Which distro does Linus Torvalds use?
from asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev to linux@lemmy.ml on 11 Jun 21:33
https://lemmy.asudox.dev/post/429407

#linux

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GNUmer@sopuli.xyz on 11 Jun 21:36 next collapse

Fedora. There’s a video of him explaining why he uses Fedora instead of Debian.

Edit: Link to Fedora’s pages and a Youtube video on why Linus does not use Debian (or debian-based distros)

fedoraproject.org/wiki/Is_Fedora_For_Me#Other_Peo…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHGTs1NSB1s

Resplendent606@piefed.social on 11 Jun 21:47 next collapse

Also, incase you're wondering, Richard Stallman uses Trisquel GNU/Linux.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisquel#:~:text=Richard%20Stallman%20has%20mentioned%20that,previously%20used%20the%20Lemote%20Yeeloong.

Penguincoder@beehaw.org on 11 Jun 22:15 next collapse

uses a version of Ubuntu’s modified kernel, with the non-free code (binary blobs) removed.[8

Why not just Debian without non-free, at that point?

Resplendent606@piefed.social on 11 Jun 22:26 next collapse

Because Debian does not meet the strict requirements of the FSF. It includes non-free blobs in the kernel and the FSF claims Debian "steers" users with recommendations for installing non-free plugins or codecs. Some "contrib" packages, while free themselves, exist primarily to load separately distributed proprietary programs. There are also references in the Debian documentation and official channels that suggest obtaining non-free software for functionality.

edit: typos

kemnz@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 22:29 next collapse

I saw an interview where he was saying he objected to Debian adding non-free blobs so he had them put on GNU’s shit list.

Dude is cuckoo for coco puffs.

Resplendent606@piefed.social on 11 Jun 22:45 next collapse

While I think it would be too hard for most people to be completely free of proprietary software, atleast he is practicing what he preaches. It is a nice goal to someday get there, but I don't think its realistic at the moment.

Kind in mind, though, he is 72 and I don't think he even codes anymore. His computer use probably only consists of mostly Emac (for all text based work) and a web browser (which I read he has a very particular method that involves something similar to wget, lynx, and konqueror). His computer use is very light (I imagine) compared to many Linux users.

While I aspire to and appreciate what the FSF advocates, I don't see a realistic path for myself as a Linux gamer. The proprietary firmware limitations alone would keep you on 2015 hardware.

Source: https://kottke.org/15/05/how-richard-stallman-does-his-computing

kemnz@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 12 Jun 00:13 collapse

I’m not just talking about the free software stuff.

He’s on the record blaming victims of Epstein and chastising a developer for stepping back for the birth of his child, amongst a host of other crazy things.

Truly crazy stuff.

Resplendent606@piefed.social on 12 Jun 00:29 collapse

I knew about the Epstein thing and it is pretty offensive but unsurprising. What is surprising is what I just read about the developer in 2005 who mentioned taking time off for the birth of his daughter, essentially implying that contributing to Emacs was a more valuable contribution than having children. That is messed up.

Even worse, apparently there were also old blog posts where he discussed the legalization of sex with minors and child pornography, arguing that certain acts should be legal "as long as no one is coerced" and are only illegal due to "prejudice and narrow-mindedness."

He's not a great guy. I appreciate the work he has lead with free software, but he's said some pretty screwed up stuff.

Sources:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/spawning-a-new-process/

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761718975/free-software-pioneer-quits-mit-over-his-comments-on-epstein-sex-trafficking-cas

marcie@lemmy.ml on 12 Jun 02:39 next collapse

Guys like this always go to bat for pedophiles, wonder what he says about queer people.

Mwa@thelemmy.club on 12 Jun 12:27 collapse

I heard that before

lupusblackfur@lemmy.world on 11 Jun 22:50 collapse

Yes…

Stallman is nutty, obsessive, and drunk on his own fame. 🙄 🤡 🤦‍♀️ 🖕 💩

Mwa@thelemmy.club on 12 Jun 12:27 collapse

Easier?

kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de on 12 Jun 02:38 next collapse

I once gave Trisquel a try back in the day. It’s one of those FSF approved distros right? My use case was more ahem, standard rather than anything programming related. Either case, one evening, I ran into a dependency hell trying to install a simple Direct Connect client onto it and no matter how much I tried I couldn’t succeed.

