Linus Torvalds On Future Of Desktop Linux

hi this is something party and we are here the open source summit and today we have it as little storage once again so so how has things been in the Linux burbs you know anything it's been pretty normal I mean our our model of doing development really hasn't changed you know for over ten years so it's it's pretty standardized and we've continued to make releases about every two to three months and obviously this year the big change has been that in the last roughly a year we've had all the hardware bugs that that we had to spend a fair amount of effort for workarounds and that's being somewhat stressful but I'm hoping not lived that we're starting to see the tail end of that but that is not the problem of the kernel community it's the hardware box so there's well it has become well so it's not because of the kernel community but the hardware bugs have been particularly problematic I think for the kernel community just because not just because the work runs have to be in the kernel but because the secrecy around that means that our normal workflow doesn't work and it's it's not just that we can't bring in everybody and talk about it on the normal kernel mailing lists it's also that we have a lot of open infrastructure for doing testing for doing validation and and things like that and we definitely have noticed that when you do development without all that infrastructure that we've gotten used to it's painful so it has been a big issue for the curls this whole situation and there has also been some software books as well well but those aren't new I mean we've always had that grace I think what's maybe change its that well they're not very recently but over the last few years people have gotten way more vocal about security issues and people maybe I wouldn't say take them more seriously but there is more process in place for them but I mean we've always had had the software bugs the hardware buyers are just there they're not new but they're different for us for our workflow I mean this is not even a question but Linux is an open source is everywhere these days but desktop is still you know but good day well actually I mean Chromebooks are getting pretty you can run Debian apps on Chromebooks now they have started a project well they story I'm not I mean crouton has been around for a while but now the official Google support for running Debian apps is starting to kind of trickle out I haven't actually used it yet I think it's it's bringing you I only use Chromebooks for calendaring it's it seems to be that yeah Chromebooks and an Android are the path towards the desktop but this yeah but does it really matter nowadays because we are doing most of working cloud and I I think it still matters I mean I so it's a lot of people still use the desktop not everybody uses a cloud right I still wish we were better at at having a standardized desktop that goes across all the distributions there's been some progress there I mean this is not a kernel issue so this is just like more of a personal annoyance how the fragmentation of the different vendors have I think held the desktop back of it but there has been some progress on that front to the flat things like it so but I'm still optimistic but it's been 25 years it's going to be another few years at least even with the the flat-pack there is a pin merge and then there is you know so there's a yeah now the desk up is not there because if there's one format then Linux will be treated as one platform not multiple platforms I don't me have to say and that may be what crown crown books end up doing is that maybe that will turn into a de facto standard for for desktop applications one Chromebooks start just running Debian packages or something we'll see I do more like Chrome OS is the desktop environment and you're running you know so yeah I mean what I do I would actually not mind having a Chromebook but right now my main problem is even when you can run native Linux on Chromebooks with crouton or or something you can't do the kernel testing right which is what I care about so so it's it's at the point where I can kind of see where I could use a Chromebook in a few years but not it yeah but it's not there yet okay let's talk about open source I have kind of become the default for software development and so but do you see any any risk that you know maybe companies will go back because these are the Redis labs where they change the license do you sometimes feel that you know we might you know go back to the idea so from a development angle I think people do realize how powerful it is to just have like open code and letting people be part of the development process right so the only situation where you end up I think going back to old-fashioned proprietary model ends up being for niche products where were you you may have actually a hard time finding that general population that wants to help you so I don't think those matter I I think if if you worry about just open source in general you should worry more about the whole when you do everything on the web and as a service you can use that service with open source and a regular Chrome browser or something like that but you're not seeing what's going on behind the curtain and and I think that's that's what a lot of people are more worried about and I'm with reason that that you can you can get into this situation where okay the software you run on your machine may be open source but but then if you must what you do ends up being in a proprietary cloud system anyway an esteemed open source everything is part of but at the same time we are also building a surveillance machine there people so do you I don't know how much you know do you really care about just the code has to be open source or you also care about you know either the business practices so me personally I only care about the code mm-hmm I mean when I say that maybe