I don't try to be a threat to MicroSoft, mainly because I don't really see MS as competition. Especially not Windows-the goals of Linux and Windows are simply so different.
I get the biggest enjoyment from the random and unexpected places. Linux on cellphones or refrigerators, just because it's so not what I envisioned it. Or on supercomputers.
What commercialism has brought to Linux has been the incentive to make a good distribution that is easy to use and that has all the packaging issues worked out.
I like to think that I've been a good manager. That fact has been very instrumental in making Linux a successful product.
If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system.
Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.
Obviously Linux owes its heritage to UNIX, but not its code. We would not, nor will not, make such a claim.
Today, I use Linux as my primary OS (on an x86 PC, and on a Thinkpad), and I also use Irix (on an SGI O2). Linux has improved a great deal since I wrote this, specifically with respect to its ease of installation.
I think the open software movement (and Linux in particular) is laudable.
While I may not get any money from Linux, I get a huge personal satisfaction from having written something that people really enjoy using, and that people find to be the best alternative for their needs.
A lot of other people wanted a free production UNIX with lots of bells and whistles and wanted to convert MINIX into that. I was dragged along in the maelstrom for a while, but when Linux came along, I was actually relieved that I could go back to professoring.
It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not.
Releasing Linux versions has always been a matter of higher code quality, good software architecture, and technical interest for the platform.
One of the questions I've always hated answering is how do people make money in open source. And I think that Caldera and Red Hat - and there are a number of other Linux companies going public - basically show that yes, you can actually make money in the open-source area.
I am confident that we can do better than GUIs because the basic problem with them (and with the Linux and Unix interfaces) is that they ask a human being to do things that we know experimentally humans cannot do well. The question I asked myself is, given everything we know about how the human mind works, could we design a computer and computer software so that we can work with the least confusion and greatest efficiency?
Think of the Nets infrastructure as a source of natural building resources. Linux is not growing on the trees - it is the trees.
Most hackers graduate from Unix and Linux platforms. They know them intimately. They don't try to exploit them
IBM has taken our valuable trade secrets and given them away to Linux.
The big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don't realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior. We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well.
I started Linux because I wanted to see it on the desktop... I do hope that the desktop people would try to work together ... and work more on the technology than trying to make the login screen look really nice.
Linux is its own worst enemy: it's splintered, it has different distributions, it's too complex to run for most people.
I was never a "big thinker". One of my philosophies in Linux has always been to not worry about the future too much, but make sure that we make the best of what we have now - together with keeping our options open for the future and not digging us into a hole.
I don't actually follow other operating systems much. I don't compete - I just worry about making Linux better than itself, not others.
I was Computer Shopper's linux columnist for more than half a decade, from the late 90s onwards. Yes, I know about Linux. (My first review of a Linux distro in the press was published in late 1996.)
Part of doing Linux was that I had to communicate a lot more instead of just being a geek in front of a computer.
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