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Comment by 7e | Hacker News Reader

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> but if you list the important advancements of humankind (like LLMs, drug development, basic science breakthroughs etc.)

Amusingly, free and open source kernels (including bsds) are key to enabling all of that.

No, not at all. GPUs are the key to enabling all that. Kernels are just some glue running in there. Most of the NVIDIA goodness is actually in userspace. You could just as well say that electricity or HVAC is the key.

> kernels

And what exactly do you think your GPU is running? Checkmate atheists

I must upvote your comment, this was hilarious.

Good luck using your GPU without electricity.

> if you list the important advancements of humankind (like LLMs [...])

Bait used to be believable.

LLMs are not an "important advancement of humankind". Might as well add crypto if that's the bar.

If crypto is the bar, Linux looks even worse. At least crypto was novel in the past 30 years. Linux works on new hardware and... that's it. There's nothing new about Linux. As far as OSes go there is seL4 other interesting research. Linux is a toilet. It flushes. It has utility. That's good, but I don't need to hear about every new release of something which just isn't changing in fundamental ways.

And you don't think plumbing is important? Are you secretly a fan of cholera?

And stability is important. Things which change all the time for the sake of change are extremely tiring, e.g. the JS/TS/JSX/whatever is new over there these days. Yet stodgy old Linux provides more utility than almost all other software.

If you don't think Linux is more novel than cryptocurrency, that is a less a abdication of Linux and more a condemnation of your attention span.

Pretty bad take and calling it “a collection of drivers, some VMM, and some syscalls” is a bit reductive.

Linux kernel is built and maintained across a variety of people. To my knowledge, nobody is directly paid by Linux foundation yet these people come together to slowly improve the kernel everybody uses either directly or indirectly. It’s also a demonstration of the greatness that humans can achieve if we work together to solve a problem(s) outside of the typical “capitalistic” motivations (ie, money)

> To my knowledge, nobody is directly paid by Linux foundation

I think Linus is

> ... But c'mon, it's just a collection of drivers, some VMM, and some syscalls. But people fetishize it because it's complex and fun to get into.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_Law ?

it's more beneficial than whatever your parents were able to pull off

Peak HN comment.

A nuclear power plant is just a bunch of pipes and a pile of uranium.

We like it because it is free, it is not a technological amazing breakthrought, but as a collaborative project it's kind of successful in time, you have to agree on that :)

I wouldn't put the kernel on the same footing as a nuclear power plant. A power plant is designed, the Linux kernel is accreted, like a stalagmite. It's a testament to the power of open source that something useful can come out of that process. Amazing, in fact. But the newsworthiness of the kernel is overstated, in my view.

Observe that the description has Rust in it. That's how it ends up on the front page.

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