Interview with Torvalds about the future of Linux

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Interview with Torvalds about the future of Linux

Monday, November 26. 2007

Informationweek did an email interview with Linus Torvalds about the future of Linux: Torvalds On Where Linux Is Headed In 2008. This interview leaved me somewhat dissatisfied ... i would like some information where the development of Linux will lead the operating environment in the next 12 or 24 month. Asked in this direction, the answer was somewhat limited to hardware support:

So a lot of the effort ends up being hardware-related. Both in terms of peripheral drivers and simply in platform changes. The bulk of the kernel really is about hardware support, and that alone keeps us busy. The situation in graphics and wireless networking devices -- both of which have been somewhat weak spots -- is changing, and I suspect that will be a large part of what continues to happen during 2008 too.

I hoped to see something like a ZFS competitor, albeit his thoughts about SSD could hint to something similar like read- and writezilla. More or less, the essence of this interview is: More of the same.

Posted by Joerg Moellenkamp in English, The IT Business at 13:07 | Comments (9) | Trackback (1)

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Jim Grisanzio about the Interview with Torvalds
Jim Grisanzio comments in Two great Linus quotes the same article in Informationweek, i´ve commented this afternoon:Even though I took these two quotes out of the context of the original article, they illustrate two points I agree with: (1) one person or

Weblog: c0t0d0s0.org
Tracked: Nov 26, 16:23

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Linus is the wrong person when you searching for new features. Anyone in the world can actually write an ZFS-like FS and Linus is the person who desides wether this is going into the kernel or not. If he develops features then mostly because he personaly needs it or thinks somebody could use it. This leads to a very intresting point: wether nobody in the linux worlds thinks a ZFS-like FS is necessary or they are all frightend of Sun's lawyers

#1 Joern (Homepage) on 2007-11-26 15:22 (Reply)

My point is somewhat different: The leading developers should give the community some focus. For example: Is it sensible to develop the 30th scheduler, when other problems are still lying around.

#1.1 Joerg+M. (Homepage) on 2007-11-26 15:40 (Reply)

Linux have one CPU-Scheduler (quite new) and 5 or 6 IO-Schedulers (for quite some time). This is nothing unusual.

Whats really bad about Linus is he throws every 2-3 months a new unstable kernel out and thinks this is a good solution.

#1.1.1 Joern (Homepage) on 2007-11-26 21:14 (Reply)

Also alleine im 2.6-Umgeld habe ich in der Zeit von vielen Schedulern gelesen ...

Okay, ist nur einer drin, aber man schein eine Vorliebe fuer Schedulerentwicklung zu haben

Mir faellt da ausm Stehgreif ein:
Staircase Scheduler
Rotating Staircase DeadLine Scheduler
O(1) Scheduler
Completly Fair Scheduler
Really Fair Scheduler
Really Simple Really Fair Scheduler (Vereinfachung des RFS)

#1.1.1.1 Joerg+M. (Homepage) on 2007-11-26 21:39 (Reply)

Ja, es hat viele Entwicklungen rund um den Scheduler gegeben, aber das waren alles Sachen die man selbst (bis auf den O(1) Scheduler) reinpatchen musste. Da Linux in der Öffentlichkeit entwickelt wird fällt das auch auf. Bei Closed-Source Entwicklungen wäre das nicht aufgefallen, aber so wurden viele Ideen entwickelt, getestet und wieder verworfen. Es gab Diskussionen und viele Leute haben etwas gelernt, ein unschlagbarer Vorteil des Open-Source Modells wie ich finde und nichts was man zum Vorwurf machen könnte.

#1.1.1.1.1 Joern (Homepage) on 2007-11-27 12:46 (Reply)

Ich werfe das Linux ja auch nicht vor, aber will einfach darauf hinaus, das man vielleicht den Blick ein wenig mehr auf die Schwaechen haette lenken koennen, beispielsweise das Chaos um WiFi) oder um eine LSM-Schnittstelle die wirklich allen gerecht wird ... oder ein SElinux das man auch ohne Hühnchenknochenwerfen einigermassen selber mit Policies versorgen kann ... es war ja nun nicht so das der O(1) Scheduler schlecht funktioniert hat, und unbedingt einen Ersatz brauchte. Bei sowas sehe ich die "Luminaries" einer Community ein wenig in der Pflicht, die Aufmerksamkeit ein wenig zu lenken, gegegebenfalls und notfalls durch "Nein, das kommt nicht in den Mainline-Kernel, bevor nicht andere Dinge erledigt sind".

#1.1.1.1.1.1 Joerg+M. (Homepage) on 2007-11-27 12:56 (Reply)

Linus war in Sachen Features noch nie ein Diktator, würde auch nicht viel Sinn machen. Ich sehe das wie oben schon gesagt: wenn es irgendein Feature nicht gibt, dann liegt es evtl. daran das es niemand benötigt oder anderweitig vermisst.

#1.1.1.1.1.1.1 Joern (Homepage) on 2007-11-27 19:26 (Reply)

Wenn ich das richtig beobachte, faellt das schon vielen Leuten auf, das es im WLAN-Bereich kein gemeinsames Framework gibt ... nur um mal bei diesem Beispiel zu bleiben ... und im SELinux bereich lese ich eigentlich auch sehr oft "Toll, so lange man bei den Standard policies bleibt" ... es ist bedarf da, frage ist nur ob der bedarf auch von den Entwicklern gesehen wird. Vielleicht muss am Ende ein bisschen Diktator sein, um hier vielleicht auch noch besser zu werden.

#1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1 Joerg (Homepage) on 2007-11-27 23:33 (Reply)

In addition to your thoughts: Sometimes, I have the feeling that Linux - as much as I really like it - suffers from a particularly strong case of the NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome.

If we can trust Ricardo Correia (who ports ZFS to fuse so it can be used without being in the Linux kernel), some Linux kernel devs simply do not understand the radically different idea behind ZFS. For an example, see Ricardo's blogpost on that topic (http://zfs-on-fuse.blogspot.com/2007/04/zfs-in-linux-kernel.html). The idea of a file system with no fsck seems to frighten the jeebies out of some devs ...

#1.2 Martin Eisenhardt (Homepage) on 2007-11-26 16:35 (Reply)

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