Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : LINUX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JC Jaros who wrote (1224)	3/3/1999 5:47:00 PM
From: Rusty Johnson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2617

Embrace The Mainstream, Says Linux Creator Filed at 3:12 p.m. EST By Malcolm Maclachlan for TechWeb, CMPnet SAN JOSE, Calif. -- At his keynote at LinuxWorld Expo here Tuesday night, Linux creator Linus Torvalds faced a crowd so friendly it would have made the pope jealous. But Torvalds took the opportunity to challenge some of the prevailing notions about his operating system. Linux developers should embrace the mainstream, Torvalds said, and should not get upset that some companies are now making money from the open-source OS. For instance, he said, some people have referred to companies that sell Linux on CDs as freeloaders because they are profiting from something hundreds of people put free work into. "Yes, they're making money, but they are also doing Linux a big favor," Torvalds said. "The vendors did a lot of work early on that most developers did not want to do, making Linux easier to install and making it more approachable to normal people." When he gets a new machine now, Torvalds said, even he installs Linux off a commercial disc to save time. He also asked Linux devotees to be less obsessed with the constant upgrading that goes on with Linux. Because the Net makes it easy, upgrade packs to Linux go out at least every few months. Yet the Linux Kernel stayed stable for two-and-a-half years before going into its 2.2 upgrade one month ago. Torvalds added he expects the current kernel to stay stable for the next two to three years, which is about normal for most commercial OS makers. Unless a user needs to fix a specific problem, they will have little reason bother with the incremental upgrades in between. The Linux creator showed a chart he made three years ago, projecting Linux to grow by a factor of 10 each year. The chart was originally a joke, he said, but has actually held true -- as Linux has topped 11 million users this year. For Linux to continue its ascent, however, developers need to concentrate on a couple areas that have been neglected, he said. First, while many developers have focused on the problems of scaling Linux up to supercomputers, fewer have taken on the less sexy task of scaling it down to embedded devices. Embedded devices will be an important market, he said, and Linux is flexible enough to play in this arena. The second point, he said, is Linux users should now concentrate on applications rather than the kernel. Applications will be key to bringing Linux to more people -- and to taking on Microsoft. "When you come to LinuxWorld in two years, and it's 50,000 people, and nobody cares about this Comdex thing anymore, people will be here to see the applications," he said.