Op LinuxWorld is al weer een paar dagen een interview met Linus Torvalds te vinden. Niet bepaald iemand die erg veel interviews geeft, maar voor een krat bier doet 'ie het dus wèl . Naast statements over bier en biljarten (ja, alweer...) zijn er gelukkig ook serieuze zaken die de revue passeren, zoals de recente aanvallen van Microsoft op de Open Source community, de vorige maand met veel vertraging uitgekomen kernel 2.4, en Linus' toekomstplannen. Hieronder een aantal serieuze quotes:
LinuxWorld.com: What is your take on the recent series of pronouncements by Microsoft executives that "Linux is doomed?" Do you think such attacks hurt the Linux community or make it stronger? Do you think their statements say anything about Microsoft's perception of Linux?
Linus Torvalds: I don't think they hurt Linux, nor do I think it makes us stronger. I think Microsoft has traditionally been, and pretty much continues to be, a nonissue for Linux development. Obviously, on a marketplace level Microsoft matters a lot. But I don't care. And neither do most of the people I actually work with. The latest blathering from some random executive doesn't really matter. Linux did fine when Microsoft ignored it, Linux will do fine when Microsoft disses it.
LinuxWorld.com: What were you happiest to see included in Linux 2.4, and why?
Linus Torvalds: I'm happiest about the cleanups we did at a memory management and filesystem management level. The things the infrastructure can do these days is incredible -- and the fact that it's actually faster, in addition to being more flexible and intelligent, is really wonderful.
LinuxWorld.com: What do you most want to see in the next major release of Linux, and why?
Linus Torvalds: There's a few things queued up, the most noticeable of them being to finish up the ACPI stuff (which is in 2.4.x, but in an experimental stage), doing major real clustering and NUMA support, and just seriously revisiting some of the I/O path issues. Most of them tend to be fairly well-defined goals, which makes things easier. Of course, the real fun is in what surprising things come up. Which, by definition, I won't know yet.
[break] Linus' slotaccoord tenslotte is even kort als veelzeggend en verdient daarom dan ook zeker een vermelding:[/break] Luckiest bastard alive, that's me.
Het volledige interview is hier na te lezen.