Linus on Linux
Java is dead, NT is next, and more. Linus speaks
Summary
SunWorld Senior Editor Robert McMillan caught up with Linux creator Linus
Torvalds recently to get his take on Sun, Linux, NT, and Java. And though we
asked him, no, Linus would not say anything about his new job at the
ultra-secretive Transmeta. (2,000 words)
By Robert McMillan
SunWorld: What's the relationship between the Linux community and Microsoft?
Linus Torvalds: I guess it counts as fairly hostile, mainly because a lot of
the Linux users are fairly fed up with Microsoft. I mean, they wouldn't be
Linux users otherwise.
The users of Solaris tend to be Unix users. Most Linux users are ex-DOS or
Windows users. And there are a lot of people there who really dislike
Microsoft. But at the same time, most of the developers are certainly not
anti-Microsoft. For example, me, I don't care. I think it's tasteless that
they have such a strong market, but at the same time I've actually never
been a Microsoft user myself.
SW: Microsoft has said that they have no plans to port their applications --
Internet Explorer for example -- to Linux because there is no customer
demand. Is that true?
LT: That's not the reason, I'm fairly certain. They're doing HP-Unix
versions. I mean, dream on. It's not because they think that HP-Unix people
would like Internet Explorer. That's not the issue.
The real reason is just that when you do a port to HP-Unix, you aren't
porting to something that is in any way a rival. HP-Unix has absolutely
nothing to do with Windows NT. It's politically the right thing to do.
They very much know about Linux; and they very much don't want to port to
it. And the reason they don't want to port to it is they know that on PCs,
NT and Linux have about the same user base.
SW: How big a threat is Linux to Windows NT?
LT: I honestly don't know. But with NT you are already seeing signs of bad
design -- like, NT 5.0 has been slipping for a while. From all I've heard,
they have this behemoth that is so big, they couldn't get it to build
reliably when people made changes. They definitely have problems maintaining
a sane source base.
SW: Linux has a large source base, too. How is it any better off than
Windows NT?
LT: A useful Linux distribution could be half the size of NT, but if you get
a CD, it's probably 100 million [lines of code]. But the packages are
independently developed, so they aren't a maintenance nightmare to each
other. I don't care that GCC [GNU C Compiler] is a few hundred thousand
lines of code, because it doesn't impact me. Microsoft has this one tree
that they have to maintain. It shouldn't be a problem for them, but it
obviously is.
The kernel
SW: It seems that a great deal of your work is devoted to keeping the Linux
kernel clean.
LT: For very selfish reasons, I don't want to clutter up the kernel because
it makes it so hard to maintain. And nobody's ever been in that position,
when it comes to NT. So what I think will happen is that in five years,
Microsoft will come out with the `new-new' technology -- something
completely new, because Windows NT will be where Windows 95 is right now,
which is too complex and too fragile. Because nobody knows all of it, and
it's really hard to maintain. I don't think NT gives you many benefits right
now. The only benefit you get is that it runs most Windows programs. And
assuming Wine [a Windows emulation package] starts working reliably, that
benefit is gone.
SW: A few years ago, Sun had visions of taking on Microsoft on the desktop.
Is there anything to be learned by their failure?
LT: One thing is that if you go after Microsoft, you don't do that by
selling an expensive system. You need to give an NT person a reason to run
your operating system. And Solaris was never that. Solaris was never
something that a Windows person ever had any reason to switch to. It was way
too expensive; it didn't give a Windows user much at all. It was completely
unsupported, in reality, on PC hardware. Solaris x86 was there, but let's
face it, it wasn't Solaris.
Merced
SW: How will Linux get ported to Intel's next-generation microprocessor
architecture, Merced?
LT: There are already people...for example at CERN, the European high-energy
physics laboratory -- they are already using Linux to a large degree. All
the CERN math libraries have been ported to Linux. And I know, for example,
that they've already been talking to Intel, saying, "whatever happens, we
want to run Linux on Merced too."
The big thing, actually, is to port the GCC compiler to Merced. I suspect
there probably is already some project somewhere. They're doing it under a
non-disclosure agreement (NDA) at this point. When Merced is actually
released, I suspect that within quite a short time frame you will find GCC
for Merced.
Probably what will happen is that, yes, we won't have Linux for Merced when
Merced comes out, but I bet Linux will be running on Merced faster than most
others [operating systems] within half a year.
SW: Will Merced bring any major changes to Linux?
LT: Linux is already 64-bit. It's actually the easiest 64-bit type, little
endian, which is exactly what we have for Alpha right now. The EPIC-ness
[Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing] of Merced -- VLIW [Very-Long
Instruction Word] as everybody else calls it -- is a problem for the
compiler. It's a problem for the tool chain, but it's completely irrelevant
to the kernel itself. It doesn't create any problems in that sense.
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