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Comment by brunoluiz | Hacker News Reader

Every time something like "Linus Torvalds on ..." pops up, I get curious if it will be an interesting explanation or a full Linus rage TM. This post is defo the former though (perhaps he is not raging anymore hehe).

If you never saw one of his rage moments, take a look at: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 and https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/13/132

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You have to understand that the Linux Foundation is using his "rage" as a PR exercise. He was outspoken from the start, even as a kid. His reply to Tanenbaum when he first released the Linux kernel is well know. But the Linux foundation realised that they can capitalise on this "rage" by making it more visible. Any publicity is good publicity, as they say in PR world. Negative news makes more impact than positive news. How many people outside the BSD community know who the lead developers are for BSD OSes? How many of them are interviewed at TED talks[0]? It is all about publicity.

[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_lin...

The Linux Foundation does nothing like that. Linus had been famous before its existence.

On the contrary, they made an example of him and had him recant to further the new corporate substitute religion that is used as a worker suppression tool and that solidifies the power of idle bureaucrats.

You may argue that OpenBSD's founder Theo de Raadt is arguably not a shy, calm person either, but that hasn't brought to its project the same amount of mindshare and attention Linux has.

I know about Theo :) ( though the rage pattern also applies there)

I know about Theo as well even though I am not a user on any of the BSD distribution. And that is my point. I knew about him because there was a discussion about him similar to the discussion that happens on rage of Linus. "Squeaky wheel gets the oil" as they say! In this case oil is publicity.

Thought he decided he was gonna try to be polite? I prefer the rage version. Less corporate email style

Both those posts are 8 or more years old.

He has toned it down somewhat in recent years - still blunt but that's an admirable trait for a techie (note blunt !== rude).

Indeed, people change after so many years. It is good to see that now he is providing insightful explanations, without raging or anything. After all, he is the creator of Linux and his thoughts about its directions are always super valuable.

IMO his rage posts usually still had great insightful points (cf "we do not break userspace"). The rage part was maybe unnecessary, but it wasn't the entire content of the emails.

I like the Linus that shittalks NVIDIA, though i guess that's free NVIDIA markeing, which I really do not want them to have.

There’s enough rage from other members to cover Linus and then some, just follow the thread: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/YHiMyE4E1ViDcVPi@hirez.programm...

The last half is basically his own opinions stated as truth from God, which, to me, makes him look like a complete tool. Personally I'm not a fan of parens around the conditional in ifs, but I don't go around spouting that it is the only true way.

It basically makes me write off the first half, even if it is correct (I'm not a linux dev, so I don't know).

Added: From the reply on lkml I'm not the only one.

It's a style that has been recognized as humorous for decades before the corporate CoC-wielding bureaucrats moved in. Much more refreshing than passive aggressive replies like this one:

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/YHkaaTQ2KQML2iqt@google.com/

I think Rust is not a culture fit for the Linux kernel and its adoption will further undermine Linux.

Humorous? I don't think how anyone could think stuff like "I cannot view with less or vim. Therefore it looks not at all." as even remotely funny.

Sounds just like "neckbeard yells at cloud" style to justify that the world does not do exactly what he wants.

The first point is quite valid though. From "https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/memory-model.html" where it says "Rust does not yet have a defined memory model"

the unstated part here is that in the absence of a compiler-visible atomic modelling system, an atomic model is implemented in `core::atomic` and LLVM. similarly, a `kcore` library could provide atomic types just like the way the LKMM is defined as a library in-tree.

this is not a language limitation, as the language is able to emit LLVM atomic operations just fine. like allocations, it needs people with a defined goal (like the kernel) to provide a target for implementations to reach; proäctive creation of a model without knowing if it has an audience is not worthwhile, which is why it hasn't been done

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