Re: what's the killer app for GNU/Linux systems?
Ron Johnson wrote:
And has *kept* them working on it, without turning it into a huge
ball of legacy crud, without forking or general worker revolution.
However he does it, he *has* done it, and that is his genius.
Some might argue these days with the "ball of legacy crud" part. :-)
He's no genius of social sciences or
anything.
He's a genius at something.
I doubt it. He's certainly no Einstein. Save the genius title for
people who singlehandedly (not with hundreds of thousands of people
helping them) changed how the entire of humanity views the world, please.
The rest was just dumb luck and timing. The time was right for
something new, maybe. BSD was going strong by the time Linux popped up.
If herding cats was soooooo simple:
1. FreeBSD would be the dominant OSS OS,
2. NetBSD and OpenBSD would not have forked with much acrimony,
3. NetBSD would not now be dying,
4. nor OpenBSD starving for cash.
One could argue that the guy that created the Penguin logo did more for
Linux than Linus did for it's "marketing". Perhaps religious
fundamentalists like flightless waterfowl more than they like Daemons.
OBSD's issues are all Theo's doing for both #2 and #4. The guy never
learned to play nicely with others in the sandbox as a child. #3 is
probably a side-effect of that too.
Linus is a nice guy (important) who created an OS. That OS became
popular. Lots of people latched on for the ride, and the guy proved to
be a good manager of people without any training. That's about it.
You see that much "genius" in most companies in at least one or two
managers. People with a knack for working with others. It's not that
big a deal.
QNX has been around for 20 years, and runs on many processors.
And is still used by engineers who find it useful for specific needs.
CP/M ran (runs?) on the Z80, 8086 & 68000.
Limited in what it can do. Natural selection.
NT ran (for a time) on x86, Alpha and MIPS.
Abandoned by the company supporting it. Natural selection.
z/OS has been around for 35 years, running on a sequence of
processor units over the years.
Can't make any comment about this one. No background.
DOS/VSE has been around for *41* years.
Still used.
OpenVMS runs on VAX, Alpha and Itanic.
Still used wherever the hardware requires it and it meets the needs.
HP-UX started on 68000, went to PA-RISC & now Itanic.
Still used VERY heavily.
The AS/400 started out as 2 radically different 70's-era
minicomputers, and now runs on Power64.
Uh-huh.
I won't even mention how many systems that NetBSD runs on.
Shall I go on?
Sure, but I don't get your point. Is Linux better because it's used
more, or it is just used more because people feel it's better?
Chicken and egg.
And since the original discussion was about what you THINK Linus did to
make it happen... what's all the above got to do with that?
I'm not saying that Linux isn't good software and a lot of fun. It is.
I'm not saying Linus isn't a smart, well-rounded guy with good people
and management skills. He is.
But genius? Nah.
Nate
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