Linus Torvalds releases 'biggest ever' Linux 4.9, then saves Christmas Linux overlord Linus Torvalds has released Linux 4.9. “I'm pretty sure this is the biggest release we've ever had, at least in number of commits,” Torvalds writes on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. “If you look at the number of lines changed, we've had bigger releases in the past, but they have tended to be due to specific …
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Last time I checked if you are doing it yourself and you want it to taste nice, some manual entry is required.
Unless, of course, you have the necessary gold blood as appropriate for a member of the golfogarchy, the ruling elite of our new form of government, the golfocracy (*), then you may have a point and click interface to Christmas Dinner.
Most of us don't have the point-n-click interface to Christmas Dinner, so we will have to do without point-n-clicking.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am a golfer!"
If I point 'n' click at my Shel in an attempt to get Xmas dinner, I'd get a frownie-face exception error followed by mv dinner /dev/null; /bin/bash husband, kill -9 %1; cp patio husband
Or something like that.
Pointing and clicking only works when (IsOnFire? && IsOnTelephone?)
Whereas with the CLI you just need to remember it's
$ sudo dinner -make -serve -washup type=xmas_lunch
You shouldn't make the dinner as root, you should make it as an unprivileged user and only switch privileges when it is time to serve it.
Hmm, 'dinner' seems a bit complex with all those options. Surely the traditional way would be:
$ make xmas_lunch
$ make install
$ make clean
(With 'sudo' as required in the style of obligatory xkcd…)
Why are terminal consoles still used?
It's all about getting actual work done on a technical device by professionals.
Although PHB's from the 80's could do something constructive with the command line, it is too terrifying for the determinedly technically illiterate to contemplate. A small number of monkeys clicking at random on the options presented by a GUI can occasionally achieve something by chance. Using a CLI requires thinking, reading and understanding: skills totally out of the reach of a pure GUI monkey. A GUI monkey has to take the CLI away from his colleagues or his limitations and low productivity will be obvious by comparison. There are some tasks that are well suited to a GUI, but would be time consuming and unpleasant using only a CLI.
Techies learn to use a variety of GUI and CLI tools, and pick the most appropriate for the task. A technically illiterate GUI monkey is too busy suffering the death of a thousand mouse clicks to learn anything new.
Getting started with the command line. Start a terminal emulator and:
1) Type "man 1 less" and find the key that exits from less.
2) Type "man 1 man" and find the option for searching for a key word.
3) Type "info info".
man pages give details of the operation of specific commands. info pages give more background information useful for selecting the right command.
@Flocke Kroes "Although PHB's from the 80's could do something constructive with the command line"
Really? I thought they were too busy asking their secretaries to print their emails. OTOH, their secretaries were probably doing quite a lot from the command line, or using obscure key combinations.
I thought they were too busy asking their secretaries to print their emails.
Back in the early 80s when I was an academic computer scientist the head of department's secretary could debug Algol 68 programs. She couldn't program per se, but her boss couldn't type, so she learnt to correct all his typos, fix up dodgy syntax and spollig mustakes and get the program to compile.
> “Read the man page for vi.”
Ah, if only I had been as enlightened for my own first encounter with the UNIX CLI.
Coming from an MS‑DOS and Windows background, my instructions were along the lines of: open telnet GUI in Windows; log in to SunOS server; “cd” is the same as MS‑DOS but it’s “ls” instead of “dir” and forward slashes instead of backslashes as directory separators; and “vi” is an editor. (No mention of “man”.)
OK, fine. Open telnet GUI in Windows; log in to SunOS server; poke around the filesystem a bit. So far, so good; maybe this UNIX thing isn’t so scary after all.
Run vi.
…
[Blank screen; no instructions.]
…
Press some keys. Nothing happens.
…
Press F1 for help. Nothing happens.
…
Press Ctrl+C to bail out. Nothing happens.
…
Use mouse to close Windows telnet GUI.
Eighties? I worked for PHBs in the nineteen-eighties (for certain values of 'pointy'), and none of them would have had a clue what to do if you had placed them in front of any sort of computer interface. GUIs then were rudimentary - Windows 1.0 was released in late '85. The rise of personal computing has been faster than we sometimes remember. It was the middle of the nineteen-nineties when giving computers to office workers as a productivity tool [1] became normal. I submit that the productivity value for PHBs even then was questionable: someone else has pointed out the whole secretary-prints-the-email thing (this still happens, and it's 2016!).
[1] Scientists and engineers had been using computers for computing stuff, and for information retrieval, for quite some time, of course. I'm talking about word processing and spreadsheets for administration.
The force of the CLI is that it is simply a macro language, where the force of the GUI can be harnessed in the background. (i.e. I can go and get a coffee)
All about the right tool for the job, and if its going to take logging into thousands of machines by hand to do something I could script, I know which way my thinking would go.