a lot of people worry about the world gardens and and cloud providers and they all the ownership of the data that you find with like the obvious Facebook's Google's apples whatever that's not what I actually care about it's not what I do I do code and I'm just saying I understand that a lot of people who care about open source because of the whole traditional freedom thing they will find it much I mean whirring - how much is happening inside the walled garden is a big companies and I actually don't think it's so much the code the code is is often open-source even in in a proprietary environment what the companies have is they have all the data and that is obviously their bread and butter and I it makes perfect sense but but it's it's maybe a real issue right but you also come from Europe no they have but they've left Europe first they have different approach to our privacy I'm not happy the world garden I'm just talking about surveillance privacy but does that concern you today again I'm personally pretty let's say fair okay I don't worry too much but my own privacy and I'm a very public person I do all of my work in public I have very little that I invited care about it and it's it's not something I I think it's inevitable there's going to be a lot of data people are going to know a lot about you people who worry about your DNA being available in various databases are correct it's going to be available in a lot of databases and even if you are careful the fact that you have family members who weren't it means that there's a lot of data about you and I think that's the fact and I I don't think it's necessarily even a problem but I think it can be problematic in certain circumstances but I think you making the privacy rules stricter is something that eventually even the US will will wake up to right so there will be that kind of protection but let's face it if s 8 is cheap it's and it's not going away anybody who thinks it's not going is going away it's just including themselves have you seen black mirror or not you don't watch TV right now okay so let's let's talk about you know you working in open and you can also because this video interview we could always check those parts off you don't you know what I'm going to talk about it well so do you ever wish they know that there was some you know private lk ml group where you can just not like when you go to board meetings or when you listen to coaches telling their you know players on the field you know they use all kind of words so because whatever you say because public and people pick it up and they don't know the context honestly now I mean we have private mailing lists for security issues we have private mailing lists sometimes for actually quite often it's not mailing lists it's just when you have some issue come up and you just email a group of people because it's maybe not sensitive but it's something that also you want to talk about I mean usually it's not code usually it's about maintainer shape issues things like that so we do have private email but almost always when when that happens I find to be problematic because then you don't end up having archives of it you end up having to bring new people in and they are missing all the context so I'm much happier just having all the discussion in the open and it doesn't always work that way and it does mean that then when when people get heated that's in the open too but I think that health that's healthier than then trying to kind of say it doesn't exist how does it affect you personally then you get all mad and angry and you know and you're still in your bathrobe I actually so what happens to me is sometimes I get really it's and is of the reason I get upset it's almost always the same if somebody's not acknowledging a bug that they introduce then trying to say hey we we don't need to I fix the problem I never mind the fact that somebody's now complaining about the fact that I also introduced a problem but I occasionally explode and then I fire off an email and then I forget about I mean I don't I don't tend to stay upset all that long I have noticed that because there are like news people that follow my email and then write a story about the the exploding ones that are fairly rare in the end I have actively stopped responding sometimes it needs to be something I really care about so I I never respond a lot to email I just get too much of it but in the last few years I've just decided yeah it's just less pain - not even respond at all sometimes so it has resulted in me going quiet sometimes but it's it's not a huge issue respond to the press queries about it no I actually usually like talking to journalists responding to flame were so lexicon on the mailing lists I'm like I want to respond and then I decide now let's just press Delete instead right it's not worth where's the pain but it's actually fairly rare I mean I explode maybe once a year couple of times a year and most unjustified mostly you know well I think so people have to see the context they don't know that's that's one of the issues is even if even if it were justified it's quite often that people don't see see the contents exactly and then obviously the normal day-to-day stuff that doesn't generate flame wars also does not generate news so I mean that's but that's that's understandable that's a that's not that's how that's how everything works it's not about open source I mean this is how politics and the yes so what do you think in the the okay we can once again check it out but what do you think well the political landscape I think you were said the may the best women then because I follow you Google+ when the elections were there what do you think about the current situation if you don't want talk about it because I've I've done know what to say about the whole u.s. politics I I have to say I'm a bit ashamed of being in the US right now I just leave it at that but this too