ZDNet reports that from supercomputers to stock markets to smartphones, Linux dominates most computing markets, but Linus Torvalds still wants Linux to rule on one place it doesn't: The desktop. "The challenge on the desktop is not a kernel problem. It's a whole infrastructure problem. I think we'll get there one day," said Torvalds at the LinuxCon Convention in Chicago. "Year of the Linux desktop?" asked Kroah-Hartman. "I'm not going there," replied Torvalds with a smile.
Torvalds also discussed the issue of kernel code bloat as Linux is now being run in small-form-factor embedded devices. "We've been bloating the kernel over the last 20 years, but hardware has grown faster," Torvalds said. Torvalds wants to push the envelope for the embedded market despite some challenges. He noted that some of the small-form-factor device vendors have their own operating system technologies in place already, and those vendors don't always make hardware readily available to Linux kernel developers.
The issue of Linux code maintainers was another hot-button topic addressed by Torvalds, who noted that some Linux kernel code has only a single maintainer and that can mean trouble when that maintainer wants to take time off. Torvalds said that a good setup that is now used by the x86 maintainers is to have multiple people maintaining the code. It's an approach that ARM Linux developers have recently embraced, as well. "When I used to do ARM merges, I wanted to shoot myself and take a few ARM developers with me," Torvalds said. "It's now much less painful and ARM developers are picking up the multiple maintainer approach."
(Score: 0, Troll) by AnonTechie on Friday August 22 2014, @07:34AM
One fine day this will happen. Desktop Linux will rule ! As with flying cars, fusion power, artificial intelligence, humanoid robots, humans on Mars, no BSOD, batteries with infinite charge ... all of this within the next 20 years. All you have to do is live for 20 more years.
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 22 2014, @07:53AM
There are humanoid robots now. We have no BSOD today, if you try to use one of the viable Desktop Linuxes like Ubuntu or Mint. You could even go with MacOS X (shudder). I sometimes use Windows and haven't seen one since Windows 7. If you want any of these things though, it's not enough to just live for 20 more years. Put your money where your fucking mouth is and do your part to make them happen!
(Score: 1) by aristarchus on Friday August 22 2014, @08:03AM
No BSOD today? Maybe you missed the latest news. And as for flying cars, no way. Most humans cannot deal with the four cardinal directions when piloting a vehicle. Add elevation, and we are going to have fender-benders that crater. Especially if the flying cars are running Microsoft! See
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Friday August 22 2014, @08:06AM
See . . . . wait for it! (what happened to my link?) We try again: Windows for Warships [schneier.com] (I use preview this time, like good Soylentil!)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Friday August 22 2014, @08:13AM
Well, I guess that depends on what you consider a "humanoid robot." With a loose enough definition of the term, there have been humanoid robots as early as 1770 [wikipedia.org] (it certainly looks more humanoid than whatever you were thinking of).
What we currently have is robots that very remotely look like humans, but calling them humanoid is a stretch at minimum. Please show me the robot which looks like a human (not just approximately human-shaped, if you don't look too closely), can walk on his legs like a human, and with which you can interact mostly like with a human. Don't know one? Didn't think so.
You think so? [soylentnews.org]
And where is your indication that he doesn't do that?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 22 2014, @08:34AM
As the GP seems to complacently say: "All you have to do is live for 20 more years."
(Score: 1) by ksarka on Friday August 22 2014, @08:43AM
You missed an important part of it:
[emphasis mine]
Although if we stay on the Windows are for BSOD's topic - even with the Win 7 I had a lot of trouble with BSOD's when something was happening between the OS, nvidia drivers and flash plugin on firefox - this was really frustrating and provided the usual windows information on the error, a.k.a. nothing to get a grasp on, the only solution I have found to work was to stop using firefox. Or flash - that helped aswell. Never happened with FF Forks though. And never happened on the desktop Linux setup.
In my experience having Linux for desktop is even better that doing so on laptop - no need for some stupid proprietary wifi drivers that tend to break at least once a year when an update of the system is required.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday August 22 2014, @05:06PM
Well, unless they've changed something in 7, Windows systems will never show a BSOD by default anymore, so that's probably why people think those are gone. Unless you change the settings, it'll just directly reboot now.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Sunday August 24 2014, @07:36PM
In my experience having Linux for desktop is even better that doing so on laptop - no need for some stupid proprietary wifi drivers that tend to break at least once a year when an update of the system is required.
In my experience, having Linux on hardware that officially supports Linux is the single best way to make running Linux a smooth experience. But then, comparing the way Linux runs on unsupported hardware to the way Windows does shows us a very different picture than comparing it to Windows running Windows-friendly hardware. Since Vista came out, I've noticed a decent amount of hardware incompatibilities on systems people had built with a prior version of Windows (especially one built for and shipped with Vista...) that they've installed a newer version of Windows onto, only to find that their hardware isn't supported. Around that time, it becomes pretty clear that hardware incompatibility on Linux is usually just about infinitely easier than it is on Windows, because usually, you can at least find some way to make things work, even if they are hackish. Windows tends not to have that luxury...just the luxury of having most hardware designed with it in mind. Pick your hardware when you buy your system based on it being Linux compatible, and you'll both be voting with your dollars in favor of more open hardware solutions and giving yourself a lot less work when it comes to configuring your system. In 2014, there's really not much reason not to take advantage of the fact that we finally really have this choice.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday August 22 2014, @05:03PM
Linux will certainly rule the desktop...but the desktop won't rule computing.
The desktop is rapidly becoming a device mostly used by developers and power users. The kind of people most likely to want Linux and run like hell from crap like Windows 8.
Or if people (and a mobile powerhouse like Samsung with powerful marketing) decide they want convergence devices. While it doesn't work well at all yet, as far as I know Linux is the only way to get that at all. And while I think the concept is a bit stupid, it's nice to see that they're not strictly playing catch-up anymore. Apply and Microsoft had a pretty big head-start.