Linus Torvalds: Mac OS X and Windows can't hold a candle to Linux
Linus Torvalds woke up on Mars today (or maybe it was Oz), and had this to say about Windows Vista and Apple's OS X:
I don't think they're equally flawed. I think Leopard is a much better system. On the other hand, (I've found) OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary. I think OS X is nicer than Windows in many ways, but neither can hold a candle to my own (Linux). It's a race to second place.
I guess when you're famous you can say inane things and get away with it. Yes, Linux does some things better than Mac OS X and Microsoft's Windows Vista on the desktop (security, maybe), but let's be honest: the Linux desktop is "utter crap" compared to either OS X or Windows when it comes to the thing that matters most: usability.
If normal people can't use it, it just doesn't matter how beautifully architected it is. Sorry, Linus. Everyone has to be wrong sometimes. This is your turn to shine.
That said, I found his comments on whether Google is a good open-source citizen much more illuminating:
It used to be ... this black hole, (people) went inside and you never heard anything at all from them again. That's partly just because (they) found very interesting work that they put a lot of effort into....But as far as the (Linux) kernel is concerned they seem to be consciously trying not to be this black hole....Google used to have their own version of the kernel and they didn't push it out because it was very specialized to what they did, pushing it out didn't even make sense. They did hacks and ugly things that they would not be proud of pushing out. But they have been very active now as far as the kernel is concerned.
That's a good sign, and it's an indication that the Googleheads are waking up to the realization that they're not in the operating system business. They're in the search business, and the clever tweaks they do to Linux really aren't going to put them out of business if others know about them.
Really.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Interesting point. When I read your Torvalds quote, and what he says above it in the linked article, I get the feeling he's looking at your OS X desktop and saying, "fine, look at Tivo, look at millions of mobile phones, look at the Eee PC." Because *that* is usability. In sheer numbers of things being used without problems on a day to day basis, Linux easily beats OS X and has probably surpassed Windows.
In other words, he probably doesn't care about your day-to-day desktop use - that's not his job. His job is to provide an operating system that is intentionally separated from the desktop environment and desktop applications.
So Linus is enabling people to innovate. He's enabling the next OS X killer. In fact, he probably did more to enable OS X than any one of us joe-users, through indirect actions.
Firstly the quote of "utter crap" was in relationship to the filesystem, not the entire OS.
Secondly, his reference to Linux being a better OS was based on his previous answer where he considers the visual shell not to be a part of the OS at all. No matter how true it is that Linux's usability doesn't compare to OS X, it doesn't really invalidate his statement.
Or maybe I'm just bitter because you likened visiting Australia to waking up on Mars :)
:-)
Read your own quote, m***n, Linus says that the filesystem is "utter crap" not the whole OSX, which he actually seems to like, which is also evident in your own quote.
While Linux desktop may not be nearly as polished (yet) as OSX, some professional Distros like Novell SLED is pretty damn good, right on par with what Microsoft has to offer.
Shouldn't feed the trolls, but I guess this time you got me.
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As far as usablilty, if you can't find your way around KDE, you might as well give up on using computers at all. A Windows user can certainly feel right at home with it. I find certain things about the Mac's usability very flawed. For instance, with these days of monitors commonly exceeding 22" (widescreen), having the menus completely at the top of your desktop is a long way to go to select something.
Again, Torvalds didn't comment about KDE vs. Quartz vs. Aero. He talked system-level and about Apple and Microsofts method of forcing upgrades on its users through OS upgrades, and he's correct. Now, stop the fanboyism and think with an objective viewpoint.
Also, I suspect once KDE 4 settles down, it will provide "out-of-the-box" performance and usability that will best its rivals.
You can talk about how great the Linux filesystem is all day, but when the GUIs are absolute crap and simple tasks like installing software require a visit to the terminal or a cryptic package manager, the best designed filesystem in the world won't matter. That is why I have installed three different flavors of Linux and after a month with each, have uninstalled them. I want an operating system that doesn't rely on typed commands and "tweaking" and I would suspect that the average consumer feels the same way.
The most tweaking and configuration of my Mac I've had to do is set the Appearance to Graphite and decrease the icon size on the desktop. And guess what. I don't have to visit the terminal every time I want to install something (just drag to Applications), my files stay in tact, my machine automatically backs itself up via TimeMachine, and I can be productive with commercial software made for my OS (CS3, FCP). To me, this is all worth the small price for an OS, because you get what you pay for.
