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[–] 254 points 1 month ago (55 children)

I love how just...normal...Linus is. Like...humble. Content.

Like, hey, I revolutionized the world with a pet project. Nbd.

When I was a kid I worshipped Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I'm glad I realized later that Linus and Woz are the real heroes.

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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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  • [–] 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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  • [–] 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    Gates was a jerk. Jobs was a jerk that actually did make some positive impact on the world. Linus was a jerk who's mellowed to a pretty normal state. Woz is a fucking tech Angel/God who just generally wants good things for people.

    edit: I guess to be fair, Windows did harbor us for a long time when nothing else was ready, Jobs pushed competition and some semblance of privacy. and Linus' code is just about everthing that exists now mostly for free.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    My local Microcenter has posters of notable computer pioneers up high in the back where you can see them from anywhere in the store. Each poster has the person's name as well as a description of something they're most known for. Bill Gates is there as well as Ken Thompson, Robert Kahn, Robert Metcalfe, Grace Hopper, Richard Stallman, etc. I always thought that was a nice touch. Even though it's like the nerdiest of all stores, I suspect 90% of customers are probably Windows normies and just need a computer for work or to play games and wouldn't recognize any of them with the exception of Gates. Even I don't recognize some of the names, like Kahn (co-invented TCP/IP) and Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet).

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    [–] 94 points 1 month ago (34 children)

    Isn't it a bit strange not to change your wallpaper to something different than the default Windows one?

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

    For the Arch defaults, I find their stock wallpapers generally pleasing in a weird n-dimensional way. When I was a young microslopper, it was always whatever brought me joy from newgrounds that week.

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

    The default wallpaper is meant to be pleasing, and I guess it's meant to appeal to the average person? I've known several people that don't change their wallpapers or that use that automatic carousel thing with a different image every time you wake the device.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 month ago (13 children)

    I usually set my wallpaper once right after install then never change it. I only see it for a few seconds right after boot anyways. If you see your wallpaper then you aren't really doing anything.

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    [–] 75 points 1 month ago* (17 children)

    Does RMS fit in the picture here? The founder of the fsf and GNU.

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    [–] 49 points 1 month ago* (3 children)

    A person who actually uses the PC.

    A random streamer.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 month ago

    While my setup isn't meant to be showy, I cannot operate with a single monitor these days. At work I have my laptop screen, a USB monitor to the right, a 36" ultra-widescreen up high, and a landscape 32" monitor to the left.

    I still want more screens. I basically want a Neil Pert monitor setup.

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    [–] 42 points 1 month ago (9 children)

    He now has a fancier PC, courtesy of LTT.
    screenshot of Linus Torvalds and Linus Sebastian

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    [–] 41 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    There's "Linux Kernel Developer Workspaces" series on youtube. Spoiler: most of them look like dumpsters, even if discounting that it was over 10 years ago. I guess it takes certain type of trash goblin to work on linux kernel.

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    [–] 39 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)

    looks at image with ten visible LED fans

    I don't have a problem with people decorating their computers however they want. They paid for it. It's their computer. Everyone's got their own aesthetic preferences.

    However, the last build I did, I was getting a little exasperated with how increasingly-hard it is to just find desktop components that don't have RGB lighting on them any more. I mean, to me, the desktop computer is a box that has a bunch of circuit boards in it. I'm generally not looking at my RAM sticks or motherboard segments, and don't have a glass window on the side to admire it (it gets dust in there, and I'd rather have a sturdier case without glass). I could do without the extra light pollution in my life. Most stuff can be disabled, but it's kind of obnoxious to be buying and figuring out how to disable hordes of little RGB LEDs.

    I'd also add that where LEDs exist, they have multiplied over the decades not just in number, but also in brightness.

    If I wanted to have my computer be a light show, which I don't, I'd get a DMX512 controller for it, and real lighting effects hardware.

    Maybe going for rack-mount hardware is an option. It's something that I've thought about sporadically over the years, and it does have certain benefits, if you're willing to give up portability. But rack-mount builds generally command a premium due to the market being less price-sensitive, and noise is often a more of a factor, since datacenters don't care about keeping things quiet for employees.

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    [–] 24 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Reminds me of some interview of Linus, where they showed another photo of his workspace. Linus said the first thing people usually notice is the standing desk (he was a bit of a trendsetter). The second thing they notice is the wall colour. They use the paint in mental hospitals. It has a calming effect on the human mind. (Goodness knows Linus needs all the chill he can get.)

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    [–] 17 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Why does the tech bro have those huge lights shining in his face - livestreaming?

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    [–] 14 points 1 month ago (11 children)

    That's a nice standing desk tho.

    But who can stand using one screen??

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    [–] 13 points 1 month ago

    every now and then I like going through and reading Linus' commit messages for uemacs. It's impressive that he's still maintaining that thing on a near weekly basis.

    Also he writes some of the longest commit messages known to man to the point where i'm like "I didn't know you could write them that long"

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