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I too am really disappointed by this "interview". Why oh why do they _always_ have to ask things about Microsoft from Linus?? Can't they just for once leave Microsoft out of the question and ask some interesting and serious questions? Arrrgh! Please, someone do a _good_ interview, pretty please..? :O

No, they must ask and compare.

There are countless millions of people who think "The Computer" is Microsoft...

There are many more who think Linux=Linus

No they don't. He has answered these questions countless of times, there's no need to do it again.


None of those people will read this interview.

Well, "The Computer" IS Microsoft if you like it or not. For example here are latest statistics from my country (Poland). According to them currently about 0,5 % of PC is being connected to the Internet using Linux:

Windows XP 90.8%
Windows Vista 3.8%
Windows 98 2.3%
Windows 2000 1.7%
Linux 0.5%
MacOS X 0.2%

Source: http://www.ranking.pl/index.php?page=Ranks:RanksPage&stat=21|OW

As you can see there are still almost four times more Win2000 desktops connected to the Internet, than Linux machines. And all that is happening in Europe, where awareness of open source is much more widespread compared to US. (see statistics of Firefox adoption)

I ask myself that exact same question nearly every I read a comment thread here...

Whole thing went down in first question where Torvalds said that he doesn't use Microsoft products, sigh why then bother asking other 2.

Because it was an email interview. But I agree that if the interviewer had done their homework, they would have known better than to ask these sorts of questions.

Nevertheless, Linus being Linus, we get very polite, thoughtful answers that refocus the discussion onto the source of Linux's strength and future. I enjoyed reading his responses.

Oh, and that funky, weird language - it's Klingon, dude, definitely Klingon.

Edited 2007-11-26 15:25

"It's gonna be strange to switch on your computer, not to hear the disk drive spinning, [...]"

I always found it annoying to be able to hear if a PC is running, but this seems to be specific to PCs, not to computers in general. :-)

As opposed to what?

"As opposed to what?"

Re-read my statement, please: "but this seems to be specific to PCs, not to computers in general. :-)" There are more computers than PCs, for example, servers or workstations or (near the border of this term's meaning) terminals. Users that grew up with PCs don't find it any strange that they usually are louder than, let's say, a Sun Ultra, a SGI Octane or an Apple Mac Mini - wich are all computers, but no PCs. This is hard semantics, I know, and very individual experiences and understanding of language. :-)

Apples, Suns, and SGIs are PCs too, and Dells have been extremely silent for a long time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer

Corporations have a lot of money to throw at the sound problem. DIYers the other hand don't have the same resources, so that may be the difference between the experiences.

Two terms
PC = Personal Computer
IBM PC = Personal Computer that is based loosely on the design of the original IBM PC. Or a Personal Computer that is a descendant design of the original IBM PC.

My Silent VIC-20 was a PC as was my ATARI ST. However my fridge computer is not a PC. Just waiting for Apple to come out with a iFridge that is a PC.

Unfortunately repeated readings don't make the meaning any clearer.



How is a Mac Mini not a personal computer?

I can only guess that by "PC" you mean x86-compatible PC. Are you suggesting that it's not possible for a "PC" to run quietly? That's certainly not the case - if you're capable of installing a heatsink and a power supply, about $150 (for a fanless PSU and a low-noise HSF) and a half hour of effort will get you a "PC" that's as silent as any Mac mini.

I always love hearing a computer start up.. I guess I've just gotten used to it since my old intel 286 days where you here the computer slowly wind up, and then........"Beeep!!!".

I had an old Amstrad PC2286, it had a noisy 40mb hard drive, and an even noisier cooling fan. It sort of growled rather than humming that you associate with PC's nowadays.

It was retired after Metallica tried to play in my city, but they were drowned out by my computer.

I'm fascinated by the Solid State Drives as well. Personally the most important part of the article.

After all a SSD gives the Asus Eee PC a 15 sec start up time.

Me too

I bought an UltraDMA4 SDHC-to-IDE converter on eBay (look for one in a red PCB) and I'm pretty happy with it. I installed XP just for the kicks, FreeBSD is next.

Just beware that XP will REFUSE to run Windows Update with error 0x8DDD0002 if it detects it's installed on a removable drive. Took me 2 weeks to take a wild guess and install the Hitachi driver (actually, filter) that makes Flash-based removable media report itself as fixed.



And boy, does XP boot quick here as well.

I was going to make a SSD using an IDE RAID card and CF-IDE adapters and CF cards but when I did the maths it was way more expensive than a top of the line conventional PATA drive. I could not justify the costs ,the 4GB CF cards I wanted cost about $30AUD+freight each. I have the RAID card and the converters are cheap but the FLASH RAM itself is too pricey.

