back to article Torvalds: 'We're not doing Linux95 … for a few years, at least'

The next version of the Linux kernel, version 3.12, has a name: “Suicidal squirrel”. Linus Torvalds let the new name be known in a Git commit in which he killed off the “Linux for Workgroups” name used for version 3.11. The Linux Lord has not, however, entirely ruled out returning to Microsoft-themed names for future versions …

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  1. EvanPyle
    Coat

    Linux95 - We're only 18 years behind!

    Donning the flame suit!

    1. techulture
      Pint

      Make it 9-5, if Linux ever supplants Windows as the standard OS for office serfs.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Up

        The short lived 2nd generation 9-5 was a nice Saab. Shame it was their 'Rover 75' moment.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Hey, the first gen was nice, too. I've got an '05 and love it. Speedy, quiet, cheap as chips, and pisses off arrogant Germanophile car snobs. It's perfect.

        2. Mr. Peterson
          Happy

          Reminds me of some U.S. auto-mag review of a mid-70's Saab Turbo in which the reviewer declared it "the Earth Shoe" of turbo-powered vehicles, claiming a somewhat less than impressive zero-to-sixty in an afternoon.

          Carry on.

  2. jake Silver badge
    Pint

    "Suicidal squirrel”

    Talk about poking fun at pedestrian FOSS offerings ...

    Nice one, Linus. Have a beer on me :-)

    1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: "Suicidal squirrel”

      For some reason the Tufty Club came to mind. I am getting old...

      1. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: "Suicidal squirrel”

        LOL, I wonder how many El Reg readers even know what the Tufty club is, that's made my day...

        1. Peter Simpson 1

          Re: "Suicidal squirrel”

          I just read about the Tufty Club (isn't the web wonderful?)

          Someone with a warped sense of humor decided on a squirrel for a road safety mascot, methinks.

          Here in the northeast US, they are usually seen on the roads in their two-dimensional form...

          1. Lamont Cranston
            Unhappy

            Re: "Suicidal squirrel”

            No problem with flattened, red squirrels, in the UK - the American grey competed them out of existence.

            1. stuff and nonesense

              Re: "Suicidal squirrel”

              I see red squirrels daily up here in Scotland...

              1. Lamont Cranston

                Re: "Suicidal squirrel”

                That's a good point - I did see a couple when I was in Scotland, last year, which were quite the novelty to a southener like myself.

  3. T. F. M. Reader

    The Reg will assume...

    ...he's had a problem with a newer model.

    No need to assume. The Reg could have just skimmed the original blog that was linked to in the article: the original Intel SSD that 'rocked' was put into Linus's wife's Mac Mini (that ran Linux, for those who still did not click on the link). The Reg also would not have written that Linus "bought" the SSD. Sloppy...

    Besides, what's so startling about "working for five years without filling an 80GB drive"? The guy actually works much of the time, and he probably does not fill his HD with torrented movies or kitty photos or fat PowerPoints from marketing drones. Even a large number of kernel source trees and compiled images will not take all that many GBs. [If he uses locally stored VMs though...]. My laptop is about 5 years old and it has a 160GB drive that is about 30% full, so I could have been fine with half the space. I can easily imagine that Linus is more focused and has less junk on his disks.

    1. jake Silver badge

      @ T. F. M. Reader (was: Re: The Reg will assume...)

      You've never actually worked on the Linux kernel, have you?

      Takes space, meat. Lots of space.

      1. James Hughes 1

        Re: @ T. F. M. Reader (was: The Reg will assume...) @Jake

        Kernel build tree is a few gig, so not that much. An 80GB drive would be more than adequate to have a few of those hanging around.

        Now Android on the other hand is enormous. You need perhaps 30GB or more for that.

    2. Mystic Megabyte
      Linux

      Re: The Reg will assume...

      Yup! Five year old laptop here, 18.2 GB used, 205GB free.

      1. richard 7

        Re: The Reg will assume...

        4 year old Inspiron 1545 and 64Gb SSD with VMWare Workstation and Delphi 2007 still about half empty.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The Reg will assume...

      >Working for five years without filling an 80GB drive is more startling...

      Came to say the same... perhaps his definition of "work" isn't: v. (intransitive): to sit around all day under weird fluorescent light among people you secretly despise while trying to download porn without being noticed.

      We're not all MPs you know El Reg.

      Furthermore... is it conceivable that he might be allowed by his work to use some kind of those newfangled cloudy "server" things* I've heard whispers about to store stuff?

      * https://git.kernel.org/cgit/

    4. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: The Reg will assume...

