Matthew Garrett Quits Kernel to Do His Own
Matthew Garrett, noted developers and self-proclaimed social justice warrior, today announced solidarity with Sarah Sharp's resignation in protest of rude behavior and the "way [Linus Torvalds] behaves" by providing a Linux kernel with changes rejected by Torvalds. Elsewhere, Jack M. Germain said Slackel offers advantages over Slackware but it's still not for new users and DarkDuck found most Linux users still use Windows or Mac as well.
Matthew Garrett posted today that the news of Sharp's departure was both "terrible and touching" because he knows what she means and also knows her leaving will not change anything. He said, "Linus has made it pretty clear that he's fine with the way he behaves, and nobody's going to depose him." He said he only "remembers" when working on the kernel was a pleasure because "having to deal with interminable arguments over the naming of an interface because Linus has an undying hatred of BSD securelevel." So, he's just "tired of dealing with the crap" and feels his staying encourages "its continuation. I can't be bothered any more."
Garrett then said he doesn't have to put up with "the crap" anymore because he's just going to submit his patches to his own repository and offered a link for those wanting to run a kernel with his "BSD-style securelevel interface." He concluded by saying he'll only communicate on the Linux Kernel Mailing List when he's being paid to do so. Garrett also added he'll be patching his kernel with power management code when it's ready as well. One commenter asked him to make a "MJGinux-derived distribution." Another said "It just makes no sense forking the kernel because of social issues. I hope your fork will die very soon and that no one will participate and use it." The rest are somewhere in-between.
The Linux blogger known as DarkDuck today posted that most Linux users still use Windows or MacOS. He gathered his opinion from a recent poll on his site in which the majority of respondents admitting still using one of the proprietary systems. Granting his sample was less than 100, DarkDuck found that "more than one third, use two operating systems on their computer, one of them being a flavour of Linux and another - Windows or MacOS." 16 answered they only use one Linux while 20 said they use two or more Linux distributions regularly. Four uses Windows or MacOS only.
In other news:
* Slackel Linux: Not Your Father's Slackware