Happy Birthday, Linus | Hacker News Reader

Happy Birthday, Linus

linuxjournal.com

36 pointsk7d12 comments

Linus Torvalds created a personal project that grew into something huge. I admire how he still manages the Linux kernel development, even as it has grown to a large organizational project. This is a good example analogous to growing a start-up organically into a large "company"

Happy Birthday Linus!

Well, I respect that he started Linux and Git, and I would celebrate the "birth" dates of those projects, but my opinion is that he's an Ahole .... an arrogant masturbating monkey himself who's birthday I wouldn't care to celebrate. But that's just me.

Yes, Linus is an a..hol.. But not in character. He does it as a calculated way to keep the real a--holes off of his chest. I admire Linus for his social / leadership. I learned from observing his strategies.

Do you find it interesting that many many well respected tech CEOs and project leaders could be characterized the same way?

One might go so far to assume that a forceful personality is somewhat necessary to successful project leadership. I think random people celebrating his birthday is a bit overboard, but arguably the projects he's worked on have benefited from his sometimes abrasive personality.

I don't think it's unreasonable to admire that contribution.

I don't like Linux, I think it is a curse, technically poor and the ultimate worse is better.

But I respect the fact that you did it, you kept it together, kept it going, brought people together on a worldwide project. Your pragmatism is refreshing. You've probably saved us from the world according to Stallman and Raymond so thank you for that. You come across as a nice guy when I've heard you speak.

So, after everything I've said in public and private I would like to take this opportunity to wish you happy birthday from one hacker to another, great job, keep it up.

This seems like a legitimate opinion. Why the -4?

EDIT: No, if you agree, upvote the other guy.

You can't malign a hugely successful piece of software without justifying your opinion in front of a very technical audience such as this.

Or, I guess you can and suffer the consequences (as OP did).

I do not think this is the way it should be. Thus I am glad he got modded back to neutral (which incidentally means 1 and not 0 in HN).

I think the relevant point is you shouldn't malign a project without justification. I'm really interested to know why the person thinks the kernel is technically deficient and since they didn't include that information, the comment itself is a big letdown. Not including any information on why the kernel is bad is about as informative as a comment simply saying "linux is teh rad." (I think it's troubling so many of those types of comments get upvoted.)

I agree with you on at least one point though, whether or not the project is large or popular shouldn't be relevant to the voting.

I mean, he initially wrote git too..

It may be technically poor in your particular domain of operation, which you fail to elaborate on, but I think in the domain of operation it targets, i.e. servers with performance, it evidently considered good by a great deal of smart people. For example, it totally dominates the top500 supercomputers, is used by Google for their backend, by a large number (most?) hosting companies. This is primarily due to the overall performance characteristics being better (not some sub-benchmark where FreeBSD or Solaris or whatever pulls ahead by 1 or 2%).

That is to say, the Linux kernel is the fastest for general performance oriented server tasks. It may be the case that in some areas you can get some other unix-y operating systems to outperform it, and by all means use them in those circumstances for your projects, but I think your blanket unqualified dismissal of the thousands of kernel developers as being technically poor and ultimately "worse is better" is a bit over the top.

Do you know what Worse is Better means?

btw. the top500 Linux boxes run with OS bypass because the kernel just isn't fast enough. Nice try though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com