will pass you're hopeful you're always pragmatic so I am a fairly optimistic and I think that this is a is a federation I hope okay there has been any moment when you are like totally burned out after all these flame boards they're like no I'm done I'm done the colonel I'll go into something else no I never be burned out in that sense I mean I it happens commonly that I say okay now I I mean just the last merge window was fairly painful so there was two weeks not just the regular work of a merge window which is my busiest time anyway but there were issues going on anyway and when I finally close to merge window I was like okay I'm gonna take a breather but it's not like burnout kind of breather it's more like okay it's good I have a con week coming up I have some travel I will just step back for a couple of days and then I'm fine again but you do travel a lot of you don't travel much no this was just this time I don't travel very much for conferences but but my point is even normally I can just say okay I mean I'll do something else for three days right and that's fine it's it's not the kind where I feel like this project is not worth it it's more like wow okay now I just need to have an extended weekend yeah take a break from you know all that stress and everything right oh and obviously it's not that common I mean most of the time I'm not stressed yeah I am I mean we have a very working code flow there is even when I'm busy it's seldom really stressful it's more like okay now I need to sit in front of the computer from early morning to fairly late at night but that that's the first week of the merchants window it's always like that and that's normally not a big deal so a couple of times a year I get the feeling like okay that was that was too much let's take a few days off when you talk about workflow you have talked about it earlier also the sustainability of the kernel community I mean have you ensured that you know I mean we want in us to be there for thousands of year you know Latinos but have you ensured that the number will continue to go on especially with the you have said that these high standards I actually know we have a great time and we have a big community I mean the kernel is when it comes to open source projects it is not just unusual it's unusual in like being it's a complete outlier I mean as far as I know there are no other open source projects that literally have a thousand people participating every release and we have I mean hundreds of maintained errs and and a couple of tens of pretty high level of maintainer so we got both the depth and the breadth of developers being involved and I mean people do go away not every I mean I've been doing it for 27 years yes whatever and there are a couple of people who've been there for pretty much all that time right there are so people like that but at the same time there's also a lot of people I mean think of any work environment some people stay at their job for a couple of years and then they move on and the same thing happens in the kernel and and I think that's normal and it would be odd if it didn't happen but we have a lot of all-time maintainer so here's one walking by Greg could take over if he wanted to I'm actually more worried about Greg just burning out yeah last two weeks I've been to idolised onyx but you must have really hated the last - yeah yeah sure yeah you know I don't need finish yeah he's joining us right sure I think he's been there okay let me just give me stop it you so not only earth fear the whole super team here well so what I when I was saying that the last two weeks were pretty stressful because it was a bad merge window I was like and Greg was in a much worse situation because some of the things that made the last two weeks stressful on the stable side they were a complete disasters so this is a bad couple of weeks you like to do with all the merges of all the stable all the security stuff coming in and then because we couldn't do everything in the open all the corner cases and we started finding all these because everything's incarnations right something like some basic so all these weird one I have this old six year old box that has full mana RAM and it was crashing and those other one was crashing so we had to undo the release like every other day and having merged all those patches and watch what's going into your tree at the same time which made my flow request to you later so he said you know that that you know once you know the the whole merging goes over he takes a break what do you do so I normally take a break so I normally take a break during the merge window because everybody sends me stuff before then it's all in this tree it's on my tree so I just sent it a new pole and then I can't take new things into my tree so I get to relax I watch what happens and stuff like that man I start working on stable stuff but that's my two weeks break just moved I don't live there anymore yeah I moved to The Hague so we talk about security I think you guys can just talk to each that I just didn't moderate up now I we've talked about this issue before right it's just yeah I've the last two weeks were unusually painful and it normally doesn't happen very often I'm units I think this is the worst two weeks of the year so the beginning of the year especially respond to but this was this was really bad but I mean what we have so was seventy patches that we're working for four months but nobody else could see I think that went pretty well considering it well I mean considering that there were only seventy patches they weren't even that big it was not like the meltdown packs right and it was okay mainline but I think we had so many issues and stable yeah the backwards were were crazy yeah and I was not truly a meltdown I think no tone I got to leverage the fact that the district's do the work and they did a lot of stuff and this wasn't you say you need to keep no