Let me know when Linux becomes appealing to the mass market... I might take a second look then.
So /home is buried deep? How do you figure?
The file system comment showed you know nothing about computers, this comment shows that if you have used Linux, it wasn't in this decade.
aside from the fact that a GUI has nothing to do with the filesystem... you DO realize that your mac has an almost identical filesystem layout being that they are both derivatives of unix? you should read the documentation on the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy (http://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/index.html). Once you understand the reasons why things are done the way they are, I'm sure you'll see that the way it is organized is well thought out and sensible. That being said, I doubt you'll read it. You'll blow me off as being a linux fanboy, and continue your blissfully ignorant existence.
How does the windows hierarchy go again? "My Documents -> Desktop -> C: -> Documents and Settings -> Name -> My Documents -> Desktop"?? That's so much simpler.. stupid linux people.
I'd just like to point out that you can EASILY use OS X with a Unix file system.. So that way, yo have the best OS, and you ALSO have a great file system.
It's true that OS X is the best OS, period, and it seems that everyone is realizing this.
Well that is funny. My Linux experience:
I remember my first encounter with Linux (Red Hat 4) when I was a 'normal user', and thinking that it was much more 'usable' than Windows, and certainly OSX. At the time I didn't know that it was running Gnome Desktop, or that 'Linux' is a kernel, or that it was free/open source. I didn't care. 'Red Hat' was much more appealing than anything I had ever used.
I decided to give Linux a try on my own laptop with Ubuntu, because a few of my friends hyped it up to be the most user-friendly 'distribution.' I installed from a live CD, and nearly everything worked 'out of the box'. I did have some driver issues with my wireless card, but with one single search I found a solution. In fact, this solution is the #1 Google search result for "dell Broadcom 1390 WLAN wireless." Gotta love the community.
With a little love from the hardware manufacturers to get Linux drivers out and about, the Linux desktop will become even more usable that it already is.
I think under the hood, maybe Linux is better... but OSX is FreeBSD with a Mach 3.0 kernal... More pure Unix than Linux cobbled together system. As far as development, I know a few who say its pretty easy to develop for... Just depends what you are trying to do.
Each has good attributes. I'll even give Windows XP credit for having a faster file system when looking at a directory with 20,000 files in it. OS X takes longer... all that fancy GUI, getting in the way.
For the average user, it is about useability. OSX or Windows wins.
Eventually the web will be the OS, so it won't matter.
Peace out y'all
Mark in Napa
anything to back up such a statement?
BSD is a Unix clone, Linux is a Unix derivative. As OSX is essentially BSD, OSX is more of a "pure unix" than linux is.
Of course, I don't know why that would matter...
- by Dalkorian February 6, 2008 10:16 AM PST
- DeathsOverture made this comment:
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (33 Comments)"I decided to give Linux a try on my own laptop with Ubuntu, because a few of my friends hyped it up to be the most user-friendly 'distribution.' I installed from a live CD, and nearly everything worked 'out of the box'."
This mirrors my experience with Ubuntu on my desktop box. It just works. No hassles, no draconian licensing schemes and it doesn't do things behind my back. It gets out of my way and lets me do what I want with my computer. Winblows just can't say that.
I still have XP on another partition on that machine, mostly for playing games. But I find that other than playing games, I *NEVER* boot winblows anymore. The best part is many of the games I have do have Linux ports, so I can start moving my games over to the operating system that works for me and leave the operating system that makes me work for it alone.
I don't know what people like Matt want from an OS, but Ubuntu boots faster, runs programs faster and even shuts down faster than winblows. I fire up the terminal when I want to (I'm familiar with Unix commands), but most of the time I simply don't have to, it's perfectly usable without the terminal. My computer *feels* like a 2.8GHz machine for the first time ever. It's a bonus that I don't have to worry about the plethora of programs to fix the security nightmares that have always and will always plague the trashiest OS ever designed.
Oh, did I mention it's free? And it comes with OpenOffice, which is another hundreds-of-dollar investment in the M$ world which ironically makes you even more vulnerable to the myriad of attacks in the wild.
The real question isn't whether or not you can make Linux work for you. The real question is why would you keep paying money to put up with M$'s garbageware OS and draconian licensing schemes?