Torvalds: Faster Upgrades, Smaller Devices

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

June 16, 1999 (1:23 PM EDT)

By Malcolm Maclachlan,

Linux creator Linus Torvalds on Tuesday outlined his near-term plans for Linux: smaller devices, shorter upgrade cycles.

Speaking to an audience of 350 at a Bay Area Linux Users Group meeting at the Four Seas Restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown, Torvalds said the last Linux upgrade cycle took too long. At two and a half years, it was a year behind schedule, he said. This meant that many users who wanted new features had to run versions of Linux that hadn't been thoroughly tested.

By contrast, the next version, 2.4, should have code freeze by this fall, well under a year after 2.2 came out in March. Going forward, Torvalds said, he will work to make Linux more modular, and include fewer changes in each upgrade.

He also said that too much attention has been paid to bringing Linux, the popular open source clone of Unix, to bigger and bigger computers.

"The big devices are kind of sexy," Torvalds said. "That's where the benchmarking goes, that's where the press goes."

However, small devices represent a great opportunity for Linux, he said. In the past, when embedded devices operated in a vacuum, a manufacturer could just cobble together a basic operating system. But now that small devices are being connected to networks, they need to have many more capabilities.

This echoed comments he made in his keynote speech at LinuxWorld Expo in March. Torvalds also reiterated his warning that making Linux a viable desktop alternative will take time. With supercomputer and workstation platforms, a developer can assume that his user is an expert and will use only a small range of programs. On the desktop, the user could be a novice and will demand a wide variety of applications, he said.

He also said that Linux developers should be careful about putting too many modifications into Linux to make up for hardware deficiencies.

"You shouldn't try to work around limitations in hardware, because five years down the line those workarounds are going to come back and bite you hard," Torvalds said. "That's where Windows is right now."

Rather, hardware will continue to become better, cheaper, and more powerful, he said. Even issues such as plug and play are generally solved by hardware improving, rather than changes in operating systems.

On a more personal note, Torvalds said that he will continue to be heavily involved in Linux for at least eight and a half more years, making reference to the fact that he created Linux eight and a half years ago.

However, he dodged questions about whether the company he works for, Transmeta, has any involvement in Linux. Torvalds has said little about Transmeta, which is partially funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, except that they allow him time to work on Linux. Some people have even speculated that reports that the company is primarily involved in the design of a novel type of microchip are just a cover story.

"Let's just say we're doing some cool stuff," Torvalds said before walking off stage.