this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2026
881 points (98.6% liked)
linuxmemes
32681 readers
1504 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
- Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
- Do not harrass or attack users for any reason. This includes using blanket terms, like "every user of thing".
- Don't get baited into back-and-forth insults. We are not animals.
- Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
- Bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated. This is an LGBTQ+-friendly community -- if that is a problem for you, you should leave.
3. Post Linux-related content
- Including Unix and BSD.
- Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of
sudoin Windows. - No porn, no politics, no trolling or ragebaiting.
- Don't come looking for advice, this is not the right community.
4. No recent reposts
- Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, <loves / tolerates / hates> systemd, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
5. π¬π§ Language/ΡΠ·ΡΠΊ/Sprache
- This is primarily an English-speaking community. π¬π§π¦πΊπΊπΈ
- Comments written in other languages are allowed.
- The substance of a post should be comprehensible for people who only speak English.
- Titles and post bodies written in other languages will be allowed, but only as long as the above rule is observed.
6. (NEW!) Regarding public figures
We all have our opinions, and certain public figures can be divisive. Keep in mind that this is a community for memes and light-hearted fun, not for airing grievances or leveling accusations. - Keep discussions polite and free of disparagement.
- We are never in possession of all of the facts. Defamatory comments will not be tolerated.
- Discussions that get too heated will be locked and offending comments removed. Β
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Never meet your heroes. Have you ever seen the way he rages at people on the mailing list? Don't get me wrong, he's made some incredible technical contributions that I'm thankful for, but I have to push back against claims that he is a well-adjusted dude.
Another example being the developer of GrapheneOS. Unhinged, but works in our favor. Just don't follow them on social media.
Counterpoint: Linus was all out in the open.
I wouldn't want to see what Bill Gates is like behind closed doors...especially as a kid.
No one is saying hes on the level of gates or jobs or whatever.
But that doesn't make him an angel either. It makes him human.
He famously took a year off because he wanted to work on how toxic he was.
The comment was never meet your hero's. Hes a good guy, but if you have had to work with him, you may be leas inclined to agree whole heartily.
@wholookshere but @JasonDJ never claimed that Linus is perfect. On the contrary, he admires how normal and human and unfiltered Linus is. So in terms of toxicity profile, we don't need to actually meet him to know what to expect. So your gotcha is kinda irrelevant. We know he's not a saint, and isn't trying to be. Which paradoxically makes the guy more righteous than all tech billionaires combined.
He's had to adjust quite a bit I'd say he's thoroughly and well adjusted.
Yeah, Linus today is nothing like Linus in the 90s/00s
You also have to remember that he made an OS as a hobby project and suddenly everyone wanted to mess with it. It was the Wild West of decentralized project management in those days, I donβt condone any of that unprofessional behavior but Iβm also not in the least bit fucking surprised that he had very personal rage-out moments as unsolicited criticism poured in from around the world, constructive and well intentioned or not. Thatβs a lot of unexpected pressure.
He got better, which implies to me that he wants to be a good person; and thatβs all we can really ask of anyone.
True that. Andrew Tanenbaum dissing on Linux in the early days just because it didn't conform to his ideals of a microkernel is sufficiently uncomfortable to read, imo. It's not like Linus kept anyone from making their own open source kernel.
To be fair, they insisted that they were on good speaking terms. Seen from that one occasion where some article claimed that Linux was copied from MINIX and Tanenbaum dissed the article, defending Torvalds.
Bruh if everything I said to people was recorded and searchable, I'd seem like an unhinged egomaniac with anger issues too, but people can change, and get more mellow.
People need to understand we are all humans and stop idolizing-idealizing people, aren't you all bored of celebrities/famous people abusing their status?
Seriously, we need more people who shun fame and celebrity. Like Rick Moranis did.
not really anymore for quite a while.
he will absolutely tell someone that should know better, if they are doing a bad job, but the times of random shitstorms is over for quite a while now
Have you read the rants, he is often spot on.
Not to protect so called "toxic environment", but sometimes people need to hear what others think about them and their work, preferably without pink glasses. Hiding truth behind fake polite smile is not correct approach either.
As an example, Linus once harshly commented about breaking user space. Was it impolite to mog developer? Maybe. But nowadays in our "polite circle with pink ponies" people more easily do what they not supposed to, cause there no harsh feedback. My amdgpu crashing and taking full video stack with it each focking time. It can't restart even if you trigger /sys/kernel/debug, like, it's dead-dead. And that due to user space program, aka game. This shit should't happen and yet here we are. Could it be different if Linus kept yelling at people, to reinforce fear of breaking stuff? My money on "yes". There other examples of course, like compete disaster called "Concord", where ultra polite environment became so forced that it kinda became toxic thing on itself and we all know the end result of it.
So yea, not a fan of that.
Which one is that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord
Clearly meant the ship. /s
I meant recent game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord_(video_game)
Cause it was disaster so big that Sony had to shutdown it within month, it even got plenty of coverage and documentaries. Realistically, there are more documentaries, than there were players online in it.
lol sounds like a fun thing to read up on, when bored. I'll put that in the "read at some point but probably forget about forever" drawer. Thanks!
Is that not normal for IT professionals?
Lol for real. Have you ever met a user?
From my experience as a new end user with basic questions and issues, it's pretty normal for a decent chunk of other linux users in general. I've met more angry Linux people when asking for help than I ever have for any other OS or software.
It's a small minority I'm sure, but they're extremely vocal individuals.
Where was this, reddit or something?
The linux users here seem pretty chill. There's a lot of tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating jokes about linux users being pretentious, but I don't really see much of anyone being actually obnoxious in any of the techy comms here
Various distro and general forums and GitHub/similar sites. I've come across several over the last few years. The types of places you go for actual help from people with knowledge and experience. Not just various social media sites.
It's a small amount in the grand scheme, but they're vocal. All it takes is one raging asshole for a normie first trying out Linux and looking for a solution to an issue to be driven away entirely.
That makes sense, I haven't really interacted much on those sites. I've browsed them for help sometimes, and it seems like they get annoyed when people ask questions that are already answered. Either in the docs or somewhere else on the forum. They usually just say to do a search before posting to see if it's already answered. But maybe if someone's having a bad day and gets fed up with being asked the same thing over and over again. Or maybe someone's just an asshole. I don't know.
I'm not saying it's okay to be a jerk, especially on those forums where they're literally representing the community. You're right, it really can put a sour taste in newcomers' mouths.
Have you ever managed a project as large as this? I think we can give him some leeway here. If you invite people to help on your project that is worth quadrillions, but is open-source, you have to be hardened enough. And Linus is just a well rounded person who doesn't play politics, that's what I learned from 30 years following that dude. I have to admit, he is a diver, so I am a little bit biased on his personality type (btw, so is Gabe, but he is doing it on a much larger scale now). Anyway, give this guy some space, he is doing good work that we all need to appreciate more.
Not sure if this is meant to be a fat joke, but it's worth the extra month wait for HL2E3 if it is.
It is not.
That is a painfully AI written article, do you have a better source?
You can start with his wikipedia article
If it's any consolation I also worshipped Carmack and Zoid Kirsch (credited then by deadname)....
What's wrong with Carmack? I'm genuinely curious.
I think his joining Meta to work on VR was... an interesting decision.
But then he quit.
It's not like he joined in the early startup days. Carmack knew (or could have known) full well what a shit company Meta is.
True but he probably thought he had big enough of a name to lead his own department as he pleased
Nothing...I was hoping to have some childhood heroes I can still keep.