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Steve Jobs Tried to Hire Linux Creator Linus Torvalds to Work on OS X

GenesisST said:
Thank god that didn't get to be through. The guys annoys the hell out of me.
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Gee, my feeling toward you is kind of similar. 🙄

Thank god Linus didn't take Steve's offer because Linux would have been the worse for the wear. It also proves Linus isn't some money grubbing greedmonger like Steve. I have 100x more respect for Linus than I'll ever have for the late Steve Jobs.
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
Gee, my feeling toward you is kind of similar. 🙄

Thank god Linus didn't take Steve's offer because Linux would have been the worse for the wear. It also proves Linus isn't some money grubbing greedmonger like Steve. I have 100x more respect for Linus than I'll ever have for the late Steve Jobs.
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This sounds like generic geek pride to me. One thing Steve Jobs was not is a "money grubbing greedmonger." Tovalds is more like Steve Jobs than you will ever realize.
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
It also proves Linus isn't some money grubbing greedmonger like Steve.
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No, this doesn't prove anything. Where was money even discussed in that bit about the Apple offer? See, to "prove" this, wouldn't Steve have to had offered Linus like a billion dollars or something?

Besides, where are you getting this that Steve was what you say he was? I think you're misinformed.
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
Gee, my feeling toward you is kind of similar. 🙄

Thank god Linus didn't take Steve's offer because Linux would have been the worse for the wear. It also proves Linus isn't some money grubbing greedmonger like Steve. I have 100x more respect for Linus than I'll ever have for the late Steve Jobs.
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The year 2000: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-246359.html

It's probably more likely that he, like everybody else, is interested in his own financial security.
 
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Linux works fine, much better than Windows. The only thing holding it back is the lack of developers releasing programs for it. Could be something to do with the different version, the same thing holding android back. I switched from Vista to Linux about four years ago, which ultimately brought me to the mac. It's the best of both worlds, the stability of Linux with the software of Windows. It's still a fun operating system to play with.
 
Evangelion said:
Linus would have been a good fit at Apple. In some ways, he's like Steve Jobs: he insists on correct solutions, even if they are harder to do. He knows what he wants, and he's not afraid to push people to get it. And yes, he can be a bit of an ass.

But he basically hated OS X. But his personality would have been a good fit. And there's no chance that he would stop working on Linux.



Oh, it seems we have a new uber-negative person in the forum. Good luck with Ubuntu.
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Hardly like Steve Jobs. The Kernel Team determined he wasn't a good fit. At NeXT we already had experience with a similar personality in the kernel team who was a one-way street, came from CMU to work under Avie and turned out to be a completely intolerable person to work within a team.

To be clear, Linux [I'm writing this on Debian] would be a complete disaster of an OS if it weren't for the billions invested by Corporations like IBM, Intel, Oracle, RedHat, and many more. However, the FOSS zealots would argue differently as if they'd have ever gotten it off the ground and turned into a modern OS without Corporate sponsorship and software collaboration.

Let's just say the team that is the LLVM/Clang Team at Apple working with devs at Google, ARM, Sony, IBM, Intel, Cray, etc., is the types of genius that Steve liked to cultivate. Linus's little Napoleon concept of authority is not how Steve worked. Technical development was firmly under the control of Steve's Engineering Generals.

The advancements seen at LLVM/Clang/Polly/Libc++/Libclc [OpenCL]/LLDB and more in just two years is staggering. It's an incredibly well managed team of experts from several corporations where Lattner [overseeing LLVM] doesn't have the role of benevolent dictator. The team is a finally tuned system of talent and continues to explode in contributors coming on-board.
 
q64ceo said:
It perplexes me to think that all these years after releasing Darwin as open source no one else really uses it as their base. Darwin is a powerful OS.