Does anyone know of a better way to get cheap FLASH RAM. I even thought of chaining USB FLASH drives together but those have similar prices.

So now I am waiting for them to come down in price. Since I plan to build a new computer mid-way through 2008 I will look at one then.

As far as storage is concerned, while newer filesystems like ZFS interest me moderately, there's no point in creating a shiny filesystem on top of devices that aren't up to the job.

ZFS provides end to end data integrity. Check out the "last word in filesystems presentation"... http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/docs/zfs_last.pdf
I think thats the presentation that says ZFS loves cheap disks.

Part of the reason ZFS was created was because hard disks are unreliable...so it really doesn't make sense to say that there is no point in creating this filesystem on top of devices that aren't up to the job when that was part of the reasoning behind it.

Actually, it's the opposite... One of the big performance problems with SSDs is the FTL (Firmware Translation Layer) that allows filesystems designed for rotating block devices to manage the completely alien topology of a bare Flash medium (i.e. MTD or Memory Technology Device).

Some of you may know me as a fan of abstractions, but the FTL is a very bad abstraction that does nothing but maintain an elaborate lie so as to defeat any attempts at optimization by the filesystem and I/O layer. It's a stopgap solution at best, and it's never going to exploit the full potential of random-access storage media.

There's no technical reason at all why the OS can't deal directly with the MTD without the evil interference of the FTL. Yes, it requires new Flash-aware filesystems. But our disk-oriented filesystems make absolutely no sense in the context of random-access storage.

Even the "mighty" ZFS is no more suitable to Flash than FAT32. In fact, some FTL implementations will operate more efficiently with FAT32 than with any other filesystem because it's easier to identify free blocks for garbage collection. The more sophisticated the filesystem, the more it looks like a black box to the FTL.

Fortunately, Linux supports raw Flash MTDs today and is developing superior solutions for whenever the storage industry decides to start shipping SSDs without the FTL training wheels. The OLPC XO and the FIC neo1973 are really the first open hardware platforms to feature an MTD. The Asus eeePC and other such UMPCs use an FTL.

Assuming Microsoft is dead serious about getting Windows on the XO, it could only be a matter of time before they push MTD storage support into their mainstream Windows products. Then we might see the storage industry warm to the idea of dropping the FTL.

Today the most commonly used filesystem for Linux MTDs is JFFS2 (Journaling Flash Filesystem), which is actually a log-structured filesystem. Unfortunately, it has some design limitations that make it unwieldy for mass storage media (more than a couple gigs).

The future seems to be LogFS, which, continuing the joke, is actually a journaling filesystem. LogFS has an interesting design that demonstrate a deep level of consideration for the idiosyncrasies of Flash.

As Seen on OSNews:

http://www.osnews.com/story.php/17939

Particularly when it comes to write performance, the FTL implementation can really gum up the works. Some are better than others, they're all proprietary, and most offer no way to bypass the FTL on systems that can support the Flash as an MTD. This is an evil technology that's sapping performance and impeding progress, and we must rise up against it. Down with FTL!

"They are inexpensive"

Definitely. The current problem of SSD is price per gig.

"fast"

Not really. It takes a long time to load applications and the operating system itself. An ideal disk drive should load the operating system and applications in the blink of an eye. In the real world it can take several seconds to load applications and several minutes to load the operating system. We're used to it but granted this is very slow.

"reliable"

Not at all. This is why we shouldn't expect any disk drive (HDD or SSD) to live more than a few years. Always back up your information. People usually take disk drive reliability for granted and don't backup their data.

"quiet"

Nope. Expecially those 10,000 and 15,000 rpm drives.

"and energy-efficient."

I think SSDs are more energy-efficient, as they are not mecanical.

I think SSDs are better because they are quiet and provide a faster access time. There *is* hype but I think SSDs deserve it.

Not really. It takes a long time to load applications and the operating system itself. An ideal disk drive should load the operating system and applications in the blink of an eye. In the real world it can take several seconds to load applications and several minutes to load the operating system. We're used to it but granted this is very slow.

You forget that it is not just _loading_ things, it's initializing stuff that takes time. If things were so easy that you could just load something in memory and start executing it would be amazing. I measured my HDD performance and it can load data up to ~60mb/s which means that I should be running Linux in about 3-4 seconds. But it doesn't work like that. No matter how fast media you read from the OS still has to initialize itself and all the peripherals.

Nope. Expecially those 10,000 and 15,000 rpm drives.

For Joe User those drives don't matter. Most home PCs have a 5400rpm drive, or a 7200rpm one at most. I have a 7200rpm one and I can't hear it. I can hear the power fan and the GPU fan, though.

I think SSDs are more energy-efficient, as they are not mecanical.

