Submitted by “I was in a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon and happened to spot Linus Torvalds sitting alone at a window table. I asked the creator of the Linux operating system and the Git source code control system if I could join him. Over the next fifteen minutes we talked about programming and programmers.” Editor’s Note: We’ve realized it’s unclear whether this is a satirical interview or not. We don’t know, so YMMV.
I found it: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
Sort of.
https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/iySKQGtkmtb
microemacs is his thing.
…of linking to a completely fictitious interview? Or more importantly, what is the point of writing it?
I don’t get it. Anyone who knows Linus would immediately know this is not him. I know the article is marked as “satire”, but other than that is appears completely sincere – there is nothing even remotely funny about it.
Is someone actually trying to “smear” Linus? The motivation to do this is just totally lost on me.
Perhaps, but there’s more than a grain of truth to his comments about Git and whatever happens to be flavour of the month in terms of programming languages.
Maybe… But that is kind of the point. Linus is not and never has been interested in “flavor of the month” thinking. Git might be looked upon as fashionable by some of the “Black t-shirt” crowd as the author puts it, but I think that even Linus would say if you pick your RCS based on it being “fashionable” your an idiot…
I’m just saying the satire doesn’t seem to work in this case… To me for satire to work you have to attribute some questionable words into someones mouth that your intended audience would think might come out of it – or alternately something so completely ridiculous that you immediately know they would never say it. Almost everything he has Linus saying in this piece is ridiculous – but only if you are familiar with his personality.
Maybe I’m just not getting it. I could see someone saying this stuff – just not Linus. I just think that most people reading in would probably not understand it as satire…
In hindsight maybe that is the point. It seems to me to be more of a poorly timed April Fools joke than a true satire.
Edited 2012-09-27 20:28 UTC
It started off pretty well, comparing programmer types to hipsters. There’s some truth in it. Then the writer went out of ideas, and put claims like “[distros are] all pretty much the same thing warmed over”, as if something like Archlinux doesn’t keep the indie cred of anything you have to install through the command line. Git being too hard to use? That’s just silly.
Satire works when it tells the truth in a jarring way, not when it’s just dumb.
“as if something like Archlinux doesn’t keep the indie cred of anything you have to install through the command line” Oh please, give me a break…It has nothing to do with “indy cred”, but it’s all about learning your system from the ground up and not taking anything for granted. Completely anti-hipster, actually
Nope. It used to be about learning your system and having complete control over your OS. Now, it’s about the Arch admins stroking their OS-penises and measuring them against each other, and newcomers are turned away with a “take your ball and find another playground” attitude. Very hipsterish, if you ask me.
If you don’t believe me, look into the furor on the forums over the last couple of months regarding highly aggressive, system-breaking core changes with very little notice or resolution. Various Arch admins have been quoted as saying they hate the idea of anyone new using Arch, that they want the distro to fall into obscurity so they will be “left alone by all the noobs”, and that they are making the aggressive changes to purposely turn away anyone new to the project.
And yes, I know the majority of the Arch community is not like that. It’s a core group of admins who are trying to close up the project and turn their backs on the community at large. I wish they would just fork off and leave it in more sane hands.
See, that’s what gives it the indie cred. “I’m using this incredibly difficult system because I want to learn/be in total control. Yep, I’m just that hardcore.”
In the earlier days, it used to be Slackware — usenet was flooded with card-carrying slackers making similar claims, and for some reason they were the least helpful bunch of all. Claimed they knew everything (they had to, since Slack was so hard), yet never answered anyone’s questions.
Now, I currently do use Arch at home, due to its rolling-release more than its simplicity of design or difficulty of use: whenever Debian is frozen, Sid becomes too boring. The claim that you learn more from it is bullshit. It’s a good distro, though.
No sense of humour? Or you got yourself caught? Well, I think that Thom might directly mark the news as a satire/fun/humour, and everything would be OK.
Other than that, in the past I liked the interview with C++ creator, which many believed, is a genuine too 🙂
http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/Invention_of_Cplusplus.shtml
I do have a sense of humor… That is why I’m complaining about this – it isn’t funny. I like good satire – this is so bad it doesn’t even resemble satire.
Ya, I agree — It wasn’t funny, or enlightening, or… anything else that satire usually is. I’m not sure what it was supposed to be honestly.
I guess humor is sometimes very specific.
I do think that this has been re-tweeted mostly because people thought this was an actual interview. (opinion)
Actually I DO prefer THIS Linus to the real one.
This Linus missed all the arrogance, all bashing to C++, Gnome, and all projects/companies/people that think different than him; and this Linus has a lot of injected humility that I really like.
nobody cares, fuck off now.
You seem to be defining “Arrogance” in terms of other people daring to have a different opinion than yours. If such is the case, then perhaps you may be telling us more about yourself, via projection, than Torvalds’s supposed character flaws.
Actually I respect his technical achievements a lot (I would have to be a fool to ignore them); I also respect people that thinks different to other people and respect good arguments and discussions (here in OSnews, the good quality level of discussions is amazingly good).
But after reading several comments and quotes that Linus says about technology he does not like; the “arrogant” word is the only one that comes to my mind.
Do you like comments like this one:
http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus ?
He blames C++ because he thinks it is horrible, no providing any technical detail. Ok, Linux is nice, is written in C; but a lot of beautiful and huge software is written in C++ (e.g. KDE) and the developers of such software deserve a lot of respect and admiration.