keep the questions coming yes yeah yeah if before that I was talking to Dirk and we talked about diversity I don't know how important is their topic for you guys because you do get a lot of but it's still you know when we look at the kernel community we still see you know I don't know you a very monotone us community does it worries you I have my own reviews on this so there's two things here there's the odd thing is we don't go away so I mean the one nice thing about Linux is we've been doing this for so long we have the experience we do it and we don't go away so we have like the old crowd of white male and but we are getting a lot of other people and so people are working on that we do have a long ways to go but it's also hard to tell we since that none of us are know each other when you some people at Joe's who anybody is and that's that's good - I missed somebody here he's like oh yeah you said you took a patch for me when I was 12 I was like I did so I mean I didn't you didn't know that so I mean that's a good thing - but that being said yes diversity is very important different backgrounds different stuff bring stuff thanks to the table and we do need to work on that um we participate in outreach program for we do that every two times a year so it's usually running continuously we have lots of kernel projects for that google Summer of Code is usually these days pretty much all people from either India or Asia or participating in that first of all or Eastern Europe we're doing really good for google Summer of Code so yes we are trying to do this and good stuff outreach I think is a really good example of a program that's working really well because almost everybody who goes through outreach e.on gets a job and there's people that are now working for arm and other core huge large companies that um started in outreach you so one of the defense also that you're not a company you're not going to go out and hire people right it's a community people Tom so when people do ask about diversity sometimes I feel that's not it because it's more like you know you have an open part anybody can come you're not hiring people literature one of the issues is that I mean it's easy to talk about diversity but at the same time if you look at who gets involved I mean we I mean it's hard to find non white man's it's it is I don't know it's cultural yeah part of it is history part of you is having access to computers a lot of it is I think girls are discouraged from getting into the whole mass and hard technical stuff so there's a very small percentage coming in to us but it's up to the companies too because they're the ones that assign people to work on the kernel because almost everybody is this being told to do this stuff so they're working on that too but I mean I was at IBM and on the kernel team was very a large number of women at IBM so it is there and they are participating sometimes you just don't realize it still worries EQ you still have to fix this problem or anything keeps you like where you I mean I have talked to you about that that you said you know that we are done if we can screw things up you know that's the only thing you worry about Oh as far as the future they are what is you know the technology doesn't worry me I get worried about I mean I do worry about the community and about maintainer ship issues oh it's there are some people that I worry about burning out it's not just drag I'm thinking like David Miller it's very central to the networking code and sometimes he gets I get the feeling that he is not burning out but he's gets frustrated there are there are areas in the kernel where I worry about me the internship but on the whole we've never actually had a big problem the problems we've had have been when we needed to changed and change the flow of patches and when we changed bitkeeper and them to get that was really really very painful those huge changes versus tiny incremental changes yeah yeah those have been painful but we've never really had huge median airship issues even though it's actually what worries me the most so I've talked to a bunch of maintainer is actually here about how to do that better and people are working dan Williams is the maintainer parts of the kernel he's working on a document to help other maintainer and trying to figure out how to do this better talk about Co maintaining subsystems and leaning on other people and talk to some people one person who has it co maintainer right now so does the best thing ever because now he goes away for a week and he can lean on that or and then they'd lean on each other and that just working together really helps so people are aware of this where there are lots of frustrations graphics people are still very frustrated I don't know what's going on on the GPU side but I still hear like bad words from them their maintainer model is crazy too but there are they're learning at their own world when it comes to the kernel maintainer ship and I don't know what's going on there yeah yeah I realize the problem and you came of some kind of structure because you're is it like you focus more on the tourists and also the the whole governance or of machine model around it so so none of this has really been planned what's happened is we've had like we've had problem spots and they solve their issues and different problem spots have generally solved them differently we the most noticeable one is probably arm that it was a huge problem spot 10 years ago and has now been great and they solved it by having a group of 3 plus people who do this group maintainer ship and it works really well for them and the group mentorship has worked in a few other areas and some people just can't do it so it's it's not like there's a one model fits all and there's no like this is how you should do it it's more like this is what has worked yeah and every every development group I mean works differently the graphics