Torvalds: Linux Is For Everyone

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April 19, 1999 (12:00 AM EDT)

By Eric Hausman,

CHICAGO -- Advocating choice for customers, Linux developer Linus Torvalds said his goal is for Linux to be available everywhere for whatever use the customer wants.

Speaking in front of an enthusiastic audience on the first day of the Comdex trade show here in Chicago, Torvalds said users should ultimately not care which operating system they are using.

"They should care that it's stable enough and portable enough," he said.

To that end, Torvalds took several shots at Microsoft, to the delight of the standing-room-only crowd, often referring to OSes that tend to crash and require frequent rebooting.

"What I want to see is when a person goes into a store to buy a computer, they have to think about what kind of operating system they want," Torvalds said. "So there isn't just one default choice."

The idea for Linux, Torvalds said, is for an OS in which "every user can control what he does with it."

"There's not one large vision for what Linux should be," he said. "You should be able to do whatever you want."

The system should be available to anyone, from the largest corporation to the poorest student, Torvalds said. And, he added, the Linux concept can work because the developers are not doing it for the money, but "we do it for love."

Torvalds said right now, Linux is more suited for the midrange space, adding there is much work that still needs to be done. But he said the psychological side of Linux has changed, making it more, "politically correct."

He also said while new patches for Linux are available each week, there is also a stable version available, which does not require weekly updates. "The patch of the week is for developers," Torvalds said. "Just because you can see what is going on, doesn't mean you should."

Once the current stable version of Linux becomes widely available, Torvalds said work will begin on the next version. "There is constant development," he said."

Torvalds also downplayed concerns about the possibility that Linux splinters are being developed. For one, he said, anyone who makes an improved version has to make it available to other Linux vendors. "Nobody has the potential to really screw over other vendors," he said. "They have to make the base system available."

In addition, Torvalds said he is hopeful word will spread that "splintering is bad," and that will prevent others from trying to form a proprietary Linux system.

The address was much more informal than a keynote by Microsoft chairman and CEO Bill Gates, given earlier Monday morning. Torvalds reminded the crowd he is a technical person and not a marketing person, and asked for audience participation.

Early in the presentation, when Torvalds was speaking about the ability of Linux to allow users to do whatever they want, he said there is a possibility that Linux could even control a nuclear power plant.

At that moment, the lights went out in the room, which prompted several in the crowd to yell that the lights were probably run on Windows 2000, from Microsoft.

Later, when the lights went out again, Torvalds said: "The whole show floor is controlled by Microsoft."

Torvalds also displayed his disappointment with Java.

"I used to be really excited about Java," Torvalds said. "But it lost a lot of its potential due mainly to the way Sun mishandled it."

Torvalds warned the audience not to get caught up in the hype of Linux. "Forget the hype and remember why Linux is widely used: It does what people want," he said.