Linux 3.0

[Nadav Har'El]

On Sun, May 29, 2011, geoffrey mendelson wrote about "Re: Linux 3.0":
> Good time to switch to BSD? It's GNU free :-)

I know you said this as a joke, but to rain on your parade, BSD is not GNU-
free. As far as I know *BSD distributions typically use quite a number of GNU
packages, such as gcc, groff, bc, and probably a bunch of others. They also
include, I believe, a bunch of other GPL (though not GNU) software.

> How much is going to be broken?
> What's going to be left out?

Linus's intention is to change the kernel numbering scheme, and nothing
else - the move to 3.0 (or 2.8) will not (apparently) be used as an
oportunity for massive depracation of old features, cleaup of defunct
drivers, or major restructing of the code. These things have been happening
slowly in every version, and nobody is waiting for a specific version number
(like the big three-oh) to do them.

> Will audio ever work right?

Audio has been working "right" for me for at least 10 years (before that,
I had a lot of problems with proprietary and half-working drivers)... What
kind of problems are you having?

> Will Linus, etc ever "get it" that it's not a toy and people actually  
> expect it to work and stay working?

Linux worked, and stayed working, for me for the last 18 years, ever since
I dumped AT&T's commercial System Vr4 which I had been using on my 386sx,
because Linux was, frankly, better than the commercial alternative.
Over these 18 years, I slowly dumped also the rest of the commercial
alternatives I had been using - DOS, Windows, OS/2, Solaris (nee SunOS),
Ultrix, OSF/1, Irix, HP-UX, DG/UX, and probably a few others, and today work
(almost) exclusively on Linux. My current PDA is still using Apple's
prorietary OS, but the next one will most likely be using Linux (via
Android). And I have several other devices at home running Linux (streamer,
router, and more).

So I don't think it should be called a toy. I think it has been working,
and will continue to work for another decade, better than all the "commercial"
alternatives.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Sunday, May 29 2011, 26 Iyyar 5771
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Today is the tomorrow you worried about
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |yesterday, and now you know why.