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[–] 88 points 1 month ago (42 children)

Never meet your heroes. Have you ever seen the way he rages at people on the mailing list? Don't get me wrong, he's made some incredible technical contributions that I'm thankful for, but I have to push back against claims that he is a well-adjusted dude.

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  • [–] 103 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    He's had to adjust quite a bit I'd say he's thoroughly and well adjusted.

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  • [–] 97 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Yeah, Linus today is nothing like Linus in the 90s/00s

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  • [–] 78 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    You also have to remember that he made an OS as a hobby project and suddenly everyone wanted to mess with it. It was the Wild West of decentralized project management in those days, I don’t condone any of that unprofessional behavior but I’m also not in the least bit fucking surprised that he had very personal rage-out moments as unsolicited criticism poured in from around the world, constructive and well intentioned or not. That’s a lot of unexpected pressure.

    He got better, which implies to me that he wants to be a good person; and that’s all we can really ask of anyone.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    True that. Andrew Tanenbaum dissing on Linux in the early days just because it didn't conform to his ideals of a microkernel is sufficiently uncomfortable to read, imo. It's not like Linus kept anyone from making their own open source kernel.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    To be fair, they insisted that they were on good speaking terms. Seen from that one occasion where some article claimed that Linux was copied from MINIX and Tanenbaum dissed the article, defending Torvalds.

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  • [–] 31 points 1 month ago

    the way he rages at people on the mailing list?

    not really anymore for quite a while.

    he will absolutely tell someone that should know better, if they are doing a bad job, but the times of random shitstorms is over for quite a while now

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  • [–] 29 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Counterpoint: Linus was all out in the open.

    I wouldn't want to see what Bill Gates is like behind closed doors...especially as a kid.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    No one is saying hes on the level of gates or jobs or whatever.

    But that doesn't make him an angel either. It makes him human.

    He famously took a year off because he wanted to work on how toxic he was.

    The comment was never meet your hero's. Hes a good guy, but if you have had to work with him, you may be leas inclined to agree whole heartily.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago*

    @wholookshere but @JasonDJ never claimed that Linus is perfect. On the contrary, he admires how normal and human and unfiltered Linus is. So in terms of toxicity profile, we don't need to actually meet him to know what to expect. So your gotcha is kinda irrelevant. We know he's not a saint, and isn't trying to be. Which paradoxically makes the guy more righteous than all tech billionaires combined.

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  • [+] 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)
  • [–] 16 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Another example being the developer of GrapheneOS. Unhinged, but works in our favor. Just don't follow them on social media.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    Have you ever seen the way he rages at people on the mailing list?

    Is that not normal for IT professionals?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    From my experience as a new end user with basic questions and issues, it's pretty normal for a decent chunk of other linux users in general. I've met more angry Linux people when asking for help than I ever have for any other OS or software.

    It's a small minority I'm sure, but they're extremely vocal individuals.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (2 children)

    Where was this, reddit or something?

    The linux users here seem pretty chill. There's a lot of tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating jokes about linux users being pretentious, but I don't really see much of anyone being actually obnoxious in any of the techy comms here

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Various distro and general forums and GitHub/similar sites. I've come across several over the last few years. The types of places you go for actual help from people with knowledge and experience. Not just various social media sites.

    It's a small amount in the grand scheme, but they're vocal. All it takes is one raging asshole for a normie first trying out Linux and looking for a solution to an issue to be driven away entirely.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    That makes sense, I haven't really interacted much on those sites. I've browsed them for help sometimes, and it seems like they get annoyed when people ask questions that are already answered. Either in the docs or somewhere else on the forum. They usually just say to do a search before posting to see if it's already answered. But maybe if someone's having a bad day and gets fed up with being asked the same thing over and over again. Or maybe someone's just an asshole. I don't know.

    I'm not saying it's okay to be a jerk, especially on those forums where they're literally representing the community. You're right, it really can put a sour taste in newcomers' mouths.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago* (6 children)

    If it's any consolation I also worshipped Carmack and Zoid Kirsch (credited then by deadname)....

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    What's wrong with Carmack? I'm genuinely curious.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    I think his joining Meta to work on VR was... an interesting decision.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    But then he quit.

    John Carmack ended his Meta resignation letter with: "Make better decisions and fill your products with 'Give a Damn!'"

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  • [+] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (4 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (3 children)

    btw, so is Gabe, but he is doing it on a much larger scale now

    Not sure if this is meant to be a fat joke, but it's worth the extra month wait for HL2E3 if it is.

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