Why Linus Torvalds would rather code than make money

That's not how it is. And it's not even so with a browser.

Most of the time, I have everything in one browser window with tabs, but if I have two browsers open, I have them open for a frigging reason, and they're not one browser, they're two browsers.

LXF: You can turn them off with an extension, but we've read your rant about them and broken upgrades. You could work around it by having Opera, Chrome and Firefox windows open all at once.

LT: Yeah, you can solve it by using different applications, but otherwise it makes no sense at all.

And why would I want to use Firefox and Chrome separately just to get Alt+tab to work right?

And why did you do that again? They never have a reason - there's no sane reason for that except Mac OS does that, and they never used to do the whole multitasking thing, they only have one task bar.

LXF: Have you heard about the Raspberry Pi? At least in the UK, it's really captured everyone's imagination.

LT: It's slightly too slow for what I'd like to do.

The thing can actually output on to a real monitor, but then apparently it can't play YouTube, etc, and if it can't make things like that smooth, then it's a bit too slow.

LXF: The problem is it requires some firmware which isn't open source.

LT: Plus it's like two to three years old, the SoC on that board, to keep the price down.

I think it's a compelling idea.

I really like the notion of having hardware that's so cheap you can basically give it out to kids, and 99% will never use it for anything, because they'd rather play; but if you give everybody the possibility of maybe noticing that it's cool to hack on things like that, I think it's great.

I suspect that the next generation is going to be sufficiently better that you can do some things with it.

LXF: We do a podcast and have this thing called an open ballot. One of things we asked recently is: "If you were Linus Torvalds, what would you change about Linux?"

LT: I wouldn't change a thing.

TOPICS
Latest in Internet
Quordle on a smartphone held in a hand
Quordle hints and answers for Monday, March 10 (game #1141)
NYT Strands homescreen on a mobile phone screen, on a light blue background
NYT Strands hints and answers for Monday, March 10 (game #372)
Quordle on a smartphone held in a hand
Quordle hints and answers for Sunday, March 9 (game #1140)
NYT Strands homescreen on a mobile phone screen, on a light blue background
NYT Strands hints and answers for Sunday, March 9 (game #371)
SimCity BuildIt
I can’t remember a time when SimCity didn’t exist – now I’m hooked on the app version
Quordle on a smartphone held in a hand
Quordle hints and answers for Saturday, March 8 (game #1139)
Latest in News
MacBook Air mute key
The new M4 MacBook Air finally fixes an Apple keyboard annoyance that's been around for decades
A collage of Ellie and Joel in The Last of Us season 2
The Last of Us season 2's new trailer teases a huge showdown between Bella Ramsey's Ellie and Pedro Pascal's Joel, but the big moment I'm waiting for is still being held back
Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max REVIEW
New iPhone 17 Air leak may have revealed some key specs – and how it compares to the iPhone 17 Pro Max
Gaming with AI
I asked Gemini to play a text-based adventure game with me and the AI whisked me away to a word-based fantasy
Apple iPhone 16 Review
Three iPhone 17 model dummy units appear in a hands-on video leak
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge on display the January 22, 2025 Galaxy Unpacked event.
New Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge may have revealed some key details – including its price