That is, AFAIK, very true. I read somewhere that an SSD drive uses about 1/5 the energy compared to a laptop HDD. Desktop HDDs usually use even a little bit more than those for laptops.

You guys are talking as if I didn't just link you to power and performance benchmarks.

You do realize your power benchmarks DO show an energy benefit to using an SSD device, and a decent improvement in noise?

Yep - initialization of the OS is the big time consumer when booting - disk access is not the bottleneck in most cases.

Back in the day, I worked with Honeywell minicomputers. One of the OS choices for those systems was GCOS6 MOD600. We built a configuration for each system and then processed the config, which resulted in a completely initialized OS image stored on disk (and back then, the disks were slow). Booting with the initialized OS image from disk was blazingly fast. Perhaps creating such a capability for Linux would be a cool project.

There are numerous benchmarks showing that there are very few cases where SSDs actually outperform traditional hard disks when it comes to random writes:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/08/13/flash_based_hard_drives_come...

That doesn't include the fact that there needs to be a file system which is written which takes into account how an SSD works - to ensure optimum performance and 'levelling'.

Depends upon the drive in question. This review,
from the same site, shows the SSD winning big:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/21/mtron_ssd_32_gb/

"quiet"

Nope. Expecially those 10,000 and 15,000 rpm drives.

Oh really? 10k and 15k SAS (2.5' drives) are almost silent to my ear. 10k 3.5 disks are not but then, they are mostly uninterresting/irrelevant. 3.5' disks are for bulk storage and not for fast access so 7.2k are speedy enough. For fast access, 2.5' 10k and 15k disks is the way forward. It's all about physics at those speeds.

SSD is about read latency. Sustained read speeds from SSD-disks are lacking or expensive stuff. Also, filesystems and OS:es are very lacking with regards to how SSD works as they do not minimise the number of writes to the disk => bad for life-expectancy of the disk

While I agree that SSD are often over-hyped, there is an issue here in what you're saying: HDD are not both fast and quiet, they are either fast or either quiet.

Also the main drawback about current SSD is their bandwidth limitation for writing, but this doesn't seem to be a 'hard' limit: I expect that in a few years SSD will have write bandwidth equivalent to that of an HDD (by multiplexing communications with different chips), whereas HDD won't have any time soon random-access time equivalent to that of SSD due to the fundamental limitation of the technology.

Well, gigabyte iRam 4gb boots linux and windows on my computer in about 3 seconds. But from a price perspective its not a viable sollution for mass storage. Its neat when compiling code though.

edit: iRam is just that, ramsticks on a board connected through the SATA interface. Not a flash based device.

Edited 2007-11-26 12:56

"gigabyte iRam 4gb boots linux and windows on my computer in about 3 seconds"

Wow...This i-Ram looks pretty cool...

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Storage/Products_Overview.aspx?...
http://techreport.com/articles.x/9312
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2480

Question: Is there an i-RAM that has more space? I'm thinking about 10GiB here...

Yes there are I searched until I found this site.
http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-ram.html
Which lists a lot of companies and products

Here is one that is 16GB @ £1,195
http://www.hyperdrive4.com/

There are larger and larger ones. Ones that fit in rackmount cases or require their own cabinet. StorageSpire takes up to 1TB.

I think the problem is the bigger they are the more costly they are.

You bring up a lot of good points, but in terms of access times an HD which rely on a mechanical subsystem can never beat an SSD which has no mechanical parts.

It couldn't in energy usage either.

-------So don't buy into the SSD hype too much unless you are really obsessed with that one heavy-load random-read use case that makes flash memory shine.-------

Like booting your computer? Some people do that daily, I know I do. I saw a huge difference from the upgrade.

"They are inexpensive"
True

"fast"
Throughput, yes. Latency, hell no.
All my Linux workstation use a 3/4/5 x 250GB SATA in (software) RAID5 array - a >150MB/s sustained read/write setup.
And yet, when I compile my project or start too many VM guests, my soon-to-be-replaced U160/4x36GB/10K/R5 (~70MBps) SCSI setup runs circles around the newer/bigger/better SATA setup.

"reliable"
Not really.
Moving parts == problems. Nothing you can do about it.
New HDs just hide the problems better.

"quiet"
Non-issue.

"energy-efficient."
In the long run SSD will be far more efficient. No moving parts, remember?

SSDs will not replace HDs in the foreseeable future. No doubt about it. SSD are smaller, and far more expensive.
But in the long run, SSDs is the future.

