the source code.

OpenOffice will save files as html (like MS Word will) but doesn't have the site management tools.

I use XEmacs, but I'm a geek. Half of my html source is actually perl, so I don't expect any editor to handle what I do.

I'll dig around and see what I can find.

[joebuck]

"How painful would it be to try and "operate" a home PC using Linux.How would I operate a modem dial-up connection, for instance. Would my Netscape browser work? Would cut and paste still work? Could I still use MS Word and Excel?"

If you have to ask these questions, you definitely do not want to attempt using Linux as your primary operating system.