people work differently because most of them were employed by companies and they want to iterate faster over different things and their code is huge crazy and other ones are like tiny ones like some of the security stuff is like there's very few patches but those changes affect large subsets of things so you have to spend a lot of time reviewing and testing these what would look like very small changes because they matter in a larger context so that model group other people reviewing it and spending time and whatnot is very different than other subsystems so it all evolves differently because it we all in the end work on the one solid thing but it is a bunch of little different fiefdom and stuff like that so which cuts when you start to make changes across all the areas that turns into a hard problem and that's a difficult thing to do we were like these new products coming up which are kind of owned by companies so I don't personally I I'm like companies do what companies do and they have all their upcoming projects and and I'm like whatever good you do your thing and if you don't like the GPL and you decide to use another license and you don't like some project and you decide you need to create a competitor and sometimes it's a competitor to the kernel I'm like you go girl it's all fine we can compete I won competition yeah it's not a monopoly in there because it's free you know what I mean I want I mean competition is good I mean look at the GCC and clang people now the GCC developers are really happy the clang is doing well and if you look at that that's sped up their development you know it wasn't always true but it's it's helped them out and they realized that and they're now bouncing ideas and I think everybody benefits from that yeah but separate isn't a whole different problem space in what Linux is anyway and I like I like the idea of suffer and it solves a problem that there the that area there was no other real good solution or something 20 different you know yeah real tiny but then that said there was a presentation by Microsoft showing how they've slimmed down Linux even tinier for some arm system so we're really getting close to that edge of well maybe we really do just need to run Linux in these tiny things this fearless fearless I don't actually follow that so i mean i i'm of the opinion that most projects fail right and that's not true just of a project but that's true of branching - right i I don't I don't get too upset when somebody makes a branch and says I will rewrite zone so and I'm like good go off and show us wrong right the problem with the tiny fication efforts and there's being multiple is that they usually end up doing a hatchet job where they just cut off pieces in ways that is not back mirja ball and so they go off for a few years and they cut off all the pieces they don't care about and then we are in the situation where yes we'd like to be more modular and we'd like to be better at supporting a smaller model but the way you did it we can't merge it because you basically just chopped things off without trying to take the non-small case into account yeah I mean we're seeing networking they did this let's hack up the network stack Wenli at all and the response was out that's great the idea but you gotta do it so it works for everybody and that's we're and they rewrote the tty layer that's one like they can't do that everybody we've had that when schedulers - that's like the scheduler is big and the scary is party big because it's pluggable right so if you want to make a small machine that has a much simpler usage case one of the things you do is you get rid of all the plug ability because that costs you right but that also means that we can't merge the code back because we can't take just the stupid thing that is good enough for you so a lot of these projects it's it's not worth my time really trying to figure out what they're doing only if it goes gets to the point where hey new one right that's what kind of happened to Android wear Android did a lot of things that people disagreed with and a lot of people were actually very unhappy and I was like I don't care but then they won right so now we've been merging stuff back yeah you know but before that like the locks so day one I showed that their motto is actually really good so people sat down and worked with them to come up with a mirja belushin for everybody and that took a year and a half worth of work it's not a head of time that's when I'm through the mud aware she worked and that's why we these all these Forks are great yeah yeah prove that yeah prove it wrong I don't know if there any left everybody we haven't had anything really odd come up I mean I think the hardware is now doing stuff where the kernel isn't even involved anymore so they you are AI people are they're using their fancy AI hardware but Linux is just not relevant in that space because it's basically a driver yeah we're just like here's the path to the cube yeah so we we don't see a lot I don't we haven't had a lot of push I think the tiny fication people are the ones that would be nice to get at some point but I don't ya know I mean it's it's funny when people say it's the Linux sub XYZ it's just means that it's the dominant project in some area or that's at least what they want to say it's it doesn't really have anything to do with us like serverless is fun to watch but there really is a server out there running I want to bring to the masses we're so much better off hardware wise I mean we still have pain points and they still are a lot of the time it's the same usual suspects you have a million new associating support for them is it's an uphill struggle and most of the time the hardware manufacturers don't care because for them it's throwaway hardware they know that two years from now it will be completely different so they don't even bother to spend so much time screaming things they're