So I recently had a conversation with some who though Linus Torvalds (kernel) and Linus Sebastian (Linus Tech Tips) was the same person.
That was a pretty funny and confusing conversation.
The trick is to listen to the pronunciation. Linus of LTT pronounces it as Linus, while Linus of Torvalds uses either Linus or Linus, but he doesn’t mind if people call him Linus.
I thought he branched out to tech tips as a way of making extra money. Never seen the tech tips myself and with the controversy not too long ago probably never will.
As an entertainment show about tech, it’s a pretty decent show to watch, I wouldn’t use it to base my decisions on, but if you want to hear someone talk about tech stuff in a somewhat entertaining way I’d say give them ago, Linus can be a bit much sometimes but the rest of the crew are alright.
I’ve only ever heard of torvalds because of pages like this one and since I don’t watch LTT videos often, I’ve only ever heard his first name connected with the channel.
Linus only reacted this way to people who really should have known better. This isn’t a “here is my first ever patch, I read all the rules and I hope I didn’t break any” situation. The person he is chewing out is a kernel maintainer. They are someone who is experienced and trusted and Linus was rightly angry that this poor quality work was submitted.
However… Linus has also worked a lot on himself in the past few years, fully acknowledging that he shouldn’t behave this harshly when someone fucks up. If the same situation was to present itself today, he would be much more professional, but would probably still be a bit angry and you’d know about it.
Linus is a flawed human being, but credit where it is due, he has worked on some of his character flaws.
I’d give as good as I got and we’d be fine. Not everyone is a spineless crybaby who melts down at the first hint of disapproval. Are you all little children?
Edit: Stupid question, apparently. Good thing it was rhetorical.
That’s why you should never put people on a pedestal. There are a lot of people I admire, but I always try to imagine them being stupid assholes most of the time to balance things out in my head.
If someone whom I respected shat a bit in email about my work product, I’d be sad for a bit. Then I’d read it again and understand it’s my work product and I am not my work. I can make mistakes and I can fix them, and fixing mistakes is how we get awesome.
I have received negative feedback. And I did feel just a little butthurt about it. But it was in NJ and I was new, and didn’t see from the first read that Buddy was expressing frank and honest concerns about my work product and not me. I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to clue in, but I did. And we worked through my mistakes and I was the better for it. And I learned.
And when he said my work didn’t suck as much, I knew I was improving, because I could trust him.
I get what you mean, but there are ways to say you fucked up, without calling you expletives. Some days, you get angry and scream at someone, but it doesn’t really make it feel amazing for the party being screamed at.
I didn’t mean it was mean from him to give him feedback or correct him, but the way he said it was a bit overblown.
As already stated it’s less about the facts being communicated and more about the way they’re being communicated.
I would posit that the mismatch in the style of communication lead to you needing more time to clue in. And in that way, the initial feedback might have been an inefficient way to relay the point.
However it’s also entirely possible that trying to package it in a better way, the point of the feedback-giver would have gotten lost, leading you not to clue in at all.
Communication is hard, especially tailoring it to the expected audience. That being said I don’t think being an asshole is ever ok, unless it directly saves lives or something. 😅
Linus doesn’t love that, he literally got therapy to not be like that. Maybe there’s a lesson there for you.
In fact, in a more recent talk he mentioned being horrified at the sort of people who liked how he spoke and the way they assumed he shared their political opinions as a significant motivator.
I just love people that don’t beat around the bush and are straight to the point. We have enough snowflakes and bullshitters in this world IMO. Everyone’s so sensitive all the time, like… grow up and own your mistakes. And a wake up call guy like Linus is exactly what people need.
But, having one definitely raises alarams about the seriousness of the issue… and this was a serious issue, not breaking user space is why we’re still using Linux. If it broke something on every update, I’m sure we would have opted for something else a long time ago… so would every server on this earth, as well as Google for Android.
If you think it is acceptable to lash out at someone you’re mean and if you can’t find ways to communicate clearly without lashing out you’re a bad communicator.
Linux/open source has a massive problem with finding maintainers and contributors for critical projects and a significant contributor is just how awful the communication culture of programmers is.
Nope, actually I’m fairly calm. I only lash out when others do it at me first, but I own up (not lash out) if I was to blame. And the guy did own up, and that’s great IMO, he admitted he was wrong. Bravo 👏.
Kernel devs are like mini-gods, so I can understand them being with their nose up in the clouds a bit… and they completely deserve that, they’re the driving force behind what we use every day, for free I might add. But, since Linus started the whole thing, it’s his show, he’s running it. If he doesn’t like what’s being done, and especially if it’s bullshit code, yes, I completely understand him lashing out… I might not do it that way, but I feel that there is nothing wrong with that either.
Linus wrote git to be used via email as part of its core design, so that was just the way he rolled back then. GitHub and Gitlab and all the cloud platforms and tooling came afterwards and it took time to reach a critical mass, and even then, some folks stick to what they’re used to.
Looking at Linus’ GitHub profile, looks like not much has changed — 100% commits, 0% everything else.
I like that Linus is so strict on not breaking user space because this obviously aids with compatibility and it’s probably a big part of why rolling releases work.
But I sure hope Linus’ eventual successor won’t be toxic and…cringe. It’s hard to take someone serious when he’s raging this much.
I like that Linus is so strict on not breaking user space because this obviously aids with compatibility and it’s probably a big part of why rolling releases work.
I think kernel still has compatibility with paleolithic glibc enabled by default
linuxmemes
Active
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.