      Well he does fire off a fair few sweary and violent e-mails, maybe his Linux box ran out of disk space and blew up ungracefully.

    5. Marco van de Voort

      Re: The Reg will assume...

      Stress is measured in percentage writes, and the compiled object code is iirc larger than the kernel source, and refreshed/rewritten quite often (because usually cleaned after major updates).

      Moreover he works with a DVCS so has a whole repo db, not just checkouts.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The Reg will assume...

      Those of us who use a lot of space are not all torrenting TB sized porn collections or some such utter rubbish, some of us home users do have need of TB storage NAS's and arrays.

      Photography is my main hobby and you can have an average 16bit Photoshop edited image coming in about 1.5-2GB in size, plus you may shoot over 500 keepers a year. I need triple backups so I have two mirrored 8TB NAS boxes for backups. My wife does genealogy and she collects scans of documents and photos, she has a 45,000 image family photo library stretching back to the 1860s, that needs storage and backing up.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The Reg will assume...

        Very nice I'm sure AC but what does any of that have to do with Linus' work? ...and do all those NAS devices you need for your hobbies live inside you work workstation's SSD?

  4. frank ly

    re. "... forced to spend time rebuilding ..."

    I assume this was as simple as formatting and then loading up a saved image onto a new SSD.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: re. "... forced to spend time rebuilding ..."

      The story on slashdot suggest otherwise... Someone posted a quote of Linus from a forum saying "only wimps use backup, real men ftp and use replication".

      I wonder if he changed his mind after KDE nearly lost all their codebase because of a replication error and not understanding that replication is not backup.

      Basically, like lots of IT guys, he presumes that because he knows a lot about a particular subject he knows about everything and programmers rarely know about infrastructure, particularly backup.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: re. "... forced to spend time rebuilding ..."

      Rebuilding a PC just because a disk failed, how lame; hasn't this twit heard of RAID1?

      I have known the click-of-death and grieved at the loss of data, so RAID1 for OS disks, at home and at work.

      I have two 128GB Samsung 830 SSDs as a RAID1 array, in a home MIDI tower, so that when one dies (it will!), I can order a new SSD, fit the new one, then let the RAID rebuild while the machine is in use; just like when a new WD Red failed (in warranty) in my FreeNAS; so easy and quick!

      I am in disbelief when I see any serious developer use a laptop as their main machine; because they so limiting, slow, and expensive! e.g. limited RAM (more really is better, especially for VMs and server tests), limited drive capacity (as in only one 2.5" disk), limited SATA and USB3 for external devices......

      I think that management should be instantly sacked if they insist that developers have laptops as their main machine; morons!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: re. "... forced to spend time rebuilding ..."

        >when one dies (it will!), I can order a new SSD, fit the new one, then let the RAID rebuild

        Gosh AC. So you'll have to remove and replace the failed hardware and rebuild too, when your hardware dies? Well knock me down with a feather.

        Who are you calling a "twit" and a "moron"?

      2. lunatik96

        Re: re. "... forced to spend time rebuilding ..."

        Really? Normally you have very good insight into issues and obviously know more than the average office/ cubicle droid. But A laptop provides so many more options than a desktop. My laptop (medium power) has a quad core CPU, 8 GB ram (expandable to 16) and space for 2 2.5" hard drives. 1 could be flash. The I7 2630QM CPU seems more than adequate for any of my school programming tasks and watching video. It even plays a few online flash games well, although I don't play very much. The 17" screen seems sufficient for most tasks even as my vision is getting weaker. AND it is portable. 6 hour battery life. I have worked with computers for 30 years and Unless there is a specific demand for a desk side or tower, I only use laptops which I suspect will soon give way to the larger Phablets coming out.. Soon, our TV's will have an ARM (maybe MIPS) based CPU running linux or similar for web access (which most ppl think is their computer), and only serious professionals will need dedicated units.

  5. Eugene Crosser

    Linus Torvalds let the new name be known in a Git commit

    ... and regretted shortly thereafter.

  6. fearnothing

    "Suicidal Squirrel" - you're all reading too much into this. It just means that he's been watching Happy Tree Friends.

  7. kissingthecarpet

    What a class act Linus is :-)

    1. Peter Simpson 1

      He does have his "quirks", but think of what the man has accomplished in twenty years:

      not only did he produce an open source UNIX-compatible OS, but he catalyzed an entire community to help him. Perhaps it was only a case of him being the right person in the right place at the right time, but he has certainly stuck with it and built Linux into something that I doubt he ever could have envisioned at the beginning.

      // flunked out of charm school, he did, though.