I didn't see R2D2 using a keyboard
- runs to get out of here....
OK, I'll bite.
One of us is wrong, and it depends on your OS which that is. I'm running a KDE/GNU/Linux machine, and if I press Alt-Ctrl-F1 I can have a CLI from which I can shut down the GUI1 and the machine continues to run. The virtual Teletype terminals are certainly not macros sitting on top of a graphical user interface.
If you're running a recent version (like later than 3.1.1) of Windows, then yes, your CLI (cmd.exe or powershell) is an emulated terminal running in your GUI. If you kill the window manager, then your CLI disappears with it.
'Macro language' is still pretty much wrong, though. The CLI doesn't automate the GUI, e.g. by simulating mouse inputs; it provides alternative commands to manipulate operating system objects like files.
1 jonathan@Odin:~$ sudo service lightdm stop
4.9 being the fattened up version for Christmas, 4.10 should be somewhat leaner. Let's hope the shorter merge window and seasonal over-indulgence in alcoholic beverages do not lead to 4.10 being a Turkey. Though the effect of the aforementioned beverages may mean that kernel devs may slack off and not commit, especially if they get lucky under the mistletoe.
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Version numbering can be very confusing for the uninitiated. If you suspect you might need more than 10 versions before incrementing the digit before the decimal place why not start at 4.01?
Getting more people using Linux is a good thing but some people need gentle guidance. The command line is very scary for the uninitiated and whilst very powerful it seems very awkward.
Right up to the point some bright spark decides to send you their module’s version number in a double, then acts confused when you ask them how you’re supposed to tell the difference between 4.1 and 4.10…
By 4.99 the supplier had understood the issue, and skipped 4.100 – even if it really shouldn’t have taken them that many iterations to get the product working in the first place. At the same time our GUI had to go through a few versions of its own as we tried to keep up: "%.1f", "%.2f", "%.3f", …; "%g" might have appeared to be the clever answer, except another module had its final version at 3.120 and couldn’t be changed; we ended up having to set the number of digits to appear after the decimal point in a configuration file, which you might think would have led to "%.*f", except the person coding it didn’t know about that so we got if (numDigits == 1) printf("%.1f", version); else if (numDigits == 2) …
"It's not a decimal dot, it's a separator!"
Linux Kernel Version Numbering (1)
and
Linux Kernel Version Numbering (2)
The initial Linux kernels had a very simple numbering system. The first, which was released by Torvalds in September 1991, was designated 0.01. This was followed the next month by the 0.02 kernel. The current version numbering system began with the kernel 1.0, which was released in March 1994.
Linux kernels are now identified by a set of four numbers, sometimes supplemented by several additional characters. The first number denotes the kernel version. It is changed least frequently, and only when truly major changes in the concept and the code of the kernel occur. In fact, it has been changed only twice in the history of the kernel: in 1994 with version 1.0 and in 1996 with version 2.0.
The second number denotes the major revision of the kernel version. It was formerly the case that even numbers indicated a stable release, that is, one that was deemed fit for production use (i.e., use in a non-experimental environment), such as 1.2, 2.4 or 2.6. Likewise, odd numbers, such as 1.1 or 2.5, have historically represented development releases. They were for testing new features and device drivers until they became sufficiently stable to be included in a stable release. However, this has changed starting with the Linux 2.6.x series, and new feature development now takes place in the same revision number.
The third number indicates the minor revision of the kernel. It is only changed when new features or new drivers are added. The fourth number represents corrections, such as security patches and bug (i.e., error) fixes.
Sometimes the four numbers will be followed by several letters, such as rc1, ac, ck and mm. The letters rc (followed by a number) refer to a release candidate and thus indicate a non-official release. Other letters usually indicate the person responsible for that release, such as Alan Cox, Con Kolivas and Andrew Morton.
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They sold me a dream of computing
They sold me a silent build
And they told me a shell prompt
'Till I believed in the Kernelite
And I believed in Linus Torvalds
And I looked to the screen with excited eyes
'Till I woke with a yawn on Christmas morn
And I saw him running Linux on his Raspberry Pi's
Linus: A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms. Enthusiasms... Enthusiasms...What are mine? What draws my admiration? What is that which gives me joy?...Excellent kernel code. (He holds up a the hardcover edition of "Linux Kernel Development") A man, a man sits alone at a terminal. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he sits alone. But in the field, what? PART OF A TEAM.
All: Teamwork.
Linus: Codes, debugs, documents, fixes, part of one big team. Bats himself the live-long day, Ken Thompson, Dennis Richie, and so on. (laughter) If his team don't field, what is he? You follow me? No one. A rainy day, the repos are full of users. What does he have to say? 'I'm goin' out there for myself. But, I get nowhere unless the team wins.'
(Bats an offending but unsuspecting developer to death with the directory-sized book)
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