getting better they're getting dinner but it's still 2.5 million lines of code outside that it looks like alright what I'm hoping is gonna change and we've seen this in other areas is people just standardized the SOC people get it gets too expensive to just make hundred different versions of SOC s so you end up having just four or five main families and that's happened that happened to scuzzy that happened to sound that happened to it's happened a lot over the history of the kernel and I think it's happening now to the army so since to you and then think of that plug in s IP blocks for different buses and it turns out everybody uses the same IP block this is a little tiny tweak so instead of having ten drivers you have one with the whole configurations that's going back have been hearing a lot about security and Alexei Navarro is it because a lot of people are using it in new use cases is it because you know it's been used in use cases where it makes it a very liberating you know target to attack you guys so I think it's a ssin so I know there's one major industry right now that got a huge wake-up call and they realized that there in one country their networks were infiltrated right and all of a sudden they were they were there in the she was used to the physical security to protect themselves but then they realized wait we're all digital stuff and now we need to actually pay attention to this stuff I think it's just more of an education process if you look at the security people they've been saying the same thing for 20 years it's just now it's it's hitting home more and more and more I think so um this is the same issues we've had for the past 20 years I think oh no I'm it maybe that's my opinion why it seems more prevalent now it's just a more awareness finally the message is finally sinking in the strengths and weaknesses both are out there and we are actually because we are also openly able to talk about over the bad things and weaknesses well not good I actually think a big part I don't I don't necessarily agree about the education as much well maybe they're related it's just the news cycle when it comes to to technology in general I think maybe because technology isn't changing so much anymore the I'm seeing just the tech news sites take security issues way more serious that's true it does sell but it's also I think let's say 10 years ago you wouldn't even talk about security when it came to one of those because it just wasn't an issue yeah but if you do the whole thing you you will need physical access to the machine but nobody will talk about yeah or you know you you should have and invited nobody would talk about that 1 million Android devices vulnerable yeah well that's part of the the whole PR problem where we're yeah it sells and you don't need to really you have a real security issue it's it's enough if you have something that you can make a big stink about yes so some security issues aren't as bad as they are made out to be and some people like in the security industry I mean we've both complained about that you'd comment about the loss they are attention seekers and that they want to you make a logo for your bug that you were bounced to something and that sometimes it's not even a big issue at all like the whole GPG email thing that was a perfect example there wasn't the problem and our configuration in this odd way it wasn't the cpg was not properly encrypting your emails people like theater in order to drive consulting stuff like that or they just like theater and that's the whole yeah make a website and have a cool logo that's new in the last year we pop up just for one thing and they generate a lot of views and revenues yeah we've even been spoofed that's even been spoofed to it wasn't technically it wasn't fake but it was seem to be a pump-and-dump thing yeah exactly sometimes when he explodes on you know KML what do you feel there but the grace of God I know it's being dragged who's been getting honest lately yeah got news for complaining about stuff well that the talk I gave about it about spectrum meltdown right so it's the same exact talk I gave in China in Japan in public it's been on YouTube it's public but there was actually a reporter in the room who made a sensationalist headline or somebody made a pretty headline and I was funny um luckily I mean it wasn't anything that none of us have said in the past so I'm I'm saying I think what you kind of see from the outside it's not actually what the community sees internally that much yeah I mean what we do and also I mean what we do is also everything in public you can read I mean people do troll the mailing list to see what we post and if you say something bad yeah that's a good news cycle for a day and certain sites can get a click or two but I mean the majority of everything we do is saying that putting a mic on a on a professional men baseball managers lapel when he's cursing at its players but yeah it's just different too and we also all are people I've blown up at times to have enough yeah that's good [Music] you

Channel: TFiR

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Id: mysM-V5h9z8

Length: 44min 17sec (2657 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 02 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ProfessionalSecond2]

It would surprise me if upstream kernel devs really cared much about desktop use cases. A LOT of dev work upstream comes from companies that really only care about Linux in a server environment, because that's their use case.

But, at the same time, the issues with Linux as a desktop are largely userspace related, not kernel. The kernel is good enough for most desktops as is.

[u/shmerl]

Chromebooks and Android? No, thanks!

[u/tuxutku]

your post on r/linux was removed by `banned host` , i am crossposting it again

[u/Einn1Tveir2]

Chromebooks? Those are the computers that have an expiration date right? No thank you.