      1. Crazy Operations Guy

        "UNIX-compatible OS"

        Oh god you're killing me!

        I have a whole stack of HP-UX and zOS binaries that whenever I try to run on Linux will dump like it just ate a plateful of curry made with spoiled chicken and washed down with a gallon of water from a Mexican village.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "UNIX-compatible OS"

          "hat whenever I try to run on Linux will dump like it just ate a plateful of curry "

          And you are really so well informed that you really though you could just run a binary from one system on another.

          Nearly as bad as the guy the other day that wanted wine on ARM so that he could run his Windows programs.

  8. Joseph Haig

    Suicidal Squirrel?

    Is this the kernel that is going to appear in the "Saucy Salamander" release of Ubuntu? And can we expect similarly alliterative names every six months?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Suicidal Squirrel?

      "And can we expect similarly alliterative names every six months?"

      "Killer Koala" must be on that list then.

      1. Joseph Haig

        Re: Suicidal Squirrel?

        Well, to keep in line with Ubuntu they will need to go alphabetically, so maybe Terrifying Tarantula and Undead Unicorn (hey, it is the national animal of Scotland so what does it matter if it is fictional?)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Suicidal Squirrel?

          > t is the national animal of Scotland so what does it matter if it is fictional?

          Like Scotland you mean? Absolutely appropriate.

          1. Not That Andrew

            Re: Suicidal Squirrel?

            I'm pretty sure the noble haggis is Scotland's national animal

            1. Captain DaFt

              Re: Suicidal Squirrel?

              "I'm pretty sure the noble haggis is Scotland's national animal"

              And it is a cute lil rascal too!

              http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haggis_scoticus.jpg

              (Note: the word 'gullible' is not to be confused with "tongue in cheek")

              1. This post has been deleted by its author

              2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

                Yes, cute

                Which is why it breaks my heart to see them hunted.

      2. Mephistro
        Coat

        Re: Suicidal Squirrel?

        "Killer Koala" must be on that list then.

        Wake me when they release "Motherfucking Mole"!

        Mine is the one with the garden shovel and the plans for a homemade buthane molehill buster.

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If it's too hard for the experts...

    ...how can the man in the street cope?

    This so-called expert (i.e. an amateur in all but name) didn't keep correct back-ups and has now lost a bunch of other folks' work? They shouldn't need to re-send emails, all the information should be on the server (safely backed-up). This is IT 101, not rocket engineering. Windows and Exchange have excellent provision for this, perhaps Torvalds should consider upgrading to a professional product?

    And people wonder why Linux is seen as little more than a toy for nerds.

    1. Ian Bush

      Re: If it's too hard for the experts...

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_revision_control

      Ian

    2. codejunky Silver badge

      Re: If it's too hard for the experts...

      @AC

      Dont worry I am sure you will cope. Obviously as you dont know how to cope you would see linux as a toy for nerds. Even if that toy provides most of the IT 'experience' you enjoy, particularly web. Dont worry, the experts will continue and you wont even notice.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If it's too hard for the experts...

      >And people wonder why Linux is seen as little more than a toy for nerds.

      Only by you RICHTO... and even you don't really believe your own rhetoric, do you? The ferocious desperation of your squealings betrays your inner terror. Don't worry though - there are other employers.

    4. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: If it's too hard for the experts...

      "I long ago gave up on doing backups. I have actively moved to a model where I use replaceable machines instead. I've got the stuff I care about generally on a couple of different machines, and then keys etc backed up on a separate encrypted USB key.

      So it's inconvenient. Mainly from a timing standpoint. But nothing more."

      Basically he lost the work he was actively doing.

      That's pretty much inevitable...

      He archives emails (off the mail server) as he works, maybe he should review that method - but he's been doing this for a while, so there is a good chance that the event is sufficiently rare that the occasional "can you resend merge emails for this branch" email is a good compromise.

    5. Chemist

      Re: If it's too hard for the experts...

      "i.e. an amateur in all but name"

      Better (by far) a very talented amateur than an anonymous loser

      (Not, of course, that he is an amateur BTW)

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If it's too hard for the experts...

      Never mind Windows: he could use OSX and Time Machine with a Time Capsule. Even my aged mother has got a back-up that way, going back a couple of years, easily searchable and useable. Hmm. You get a real UNIX too and most of the useful GNU and BSD stuff already installed.

      Still, more fun being a genius who acts as sole gatekeeper for the whole world of his developers, screaming obscenities at those who fail to work to his standards. Who is allowed to bawl at him for inadequate system management? Does that mean he is also the test team?

      Anon in case the Aged Mother reads this and takes offence at the description.

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