Some inspiring quotes from our supreme leader

In the UK version of Hell's Kitchen you can see this side of him. In one episode he just hung out at the beach with his whole team and it was so wholesome.

The US show is cut in a way that emphasizes his outbursts, it's much worse.

Eh, this is somewhat true, and he's dug into this a few times. Some is put up for TV, but he's inclined to be annoyed at people that call themselves chefs, take people's money, and serve them sub-par products. In a few shows, like the one with Angela Hartnett where she took over The Connaught, it showed that he's still an angry dude, but that it was needed because he's taking over the restaurant at one of London's finest hotels. Michelin Star places seem to be the same boiling pot of bullying and anger to strive for the best possible quality.

Some chefs, like J Kenji Lopez Alt have called it and him out several times on it, because it's a very damaging practice, and one that spreads throughout the industry from wannabe Ramsay's that thinks intimidation is needed to make food.

I'm sure Ramsay is a lovely guy in person, but I would hate to work for him.

Linus is also said to be a sweet guy IRL and only became the angry kernel guy on the mailing list.

You mean when he's not admitting to felony crimes to advance his career?

I can’t believe linus did a “KILL YOURSELF, NOW” before it was cool

Indeed, I think he just wanted to get the point across that it is a dangerous approach.

It was never a question of being technically right or wrong. Linus' realization was that his inflammatory language was viewed as permission by other people in the Linux community to be verbally abusive to their peers. People who had been valuable contributors to Linux projects explained to Linus how they had been berated by colleagues, and when challenged those colleagues cited Linus' own language.

What Linus wants is working code, and you don't get working code by giving tacit permission to your most aggressive & abrasive community members to attack others.

Doesn't mean it's ever the right thing to say.

Especially among professionals

I remember telling someone to go kill themselves was a generic insult in school. Same as "fuck off".

While I mostly agree with you, don't discount the insane volume of genuine hate speech in the United States. A vast amount of it –if not the majority– is coded language so there is an actual need to be extra sensitive. If you aren't a member of a targeted minority, you won't get it because the nature of coded hate speech is that it's only transparent to the perpetrators and the victims.

I love this part:

the next time I see you copying VFS functions (or any other core functions) without udnerstanding what the f*ck they do, and why they do it, I'm going to put you in my spam-filter for a week.

Like after all that he will just block him for a week 🤣 I would block them for a year minimum or forever...

His response to Linus was interesting to read.

Oh and especially this comment further down in the conversation...

As it is, I feel like I have to waste my time checking all your patches, and I'm saying "it's not worth it".

I'm basically done with this. I never said I was a VFS guy and I learned a lot doing this. I had really nobody to look at my code even though most of it went to the fsdevel list. Nobody said I was doing it wrong.

Sorry to have wasted your time

Oh that's fun.

Damn, you know, that's a pretty good idea, a callendar with Linus quotes 😂.

You know that you can make people very upset if you do it wrong. That's something.

YOUR CODE IS SHIT AND YOU ARE SHIT

Omfg I love this guy

"we only criticize people we care about. If you're messing up, and no one's saying anything anymore, you're in a bad spot"

-- Randy Pausch, "Last Lecture"

Business people too. They have a way of speaking that kind of pacifies and exhausts you, so that by the time they're finished speaking you're confused and don't really feel like arguing anymore

Most users actually have enjoyed both systemd and pulseaudio for many years now. They are both some of the best technology we have in the Linux world.

Has pulse ever reached mature or stable levels? Anyway, happy pipewire user now.

I love everything about Slackware except for the occasional weirdness and the absolute lack of package management from the distro itself (discounting third-party tools)

My favorite anecdote about Stallman is how some women at MIT kept massive amounts of plants in their office to ward him off.

Both. Period.

Stallman has done more than anyone for free software. Just because you don't like how he talks doesn't take away the talent and the sheer will of the man. Linux should have never entertained snowflakes

You try achieving what they have achieved then

Also, humiliating someone in front of the whole LKML list by calling their code garbage isn't constructive. It's the reason why a lot of people take one look at that toxic cesspit and walk the other way.

Yea anger issues is no joke

That happened in 2012 and a lot has changed with Linus since then.

This reply ^

Basically if you need the same logic in two places instead of copying it to the second place you make it into a function and use that function in both places.

That way if you need that logic to change you only need to make that edit once regardless of whether you use it one time or one thousand times.

I don’t even know what encapsulation even means lmao.

It's basically a fancy way to reuse code.

'Shut up'

Then you're working with the wrong others.

Meh, maintainability is king. Sticking to the letter of the style law is probably not necessary, but ignoring badly structured code now is going to bite you in the ass when it comes time to change any of it.

It really does drive people away. I'm not good enough for the kernel, but there's a project I could contribute to as part of my job but I don't because there are mean folks there. My first contribution there was met with cursing.

Making it personal is usually a bit over the top, I agree. Still, the no-bullshit attitude itself is good.

Looks like you have not been a part of any Linux community before 🤔...

It will fall on deaf ears

It's garbage.

My opinion is that it is:

1. Less likely to be effective. There's a good chance that the submitter won't get the message, and that they'll submit another pull request, five minutes later, with the exact same issue that made the first PR to be rejected. And again. Again. Again.
2. More insulting. Now you aren't just saying "your code is garbage"; you're saying "your code is garbage and you're a fragile little thing that will break apart if handled incorrectly".
3. As likely to create drama as the original verbiage, given that the drama is originated in human nature - we humans want to believe (even if outright false) that we're "contributing", even when we are not.

There’s many ways to point out the issues with the patch without being a jerk.

Yes, if you don't mind pointing out again those exact same issues again, because the same person (or potentially someone else) did the same mistake again, as they failed to understand the gravity of the issue again. And again, again, again.

...or alternatively you give the person a good smacking. That's what Torvalds did, while pointing out those issues again. Carrot and stick

maybe there could’ve been more useful conversations about the concerns (re: tar) that were brought up in the previous message.

Likely not - that tar example was brought to highlight that Torvalds' suggestion would cause a regression; that's it. The discussion itself reached a dead end, the solution wouldn't be to keep the conversation about that, but someone submitting a patch that would neither cause said regression nor misuse the VSF functions.

It's half this, and half an explicit policy "we do not break user space". Together it meant that if you did anything that screwed up the user space you got told about it at length.

Now Linux culture is established enough that it only really needs the policy, and not the cussing people out to enforce it.

Famous email about it here: https://linuxreviews.org/WE_DO_NOT_BREAK_USERSPACE

I don't think car commuters necessarily make for a good example of adult behavior - in fact, the opposite tends to be true.

There's no need to yell at someone to convey what's wrong with their code.

None whatsoever, in fact.

Did you know that you can be diligent without yelling at people?

Linus has full control over what code makes it into the kernel, yelling is not required to accomplish that.

If my boss ever spoke to me like that about a mistake, I would straight up quit. Either be respectful or get fucked, that goes doubly so for a non-profit relying on the good will of contributors.

This comment is giving me a lot of 'rightwinger calling others snowflakes'-vibes.

Did you know that yelling is not a particularly effective technique pedagogically?

Did you know that it's entirely possible to criticize someone else's code without yelling at them?

Do we [people in general] have some reason to conclude that it'll stop or keep working?

And, if it stops working, do we have some reason to conclude that we won't know why?

But until that, it works just fine