I then decided to move back to Debian. Either case, most distros have Eiskaltdcpp (as one example of a client) in their repos, except for Trisquel. This was multiple years ago. I am currently on Void.

Resplendent606@piefed.social on 12 Jun 02:50 collapse

This is the experience I imagine I would have trying it. It is probably what anyone with a modern system would experience with proprietary firmware. From what I read, Trisquel's core philosophy is to include only free software and Eiskaltdcpp most likely relies on some non-free dependencies.

I like Debian. I am currently trying Fedora and it has been good, too. Void is on my list of "distros to someday try" as it sounds super interesting using runit, XBPS, and not relying on systemd.

kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de on 12 Jun 03:56 collapse

Yes, Trisquel can be a pain to be used as a daily driver. Whilst I admire the philosophy behind it’s concept, it definitely leaves a lot of end work to be done by the user.

I have used Fedora for quite some time in the past . I think Fedora and now discontinued Cent OS were two RPM based distros (I think Fedora now uses Dnf as well) I have used. Cent OS I liked decently, it wasn’t as bleeding edge as Fedora and for a long time I dual booted Cent OS and Debian.

Void is decent independent distro. Ironically I don’t have any anti systemd feelings and just gave it a try for heck of it and stuck to it. I think there is a musl version of Void as well but that makes things only complicated.

sxan@midwest.social on 12 Jun 08:09 next collapse

I feel the same way about Artix. I had it on my laptop for a while, and it was a regular PITA. I think I may have made it harder on myself, because while getting rid of systemd was fine, I was also trying to do without NetworkManager and on a laptop that wasn’t a great idea. I never did find a good, reliable set-up that managed access point hopping as well as nm.

Really, thinking back, Artix was fine; it really was just the roaming WiFi handling that gave me grief, and I did that to myself.

sxan@midwest.social on 12 Jun 08:20 collapse

(I’m replying to you twice b/c totally different topics)

Tell me more about your Void experience. I’ve been meaning to give it a shot, except I don’t get as much enjoyment out of fussing with distros as I used to. What are the pain points? Under Artix, I used dinit which I really liked, but I tried s6 first and absolutely hated it. I didn’t try runit; how is it?

What I’m most interested in is xbps, because IMO it’s the package manager that makes or breaks a system. I’m quite fond of pacman and have encountered far fewer dependency hell situations than I did with either rpm or deb, and rolling release is a must. xbps looks kind of like a rolling stable release?

kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de on 12 Jun 10:39 collapse

Void is rolling release IIRC. The package manager is quite fast and gets the job done. The pain point is that Void has a lower selection of package in its repos compared to say, Arch. Some good stuff is there (for example I was looking for a third party Spotify client ncspot? Back in the day and it was packaged in Void’s repos) but if someone uses niche stuff a lot, there can be issues.

Of course there is Flatpak support. And the system itself is comparatively lean and fast. I don’t think my installation of Void came with plenty of pre-installed apps.

It ships in two builds : glibc or musl. The latter one is less favored because it only makes life tougher honestly. Runit support is a strong point of it though personally I don’t have any anti systemd qualms.

The documentation is basic and okayish. I still often go to Arch Wiki since that’s honestly the most detailed. Also, I just found that it’s the highest rated distro on Distro Watch. I have distro hopped a long time and Void is decent. I still hold Debian in higher regard since it’s slightly easier for a novice to get used to (though it’s repos can be hold often old versions of software) and also because it was my main entry point to the Linux world.

Mwa@thelemmy.club on 12 Jun 12:25 next collapse

Probably the reason why I avoided Void yes ik it’s a independent distro

sxan@midwest.social on 12 Jun 14:17 collapse

Void is rolling release IIRC

That’s what I thought, but the main website says Void focuses on stability over being cutting edge, which would imply some sort of release cycle. Or, maybe they just update packages less frequently.

