The ups and downs of life with Linus
Linux kernel maintainer Alan Cox has given an insight into the experience of working with Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux who maintains its development kernel.
During a talk last weekend at the Free and Open source Software Developers European Meeting, FOSDEM, on the challenges of maintaining a stable Linux kernel, Cox revealed that although Linus is good at developing code, he does not enjoy some of the other jobs that go along with software development such as bug fixing and beta testing.
"Linus is a good developer, but is a terrible engineer," said Cox. "I'm sure he would agree with that."
Cox explained that he and Torvalds sometimes have different approaches to fixing a problem, due in part to their different responsibilities. As the maintainer of the development kernel Torvalds needs make sure the kernel code is easy to maintain, while Cox is more interested in kernel stability and is not so worried about "hacking" the code to get it to work.