Or this one:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-December/msg00021.htm…
where Linux bashes Gnome in an aggresive way?
He can dislike anything, but being unrespectful takes a lot of respect towards him away.
Edited 2012-09-28 00:28 UTC
He hasn’t fully explained his kernel abi position either. Yes he calls it “non-sense” but both Windows and OSX have one and don’t suffer any performance benefits because of it.
Someone should ask him how a 3 year abi would slow down Linux. Like have him specifically point to a period in time where it would have caused problems. Or ask him if in-tree drivers are ever broken. Everyone who interviews him gets a geek crush and throws him softballs.
Everyone has their faults and Linus can be pigheaded.
Bullshit.
Go read Linus and Ingo answer here:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/115250422803614415116/posts/hMT5kW8LKJk
You’re the one that has fallen for his bullshit.
Never broke interfaces from day one? The userspace driver API didn’t exist until 2007. So yes they were breaking everything from day one and they will still break in-tree drivers if they feel like it.
Linus is just giving some p.r. speak there. The truth is that Linux is his pet and he will break whatever he wants.
Maybe I will have to blog about this because everyone seems to have fallen for that response to Miguel’s blog.
Shut up.
First you call ZJ’s comment bullshit, then you post a quote by LT that reaffirms his comment?
And I can’t find anything in the thread you linked where he explains his position. Instead LT and other kernel devs talk about Linux having a stable external interface which is a different matter.
Then there is of course the stable_api_nonsense.txt file which doesn’t adress the largest issue of not having a stable driver ABI (ie. that it’s difficult to get new drivers without replacing the kernel with a newer version and that you’ll have to wait for drivers to be merged upstream in a stable release before you can use the new hardware you bought).
Did you actually read what he was responding to?
Are you saying that is real question? That is a troll if I ever saw one… I think he was just responding in kind.
I get that some people love C++ and think Linus’ pathological hatred for it are unfathomable – well it goes both ways. Some people just love C and think that those of us who use C++ are slightly brain damaged… I’m not saying I agree with that attitude by the way – just pointing out that when a long time C developer hears “why didn’t you do that in C++” for the 5000th time they have a tendency to snap.
Civility is not always the appropriate response. If you believe something strongly enough, and have heard the counter arguments so often that you know them by heart and still are convinced you are right, what exactly is the point of having a civil debate over it? You already know how it will end…
Sometimes “f*ck off” is the right way to handle it.
Disclaimer: I actually think C++ is a perfectly fine language and don’t agree with everything Linus says about it. But he does make some good points on why it isn’t appropriate for kernel work. More importantly though, I appreciate the fact that he speaks his mind and doesn’t cave to herd mentality – because I think herd mentality is way more dangerous than C ever was. There is something to be said for people who are willing to say what they think even when they know it won’t be popular…
The thing is that Linus has a very successful track record of “shipped” projects, so if you keep trying to make qualitative arguments to emotional appeal you’re going to look foolish, because you, as an anonymous unknown quantity simply do not have any authority.
So yeah, you may not agree with his views and opinions, and that is OK. But calling hims “arrogant” because he dares not sharing your point of view, that strikes me, as I said earlier, a bit projective from your part. I think the issue some people have with Linus is that he can not only talk the talk, but walk the walk, and he is aware of that fact. And that seems to not sit well with some people, for some reason.
If you don’t like his opinions and/or projects, then do not use them.
Edited 2012-09-28 23:27 UTC
It helps if the joke is actually funny.
I hadn’t spotted this was fake interview until you posted. Thanks for the heads up.
Now if only there was a way to down vote articles….
I’ve been amazed by two things related to this over the past few days: (1) the speed at which the article has spread around Twitter, being retweeted by loads of people who think it’s a genuine interview, and (2) the number of people who subsequently claim that they were in on the joke all along when they posted/tweeted/linked to it.
Just out of interest, would the person who downvoted this comment care to mention why they did so?
Sorry is this what goes around as jokes these days?
Some pretty strong comments on Linux by himself. But what I really missed was the usual GNOME dead right ‘kick-in-the-butt’ rethoric!
you lost me at “the Linux operating system” — linus would never talk to someone so stupid
Thom, you should update the post to mention it is a joke.
The article on
http://typicalprogrammer.com/?p=143
has the tag “Satire”
It’s not obvious Linus didn’t actually say that.
I agree. It took reading the comments section for me to notice that there was a Satire tag. The author of the article should have better indicated it was a parody.
Agreed, but…a satirical treatment of or parody of what?
Challange accepted
Kate already does this.
It’s a KDE text editor that (if the option is selected) behaves like VIM.
I don’t understand why people here assumed it was satirical. There’s nothing satirical about it, and for that matter given Linus’ provocative and frank comments in the past, I wasn’t surprised at all when I read the interview. The only part that I thought was fake was the interview format, which I assumed was imposed upon an actual conversation that took place.
It’s quite clear now that the entire thing fake, but I didn’t get it until one of the commenters here noted that the post was tagged under “Satire”. I’m not sure the author knows what satire really is. Fake things assigned to false identities =/= satire.
http://www.snopes.com/computer/program/stroustrup.asp
I thought it was satire when I first read it, but with Linus, its tough to tell.