I still hold Debian in higher regard since it’s slightly easier for a novice to get used to

It’s hard to beat Mint as a novice distro, for sure.

kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de on 12 Jun 14:50 collapse

I mean I guess there are more noob friendly distros than Debian [ there was a time when all I saw was Ubuntu around me and it’s ubiquitous Unity DE was instantly recognizable to my eye] but chances are many of them are ultimately based on Debian itself. Mint’s main ISO is based on Ubuntu [and indirectly Debian] whilst they also release a LMDE [Linux Mint Debian Edition] as a fallback variant directly based on Debian. I guess Zorin OS or elementary OS are also decent but they also seem more like heavy reskins to me than anything else.[Zorin has a Windows like feel to it].

sxan@midwest.social on 12 Jun 16:35 collapse

Mint eschews all of the Snap crap, though, doesn’t it?

Jesus, please tell me it does. I’ve been recommending it to beginners. I thought it was sanitized.

kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de on 13 Jun 00:27 collapse

Yes, Mint does not have any Snap stuff. It was Canonical’s idea to put in Snap and I think Ubuntu Is one of the only mainstream distros to use snap instead of flatpak.

Ferk@lemmy.ml on 12 Jun 15:05 next collapse

That was long ago, I wonder if he might be using now GNU Guix, since it’s a GNU project.

corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca on 13 Jun 07:14 collapse

incase

Your phone was right: this isn’t a word.

polle@feddit.org on 11 Jun 23:08 next collapse

This YouTube statement is 10 years old.

Mwa@thelemmy.club on 12 Jun 12:25 next collapse

The wiki was last updated in 2021

pineapple@lemmy.ml on 13 Jun 03:14 collapse

Maybe because his distro of choice still hasn’t changed.

Mwa@thelemmy.club on 13 Jun 06:52 collapse

Maybe idk?

vandsjov@feddit.dk on 12 Jun 20:22 collapse

Fun video that shows Torvald is not the best person to judge about if a distribution is good or bad - he’s just your average user.

janNatan@lemmy.ml on 12 Jun 02:26 next collapse

I’m not an expert, but I believes he codes the Linux Kernel on Asahi these days.

arstechnica.com/…/linus-torvalds-uses-an-arm-powe…

Zetta@mander.xyz on 12 Jun 12:10 collapse

I think he was only using it to work on the MacBook, Which, I really don’t think is his daily driver.

janNatan@lemmy.ml on 12 Jun 13:14 collapse

Could be! I have no idea.

black0ut@pawb.social on 12 Jun 15:04 collapse

Last I heard is that he compiles the kernel on an AMD machine (with a threadripper iirc), so he also has a beefy desktop.

VinesNFluff@pawb.social on 12 Jun 11:36 next collapse

I’m more curious which is Stallman’s poison of choice

limelight79@lemmy.world on 12 Jun 11:50 next collapse

Hurd, I assume.

sik0fewl@lemmy.ca on 12 Jun 13:44 next collapse

GNU/Hurd

LeFantome@programming.dev on 13 Jun 07:19 collapse

Hahahahahaha. Good one.

Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works on 12 Jun 16:18 collapse

Triqusel??? I think

bieren@lemmy.zip on 12 Jun 12:40 next collapse

Come on. We all know he uses WSL.

Enzy@lemm.ee on 12 Jun 12:44 next collapse

Windows

bilb@lemmy.ml on 13 Jun 02:25 collapse

I hung out with him in Vegas and he’s 100% a windows guy

b34n5@hexbear.net on 12 Jun 20:00 next collapse

I read somewhere that he uses Fedora. I don’t know how accurate that info is, though.

pineapple@lemmy.ml on 13 Jun 03:13 collapse

I heard that somewhere too. It might have been a while ago but he has said publicly a few times that he doesn’t care much about which distro he uses doesn’t switch very often.

Beagle@discuss.tchncs.de on 12 Jun 21:21 next collapse

He does not use any distro, he uses the Kernel directly :)

(joke)

llii@discuss.tchncs.de on 13 Jun 07:46 next collapse

Git/Linux

Beagle@discuss.tchncs.de on 13 Jun 11:15 collapse

True! My bad 😅 How could I forget about Git?

JustVik@lemmy.ml on 13 Jun 13:23 collapse

And a special keyboard with ~467 keys. One key for each syscall.

archy@lemmy.world on 13 Jun 13:21 collapse

I don’t know about the distro but I know his keyboard only has 2 keys: 1 and 0