- Gilboa

SSD's are a rather new technology, but the future does look bright. Just take a look at this Fusion IO technology:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6394

http://www.fusionio.com/demo.html

Your generalization of HDD vs. SSD doesn't account for the technologies that the SSD are based on. (battery backed) DRAM and Flash SSD have a lot of inherent problems such as limited writes, throughput issues, and cost that will ultimately prevent them from becoming 'HDD Killers'

Now if a technology like NRAM matures, then it will blow the pants off both eletro-mechanical disks, and DRAM/Flash based drives. The theoretical speeds will be similar to that of DRAM except with the distinct advantage of being a non-volatile memory technology.

Anyone who's been though a basic computer architecture course should understand how huge the implications of a technology like this are.

Edited 2007-11-26 16:35

Ideally, if operating systems became cheap enough, it would be great to be able to pull out a chip, and simply drop in a new one in its place - thus, in a desktop, you have two chips, one for storage, one for the operating system itself.

The operating system itself is non-writable, instead all the user files are saved on the user storage device. If that has any problems, load up, format the flash device, and all the settings are recreated on reboot. Updates are handled by storing them on the user writable chip, and the operating system going to the user writable chip before attempting to load the one on the chip itself.

Ideally, if operating systems became cheap enough, it would be great to be able to pull out a chip, and simply drop in a new one in its place - thus, in a desktop, you have two chips, one for storage, one for the operating system itself.

Is "free" cheap enough? -- various Linux distros have been booting from USB flash drives and compact flash cards ever since motherboards and bioses allowed it. And it is simple to just keep all user data and user settings (and even some apps) on a separate USB flash drive or compact flash card.

I was running Puppy Linux from a USB flash drive, and it was lightning fast, because it defaults to loading the entire OS into the ram. It is so small, that I didn't need a separate flash drive for the userspace.

Windows can also boot from a USB flash: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/09/windows_in_your_pocket/

As can OSX (although it seems to require at least a 1-gig drive and seems more complicated to set-up): http://blog.bradbergeron.com/2006/11/29/howto-install-and-boot-os-x...

Ooh, ooh, ooh, here's mine: "If Stever Ballmer asked for your advice, what would you say?"

Ugh...

Seriously, if OSNews does an interview with Linus, there better not be any questions about Microsoft or its products. No boxers or briefs inquiries. Nothing about what features he expects in 2009. Let's try to keep it to questions we can't quickly answer by consulting Jonathan Corbet's Linux Weather Forecast:

http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Linux_Weather_Forecast

Ask him about his day-to-day work activities. Ask him about code quality and complexity. Ask him about developer relations. Ask him about any long-range concerns he might have about the project. Maybe ask him about license fragmentation between Linux and OpenSolaris and reciprocity with the BSD communities. Ask him about how convergence of logic and stream computation in next-gen hardware might impact the kernel.

People have a huge misunderstanding of the kinds of things that Linus cares about. Ask him about the stuff that matters to him, and you'll have a great interview. Ask him about what matters to the tech news echo chamber, and he'll roll his eyes and phone it in.

I say we get Bill Gates in here, and interview him about the US Stock Market.

Then we get... Theo de Raalt in here, and ask him about the European Space Agency.

They are indeed used by some laptop manufacturers, I've seen them in some Dells and Sonys, but with about 256 MB of Flash memory, there isn't any benchmark that shows even a small increase in performance.

I think SanDisk's Vaulter Disk is going to achieve better results, but I haven't found any benchmarks yet. I wrote about it in my blog (just the announcement, technical details are out of my skill):

http://optimitza.cat/news/2007/11/14/vaulter-disk-the-long-awaited-...

But back when 30 megabytes were a lot of storage capacity.

+1 for you stating the obvious, I really cannot understand the people around here who would mod you down for your statement.

Apart, of course, from this.......

You said "I could really care less"

It is said like this,

"I could'nt care less"

Please elaborate: what was so bad about Ubuntu 7.10 compared to previous versions?



No, actually, I would not.



If Ubuntu 6.06 and 7.04 had been working good, why not reinstall these?



What feelings would those be? Do you really dislike Microsoft, or are you simply parrotting what you think a Linux enthusiast would say?



My experiences with Ubuntu is that everything just works. I've installed it on the PCs of non-techie friends, and I haven't had a single complaint yet.



I'm sorry, but I'm quite skeptical about your whole story. In fact, it sounds like a complete fabrication destined to discourage others to try Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular.

Some weeks ago I put a list of main "bad things" I encounter in latest Ubuntu, not present in previous versions.

A quick reminder:

- broken debmirror (for me it was critical since I use it)

- screensaver settings in LiveCD - activating it the same moment GNOME is displayed - at first sight it looks similar like problems with monitor mode being detected wrong.

- "screen and graphic" xorg.conf's ultimate destroyer.

- graphics card and monitor detection failed on my two PC - 6.06, 6.10 and 7.04 detected them fine.

- Synaptic and Add/remove works horribly with offline repos DVDs. Even created with care - "universe"