Linus Torvalds postpones Linux 6.8 merge window after being taken offline by storms

Linus Torvalds has indefinitely postponed the merge window for version 6.8 of the Linux kernel after a winter storm knocked out power and internet near his work-from-home location in Oregon. On Saturday Torvalds shared news that temperatures in his area near Portland fell to 14°F (-10°C) and that the power outage was …

[David 132]

I sympathize with Linus.

I'm also in Oregon near Portland. We got temperatures down to 12F (-11C) yesterday, which was particularly pleasant when our power went out at 8:30AM - and with it our water. The wife and I spent the day huddled round the log fire, with a propane heater and two electric ceramic heaters running off our generator - for all the good they did, I might as well have been waving a Swan Vestas match around. The house dropped to about 40F (4C) despite our best efforts (on a brighter note, I now know that I need to re-do the draught stripping around one of the doors - its hinges on the inside were coated in ice...)

Unlike Linus I didn't have to run a kernel merge window, although I did have to keep dozens of ducks and a couple of goats alive and thawed. No I won't swap with him :)

Fortunately our power came back on unexpectedly this afternoon (thanks heroic PGE linesmen!), but looking at the 'leccy company's outage tracker I see they still have 4100 outages and about 80,000 people affected - I do hope Linus isn't one of them. This weather is brutal.

[ldo]

Just Checking ...

... that I am allowed to type things like “12°F” and “-11°C” without triggering those “unsupported character” errors ...

[Roland6]

Re: I sympathize with Linus.

> although I did have to keep dozens of ducks and a couple of goats alive and thawed

In past ages the stables were under the house: animals kept warm and animals provided warmth for the humans above them…

[JamesTGrant]

Re: I sympathize with Linus.

You can still find homes with a similar layout in rural areas in the Middle East. Particularly on hill slopes.

[john.jones.name]

Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær!

how bad is the insulation ? this is not -40°C like you get in finland

[Andy The Hat]

Re: Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær!

Only -40C? Call that cold? When I were a lad we froze to absolute zero, licked glaciers to warm up for breakfast ... :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær!

Scraping ice off the inside of the bedroom windows etc. (in the blizzard of misty eyed memories this was a real thing when I were a lad btw, no central heating back then).

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær!

in the blizzard of misty eyed memories this was a real thing when I were a lad btw, no central heating back then

Likewise. We did have some storage heaters (remember economy 7?) but they were in the lounge, my parents bedroom (funny that) and one in the hallway. Mum was firmly of the "if you are cold, put another jumper on" persuasion..

The back bedroom (down a little corridor and steps) was particularly cold. It did have a gas fire but it was so anaemic it was hardly worth the bother. *And* I got told off for running it all night ("gas isn't free you know"! and "you might poison yourself with carbon monoxide"!) so it was generally a case of another blanket or two plus a dog or cat if you could persuade them to leave my parents' bedroom..

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær!

"We did have some storage heaters"

If they'd been invented they wouldn't have done us much good. Not without electricity.

[Rick Deckard]

Re: Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær!

What's central heating ...is that when you make the fire in the centre of the cave ?

[Zolko]

Re: Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær!

Ha, breakfast, what a luxury ! We used to ...

[Joe W]

Re: Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær!

Spent a year in S'toon, we had -50 (yeah, -50°C, I guess that's -60F? at some point you stop caring for the units, it's bloody cold, that's what it is) for a week (and when I arrived in late summer it was still a nice +35°C, or thereabouts) - did not really matter, people can work with that ( I also lived in Norway, so I second your comment title).

[Anonymous Coward]

M3GAN

Why does this make me think of the opening of the film M3GAN where the girl gets orphaned in a car crash due to bad weather near Oregon. (And a later screenshot of M3GAN's code is the Linux kernel groups.c)

[Wanting more]

Single point of failure?

Should such an important project really be so reliant on just one person.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Single point of failure?

See what TMMM says about the importance of a single mind determine things.

[Alumoi]

Re: Single point of failure?

Let's go by committee, Microsoft style. That will teach Linus how an OS is done.

[JamesTGrant]

Re: Single point of failure?

To be fair - the NT kernel was pretty flippin’ excellent (one might argue that it’s still in use and as everyone who worked on it is now retired and there’s no one at Microsoft brave enough to work on it, it is the only reason Windows OS is stable. But that’d be unkind…)