All these new Linux flavors have no idea what they are giving up by not going down that lane.
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I agree with that analogy ! Not a great fan of Ubuntu,, ever since the latest gnome shell came it took away the geekyness of Linux... Ubuntu has lost a lot of users to Mint. I'm afraid I used to use Solaris and Opensuse and Ultimate Edition..All these platforms including OSX have one thing in common.....Unix!!
 
Wirelessly posted

It would be really interesting to know why he hated Mac OS's Mach kernel. From what I've read it's that kernel that makes OSX so good.
 
Bubba Satori said:
Yeah, who wouldn't want to go from 95% marketshare to 1%. 🙄

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It's the UI and apps that come standard with OSX that make it great, imo.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)

The Mach kernel is part of the underlying mechanics that makes OSX possible, for it's time it was incredibly advanced and Apple saw 20 to 30 years worth of development possibilities in it. It sounded really quite extraordinary which makes me wonder why Linus didn't like it.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1154036/osxorigins.html

While seeking the fundaments of an advanced operating system to match NeXT’s ideas for innovative hardware, a new approach to UNIX architecture caught the eye of Jobs and his team. It was an experimental OS kernel christened “Mach” that was under development by graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University. The most prominent of these students was a 24-year-old named Avie Tevanian, who had begun the Mach project as part of his PhD in Computer Science.

A kernel lies in the heart of every computer operating system. It is a piece of software that controls the most basic functions of the computer and serves as an intermediary between the hardware and higher level software that runs on top of it. Tevanian’s Mach kernel was unique for its time in that it gained added functionality from pre-compiled modules that could be shifted around and updated without the need to start from scratch every time the kernel author added new features. To put it simply, this gave Mach a far more flexible and modern structure than previous UNIX-compatible kernels, and it was this novel quality that attracted Jobs’s attention.
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It's a remarkable development, that's why I'm so curious as to why he wouldn't like it.

But how long will it last? Tevanian, who left Apple in 2006, is surprised and delighted at how flexible OS X and his clever little kernel (part of which still resides in OS X today) turned out to be. After all, he says, OS X runs on a wide range of hardware, from industrial strength servers to desktops to even iPhones and iPods. Apple had a 20 to 30 year lifespan in mind for OS X during its development, says Tevanian, but he suspects its fundamental underpinnings may last even longer. Only time will tell.
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Xtremehkr said:
The Mach kernel is part of the underlying mechanics that makes OSX possible, for it's time it was incredibly advanced and Apple saw 20 to 30 years worth of development possibilities in it. It sounded really quite extraordinary which makes me wonder why Linus didn't like it.
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Probably because Apple is psychotic about having everything as closed as possible, the end user would have many limitations where as Linux gives the user as much freedom as possible.

Choice, is not in Apple's vocabulary. I have a feeling Steve Jobs must have gotten the hives if that word was ever used around him. Just look at all the proprietary bull***t there is with iOS.... forced use of itunes? No replaceable battery? Only one means of acquiring software? Closed OS with limited customization? I could go on.
 
Hellhammer said:
I think your conclusion is far-fetched. Torvalds working for Apple would not have meant that OS X would have become another Linux. I'm pretty sure Steve would still have made the final decisions on ideas - Torvalds being the guy who turns ideas into actual code.
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I didn't draw any conclusion. I just said that he annoys me and that I remember when you had to compile a lot just to install basic software.

I've seen videos of him at conference and he just bugs me.

As for my "thank god it didn't go through" comment, I might not have bought a Mac and moved away from Windows.
 
I have a lot of respect for Linus. I may not always agree with him, but he seems much more grounded and realistic compared to some of the FOSS people out there, especially when compared against RMS. I really came to respect him when he chose to keep Linux under the GPLv2 and not move it to version 3.

