Linux Journal's very first issue featured an interview between LJ's first Publisher, Robert Young (who went on to co-found Red Hat among other things), and Linus Torvalds (author of the Linux kernel). After 25 years, we thought it'd be interesting to get the two of them together again. You can read that first interview from 1994 here.

Warning: this article contains profanity. Linus Torvalds recently stepped away from kernel development temporarily in order to think about how to be less harsh with developers in certain situations. Simultaneous with his departure was a patch introducing a new Code of Conduct into the kernel source tree. The effects of this are beginning to be felt.

You ever see an injustice in the world—one so strong, so overwhelming—that, try as you might, you just can't ignore it? A crime that dominates your consciousness beyond all others? That drives you, even in the face of certain defeat, to action? Mine is...Linux. Not the existence of Linux. Linux is amazing. Linux powers the world. Linux is, as the kids say, totally tubular. It's the name. It's the name that makes me Hulk out. Specifically, it's that confounded "X". It just plain should not be there.

On October 23, 2018, Linus Torvalds came out of his self-imposed isolation, pulling a lot of patches from the git trees of various developers. It was his first appearance on the Linux Kernel Mailing List since September 16, 2018, when he announced he would take a break from kernel development to address his sometimes harsh behavior toward developers. On the 23rd, he announced his return, which I cover here after summarizing some of his pull activities.

Linux isn't a story anymore.
 
 That's a good thing, but not an interesting one. Let me explain.
 
 Journalism's main product is the story. In newsrooms, the three words uttered most often by editors to reporters are "What's the story?"
 
 As I was taught by an editor long ago—and as I have found to be true constantly ever since—all stories are about three things:

On September 16, 2018, Linus Torvalds released the 4.19-rc4 version of the kernel, and he also announced he was taking a break from Linux development in order to consider his own behavior and to come up with a better approach to kernel development. This was partly inspired by his realization that he wasn't looking forward to the Kernel Summit event, and he said that "it wasn't actually funny or a good sign that I was hoping to just skip the yearly kernel summit entirely." He also wrote that it was partly inspired when: ...people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of not understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry.

There's an ongoing series of skirmishes between corporations who want to sell products that users don't fully control and the kernel developers who want users to be the highest authority. Sometimes these skirmishes manifest in the form of security patches intended to lock down the kernel. Do they lock down the kernel against outside attackers? Or do they lock down the kernel against change from anyone at all, including the user who owns the device?

A look at Linux kernel developers' various revision control solutions through the years, Linus Torvalds' decision to use BitKeeper and the controversy that followed, and how Git came to be created.

The question of the earliest GCC compiler version to support for building the Linux kernel comes up periodically. The ideal would be for Linux to compile under all GCC versions, because you never know what kind of system someone is running. Maybe their company's security team has to approve all software upgrades for their highly sensitive devices, and GCC is low on that list. Maybe they need to save as much space as possible, and recent versions of GCC are too big. There are all sorts of reasons why someone might be stuck with old software.

Having made an earlier defection from KDE to Gnome, Linus Torvalds has now rejected both in favor of Xfce. It’s only natural that the actions of the creator of the Linux kernel would attract extra scrutiny, and I think that his decision is reflective of a wider disenchantment amongst long-term Linux users.

Issue #1, March/April 1994 Linus (rhymes with shyness) Torvalds (author of the Linux kernel) traded email with us for several days in January giving us his views on the future direction of Linux (rhymes with clinics) and his ongoing role in its development. Linux Journal: Ken Thompson was once asked, if he had the chance to do it all again, what changes would he make in Unix. He said he would add an e to the creat system call. How about you and Linux?