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发信人: Gamble_Tan@bbs.ustc.edu.cn (岫云), 信区: Linux
标 题: [news]Linus on Linux(Java is dead, NT is next, and more. Linus speaks)
发信站: 中国科大BBS站 (Wed Aug 26 03:26:16 1998)
转信站: ShenZhen-University!clinux.ml.org!linux.ustc.edu.cn!ustcnews!ustcbbs
Linus on Linux
Java is dead, NT is next, and more. Linus speaks
By Robert McMillan
SunWorld
August 1998
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_________________________________________________________________
Abstract
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)
_________________________________________________________________
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article to
a friend
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?
Spotlight on Linux
How to put Linux on your SPARC
Interview with Linux creator, Linus Torvalds
Linux vs. NT. vs. Solaris
Red Hat fixes Linux/SPARC bug
Why Intel and Sun love Linux
Reader Survey: How do you like your Open Source?
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.
In 5 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.
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.
[INLINE]
Linus Torvalds addresses the Linux faithful in Santa Clara, CA, July
1998. Also on hand, Robert Hart, Red Hat Software (right); Larry
Augustin, VA Research; Sunil Saxena, Intel Corp.; Jeremy Allison,
Samba
SW: Tell us about the SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) work you've been
doing on Linux.
LT: That's what I've been working on for the last year or so. It's in
a much nicer state right now. We still have things we know aren't at
all optimal, but all the infrastructure is there.
The only sane way to go from UP to SMP is to essentially force the
kernel to run on only one CPU at a time. It can switch between CPUs,
but it only runs on one at one specific time. Which means that you
don't have to rewrite any of the kernel. You just have to rewrite the
low-level entry points to the kernel and make sure that they lock each
other out. It's really simple.
SW: When will companies like Dell start selling Linux machines?
LT: The only thing that will make one of the big companies pre-install
[Linux] is just market. There's also pressure from certain obvious
quarters not to do it. Even though it's probably not on paper, I
suspect it's probably true that Microsoft doesn't like having other
systems pre-installed. You probably need to have a very noticeable
market to decide this. I think the point of no return is 10 to 15
percent of the market. We aren't there yet. We're closer to five.
Small vendors already install Linux. At the point that one of the
larger ones notices that it's losing sales to smaller ones, that's
probably when it will start happening.
Java is dead
SW: What are your thoughts on Java?
LT: I think everybody hates Java as a desktop thing. I see Java
mentioned a lot lately, but all of the mentions within the last year
have been of Java as a server language, not as a desktop language. If
you go back a year and a half, everybody was talking about Java on the
desktop. They aren't anymore. It's dead. And once you're dead on the
desktop, my personal opinion is you're dead. If servers are everything
you have, just forget it. Why do you think Sun, HP -- everybody -- is
nervous about Microsoft? It's not because they make great servers.
It's because they control the desktop. Once you control the desktop,
you control the servers.
It's no longer something that will revolutionize the industry. It
could have revolutionized the industry if it was on the desktop, but I
don't see that happening anymore. I hope I'm wrong. Really. I just
don't think I am.
SW: How did Sun blow it?
LT: Too much noise, too much talk, too much discussion, not enough
"show me."
SW: So Sun's credibility is shot?
LT: It's the credibility. It's also the fact that their
implementations were bad. So you have people like HP who just decided
that, "Hey, I can do a better implementation. I don't need Sun
anymore." Or you have people like Microsoft who decide, "Okay, let's
do our own extensions." And because the Sun implementation isn't good
enough to carry Java on its own, the Microsoft extensions actually
make sense to people. And it's just not compelling enough for anybody
to switch.
Sun has done this right in the past. Sun did it right with NFS. NFS
became the standard because NFS was the only game in town at the time.
It was freely available; things like that. NFS is a really crappy
standard, but, I mean, it's there. And Java could have been a
standard. But in order to get a standard that actually stands up to
something, you have to get it onto enough machines that nobody can
come in with a competing standard -- which means that you really have
to execute on it.
Sun did it right with
NFS. NFS became the
standard because NFS
was the only game in
town at the time.
I could be wrong. There are people writing Java, but there are a lot
of people who gave up on Java. I think Corel is the biggest example.
Essentially I see the Java engine just slipping, not going anywhere.
And I really hate that happening because Java could have been a big
boost to Linux.
SW: Didn't the Linux community have a difficult relationship with
JavaSoft?
LT: This is part of why I think Java has died. Instead of just
leveraging off the Linux base that really wanted to have Java working,
they just made it hard for the Linux base to get Java working.
I know that there were people who had sources available and were able
to do JVM [Java virtual machine] binaries. They all came out for
Linux, but they came out two months late. And nobody got to play with
the sources. Nobody got to fix the problems. So right now there are
still people working on Java for Linux, but most of them seem to have
given up on the Sun implementations. They're using Kaffe and writing
their own libraries.
The group in charge of Java at Sun had some licensing problems for the
Linux version [of the Java Development Kit] and for two or three
months it looked like the JDK from Sun wouldn't even be available. And
that made a lot of Linux people really unhappy and pissed off at Sun.
Those licensing fee issues were finally clarified, but the damage had
been done.
This answer is not here yet
SW: What are you working on at Transmeta Corp.?
LT: What they're actually doing is a secret. It's a hardware company,
but they do have a software side. I can't answer any questions about
Transmeta.
SW: It's a long way from Finland, though.
LT: I knew that the only way to actually force myself to actually
write the thesis was to have a pressing reason to do so. I liked being
at the university, but I wanted to do something else. I was kind of
thinking that, `Hey, I want to see the commercial side, and maybe I'll
go back to the university because I have enjoyed it.' But I at least
want to see the other side of the fence. And now that I've seen the
other side of the fence, I'm fairly certain I don't want to go back to
the university.
I really like working at a commercial company. You don't have to write
papers. You actually get to code, which I really enjoy. And you have a
very clear goal. You don't have to make up some goal to make grants.
--
※ 来源: 中国科大BBS站 [bbs.ustc.edu.cn]
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