Everyone here is currently using Linux. This site is hosted on it, as are many others. So don't be so quick to judge here.
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
Gee, my feeling toward you is kind of similar. 🙄

Thank god Linus didn't take Steve's offer because Linux would have been the worse for the wear. It also proves Linus isn't some money grubbing greedmonger like Steve. I have 100x more respect for Linus than I'll ever have for the late Steve Jobs.
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Please don't take it personal. I've seen video of Linus and he just bugs me, that's it.
 
wikus said:
Probably because Apple is psychotic about having everything as closed as possible, the end user would have many limitations where as Linux gives the user as much freedom as possible.

Choice, is not in Apple's vocabulary. I have a feeling Steve Jobs must have gotten the hives if that word was ever used around him. Just look at all the proprietary bull***t there is with iOS.... forced use of itunes? No replaceable battery? Only one means of acquiring software? Closed OS with limited customization? I could go on.
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Every ecosystem has its annoyances, including OS X/iOS, Windows, Android and Linux. Those systems don't necessarily need choice in their vocabulary, it just needs to be in yours. I noticed in a separate post that you are going to move your household to Linux (Ubuntu). See how easy choice is? I've moved my household across multiple platforms over the years. My "IT Support" time has decreased to near zero with OS X and I've got the level of control over the OS that I need. Personally, I don't want the OS to get in my way and being an SA isn't interesting to me anymore. Each to his or her own, though.
 
Xtremehkr said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)

The Mach kernel is part of the underlying mechanics that makes OSX possible, for it's time it was incredibly advanced and Apple saw 20 to 30 years worth of development possibilities in it. It sounded really quite extraordinary which makes me wonder why Linus didn't like it.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1154036/osxorigins.html



It's a remarkable development, that's why I'm so curious as to why he wouldn't like it.
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He wouldn't like it because of apple business model is against everything he stands for. The worst thing in the world for him is to see an open source product become one of the most closed products in the history of computing.
 
r.harris1 said:
Every ecosystem has its annoyances, including OS X/iOS, Windows, Android and Linux. Those systems don't necessarily need choice in their vocabulary, it just needs to be in yours. I noticed in a separate post that you are going to move your household to Linux (Ubuntu). See how easy choice is? I've moved my household across multiple platforms over the years. My "IT Support" time has decreased to near zero with OS X and I've got the level of control over the OS that I need. Personally, I don't want the OS to get in my way and being an SA isn't interesting to me anymore. Each to his or her own, though.
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Uh, I never said anything like that. I wouldnt move anyone in my house to Linux because the software isnt there, especially in my case since I rely on the Adobe Creative Suite.

I'm talking about choices like configuring Mission Control after they botched it by removing essential Expose features. The ability to not be forced to use iTunes with an iPhone.
 
minor technical point

Linux is not an operating system; it is a kernel which operating systems are built on. Most Linux based OSes are build out with GNU tools and software.
Linux started building a kernel while RMS started building all the other stuff. Two people approaching the same problem from different ends.

Someone mentioned that this site is hosted on Linux. Probably not; it's probably hosted on Apache. Linux itself is almost completely useless to real people; it's all the other stuff around it that makes the OS and hence the computer, useful.
 
Torvalds was a beleiver in the use of monolithic kernals to implement an OS, and argued such as early as 1992. That pretty much ruled out Darwin and the Mach kernal from his favor around the turn of the millenium.
 
I use both Linux and OS X (OS X is my main OS and use a lot of use-and-throw Linux VMs whenever I need to do some crazy hacky stuff). I don't know why they think that OS X would had been a lot better if Linus worked for Apple. Out of the box, I think OS X (Darwin) is a far better, stable, complete, secure and user friendly *NIX than any other OS.
 
All fine if you don't like the path the OSX is going: you can't please everyone (coming from Leopard, I don't see what all the fuss about Lion being the end of OSX is about).

However, saying that Ubuntu has surpassed OSX and constitutes a legitimate alternative is a *slight* overstatement, to say the least. While it may be miles away from the distros of 10 years ago, it still has a long long way to go until it reaches the state of compatibility and ease of use of OS X or even Windows, for that matter.
 
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