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As soon as he's not in charge quality is going to go right to shit though.
He has taken several months-long breaks and things have been fine. There are other trustworthy devs (like Greg Kroah-Hartman) who he leaves in charge who do just fine at holding the line in his absence. They might not publicly shame bad pull requests as elegantly as Torvolds, but the kernel will probably be fine.
Ah yes, Linus Torvalds, the man who convinced generations of nerds that it's okay to treat others like shit as long as you're "right".
He's like the walking epitome of "you're not wrong, you're just an asshole."
Edit: and the neckbeards who spring to his defense always screech about how everybody else needs to stop being so thin-skinned.
No, assholes need to stop treating people like shit. Don't put this on the rest of us
It's possible to acknowledge Torvalds as both a technical leader and overall smart guy, as well as acknowledging his poor treatment of people and generally being an asshole. A person can be both of those things.
Sure, I never said otherwise, but the problem is usually that people are so blinded by his being a tech leader that they excuse his behavior. Seriously, imagine this was literally anybody else, they'd get booted from their position faster than you can say "motherfucker"
Yeah, that's what I mean. It's possible to acknowledge his genius as well as call out his shitty behavior. We can and should do both.
He's just guarding the fort. I'd rather he not be a pushover.
You can guard the fort effectively without being an asshole. I admire Torvalds for his work, but his behavior is still awful.
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I didn't see that in the business world. Assholes who were right did fine. Assholes who were wrong got booted. Nice guys that were wrong got promoted to management.
Definitely not to excuse it, but I think this is a not uncommon pattern in tech leaders. I recall hearing stories of profanity-laden rants to employees about their bad code by both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs during their leadership of Microsoft and Apple. It's inexcusable behavior no matter when or where it occurs, but I don't think Linus Torvalds is a unique case for getting a pass.
Indeed but you see constant comments condoning or even praising his shitty behaviour, like creating a popular kernel somehow gives him the right to be an arsehole.
I would like to see more "I'm glad he made Linux but I wish he wouldn't be so constantly abusive" and less "haha he got em again! What a good rant! You're the best Linus!".
I think "creating a popular kernel" is significantly downplaying his creation. Almost all of the web runs on the Linux kernel and I don't mean just web servers but also DNS servers and routers. Every android phone uses Linux. Most embedded devices run Linux. Anything "smart" is likely to run on Linux. If your car has anything resembling an operating system it's probably running Linux.
He didn't create a popular kernel, he created a kernel that runs the world you live in.
He's definitely done a huge amount of work and been very successful... But if he hadn't there's a strong chance someone else would have. So it's not like without Torvalds the web would all be running on Windows. We'd probably be using FreeBSD or something.
Or maybe Plan 9! Who knows, we might have ended up in a better state. Or worse. I doubt we wouldn't have anything though. There are too many nerds who like writing OSes for fun.
This is a terrible take. If Linus didn't exist, open source would be light years behind its current scope.
There are many sectors that have been completely captured by the "bad guys". Luckily, operating systems aren't one of them.
I guess I hadn't seen so many people jumping to his defense on these things. Until reading the comments in this thread. Damn, son.
That being said, I've never read too far into the drama around Linus's behavior, and I don't care to. I understand he's overly abrasive, and he has taken steps to remedy it, but I can also understand where you'd end up lacking empathy after years and years of handling PRs (and some have mentioned that he typically only goes off on people who are otherwise themselves being obnoxious--still not a good reason, but I can empathize).
I guess I hope we can treat Linus like a human, neither deifying nor demonizing him. Praise him for his accomplishments, and call him out when he's unreasonably being a dick. It's not good for anyone to normalize shitty behavior, least of all for Linus.
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We need to treat people with respect
E: Downvotes? You fucking asshole neckbeards!
haha
heh to be fair he wasn't wrong either... There are just nicer ways to go about it.
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I'm a long time Linux user, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. Linus is a dick. He insults people all the time, and people have normalized it. He's a fucking genius, but not a nice person. What's wrong with just saying "hey, your code has so and so issues. Please fix and resubmit"???
It is important to be able to call people out on their incompetence. Now more than ever. Bad people often hide behind incompetence in order to avoid blame for their actions, and it works.
Calling out incompetence and being a fucking dick are not the same thing, and the fact that people (you included) think that you can't point out mistakes without being a cunt is the entire problem here
Yeah but you just called everyone in the comments who defends him a "neckbeard"
Yes, good job, me shooting my mouth off at Linus stans is exactly the same as Linus publicly humiliating people in what is essentially a professional setting, and therefore me calling people neckbeards invalidates everything I said.
I swear it's like nothing has changed about Linux users in 30 years.
Kinda invalidates your point, yeah.
How can I take you seriously if you're over here doing the same thing as him?
You can always say "hey, your code has so and so issues, therefore, I won't approve this PR. Please fix and resubmit. Also, please make sure you don't submit your code late. Thanks", instead of insulting the person.
I reckon it would be beneficial to everyone involved if someone else just handled public relations for Linus. Just add a filter.
That goes directly against the open, transparent development model of the Linux Kernel.
When you're developing in the open, everything becomes "public relations".
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Bro was late and did poor work and that's all Linus said. He didn't insult the guy, he just wasn't polite. Linus is plenty nice to people not actively making his job harder while he's on vacation. It's understandable to be short with someone under those circumstances.
This was my take.
Developer was late. That itself is a trigger.
If you rush me trying to sneak code in, gloves are off.
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Not defending him, but him as an entire person is why we have Linux
If he was different we probably wouldn't have it
question: do you believe it's as bad now as it has been historically? because the guy went to anger management therapy for like a year after getting called out last time, and i got the impression that things improved after that.
Autistic people struggle with certain social expectations. I'm not excusing his behavior, just giving context.
What Linus says to people is nothing, considering the importance of the Linux kernel in every-ray life. People need to get thicker skin
I dunno, the lesson I learned from him is it's ok to get help. He went and got some, and made working with him better for everyone.
Honestly that's pretty tame given his history
Which is a fairly shocking thing to say really. I thought promised to be less of a dick a while ago. Guess he couldn't keep it up.
Spicy Linus > mild Linus.
This is 2*
It is much less dickish that what he used to say, so he's keeping his promise.
Holy shit. Torvalds is only 55 and that's what he looks like now?
Holy fuck.
Now, I would hope there's no garbage inside the RISC-V parts, but that's your choice. But things in generic headers do not get polluted by crazy stuff.
So can anyone explain this? What are header files in this context and why are unnecessary functions especially problematic for them? Why would it not be up to Linus or not his concern what is included in the "RISC-V parts"? I guess this is all code for a Linux kernel that is built on top of RISC-V which I think is an assembly language, and not a modification to RISC-V itself?
I get the logic about make_u32_from_two_u16() being bad at least.
A header file in the C family of programming languages contains the declarations for each function that gets defined in the accompanying code file. Ideally, the header file should only contain import statements, some basic definitions, and function declarations. It should not contain any actual executable code.
A header file basically exists to tell the compiler "hey, these functions exist in this file, don't freak out if it gets called before you see its definition." Without the header file, you'd need to write the declarations at the beginning of the code file (in the header, hence the name).
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Palmer Dabbelt took it like a champ though:
OK, sorry. I've been dropping the ball lately and it kind of piled up as taking a bunch of stuff late, but that just leads to me making mistakes. So I'll stop being late, and hopefully that helps with the quality issues.
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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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