OMG! Ubuntu! Interviews Linus Torvalds

Aside from the obvious mass of geeks, one stature at Linux conferences all over the world is the man who invented the Linux kernel over 20 years ago, Linus Torvalds. At the recent Linux.conf.au 2011 conference held in Brisbane, OMG! Ubuntu! caught up with Linus to barrage him with some questions; to get his opinion on Ubuntu, and to see what’s in store for the Linux kernel.

As you might expect, Linus is someone who likes what he likes, and doesn’t like to use an OS that’s been dumbed down. He and I share similar opinions of GNOME, and it seems we also agree on Ubuntu, although he has far more of a right. He claims that Ubuntu is good because it “made Debian usable”, but as a developer, it’s a chore to use. Understandable, as Ubuntu is not exactly targeting kernel developers.

He did give Ubuntu props for being the distribution to pretty much start “the whole Live CD install”, which is something I can agree with to some degree. Ubuntu wasn’t the first to deliver a Live CD environment, but it was the first to deliver one that people want to actually use. It’s nice to boot up to an OS contained on a CD or thumb drive and actually use it while it installs to your PC.

In talking about the future, Linus is excited about brand-new file lookup code that I believe should be implemented in the next release. The goal is to improve efficiency, and it should give a noticeable performance boost system-wide, both with the kernel itself, and in all of the applications you use. It’s something that could make mechanical hard drives feel faster, and make SSDs seem even faster.

For those interested in Linux, or Linus, I recommend checking out the full, but quick, interview.

“At the same time it’s kind of the less glamorous side of the kernel. People tend to talk up new features and how we do something really cool that nobody has ever done before. The fact is in the end the really important stuff is the meat and potatoes – doing the boring stuff, the stuff that really matters.”