Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Cult of Mac, Leopard
Linux creator disses Leopard file system
During the latest Linux conference in Melbourne, Australia, Linus Torvalds was quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald saying that the Leopard file system was "complete and utter crap." As you may know, Torvalds is the parent of the Linux kernel. He said that he still prefers Leopard to Windows Vista; However, he went on to say that both companies are using their operating systems to propel more software and hardware sales.
We'll refrain from commenting on various drawbacks of Linux distributions when compared to Mac OS X, but if you're curious about the challenges and pleasures found when moving to Linux, have a look at the Flipping the Linux Switch series produced by our colleagues at Download Squad.
[via MacNN]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Justin said 11:40AM on 2-06-2008
Cory-- since you're getting paid to do this and, well, I'm not, it would be nice if you summarized a little more about *why* he thinks its utter crap, more than just leaving us that quote. Doing a good job though, otherwise. :)
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Angel said 11:43AM on 2-06-2008
Agree. Why did he say that?
Alan said 11:58AM on 2-06-2008
There's a decent blurb about the deficiencies of HFS in the book "Practical File System Design":
http://www.letterp.com/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf
However, apart from large block sizes, it looks like HFS+ fixed all of the major issues. So I suspect Linus is just shooting his mouth off here in a classic 'Emacs' vs. 'vi' argument.
To some extent, the discussion is basically moot since Apple has demonstrated its intention to move to ZFS. Noel even posted on the ZFS mailing list last week that the next version of Time Machine will use ZFS snapshots directly, which is fantastic. Linus may well be bitter about this, since licensing issues have kept kernel-mode ZFS unavailable on Linux. It's a shame, because ZFS is fantastic. I use it now on my Leopard home server.
Simon Arch said 1:39PM on 2-06-2008
"Apple has demonstrated its intention to move to ZFS."
When? Where? I missed that news. It's too bad if they do. ZFS is not without its own deficiencies. I'd much rather see them carry on with HFS+.
Fritz Laurel said 3:23PM on 2-06-2008
I agree with Justin. I was totally expecting the article to at least give me a summary of what he said. Otherwise, this post is useless.
Kevin Ballard said 5:00PM on 2-06-2008
Unfortunately, I can tell you why he thinks it's crap. Why? Because this basically resulted because of a discussion I had with him (on the git mailing list). Basically, HFS+ is case-insensitive and normalizes all unicode strings to a variant of NFC. Both of these traits he thinks are unacceptable. Despite the fact that I actually tracked down 2 Apple filesystem engineers and got the skinny as to the historical choices behind normalizing (and frankly, case-insensitive is a good thing for a user desktop, Linus just can't see that) and yet Linus refused to pay attention. He acts like the Linux filesystems are perfect. What a hypocrite.
Kevin Ballard said 5:01PM on 2-06-2008
Frankly, Linus just acts like an unruly child sometimes.
Russell said 11:54AM on 2-06-2008
This is probably some of his problems with HFS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_File_System#Problems
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Marcos said 12:02PM on 2-06-2008
Mac OS X's default file system is HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) not HFS (Mac OS Standard). The Wikipedia article is for the older file system.
Also, the original article doesn't say why Linus thinks the file system for Mac OS X is so bad. With no rationale behind his assertion, well, it loses a lot of credibility.
Besides, he himself admits he doesn't care about what happens outside of Linux so it wouldn't be far fetched to assume he doesn't really know much about HFS+.
I'd love to hear more about this.
drp said 12:09PM on 2-06-2008
Although the Wikipedia article you linked to is interesting, it's not really relevant. That depicts HFS prior to 1998. HFS+, the filesystem currently in use doesn't have those limitations.
In fact, one could argue that HFS+ is better than ext3fs (the default Linux filesystem) since it stores its directories as B* trees and not flat linear lists.
Rory said 11:55AM on 2-06-2008
I don't think the article goes into much detail, but I suspect that he's referring to the age of HFS & HFS+. Personally, I agree, I would love to see HFS+ replaced with something a little newer.
Keep in mind, this was some newspaper hoping to cause a stir and get some readers, and Mac users are easy to bait.
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Brandon Martinez said 11:58AM on 2-06-2008
I read the article this came from, and I don't remember Linus elaborating on it. However, HFS+ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HFS%2B) is an old File System, that has had extension after extension added to it to support new features; and generally when you do that it can make things messy, although, not necessarily terrible (Linus is probably blowing a lot of steam, although I can see some justification).
I'm glad that Apple is looking into ZFS, and being able to make it a bootable FS; maybe if they can get that done then Linus will have *nothing* to complain about.
However, his opinion on driving software isn't completely valid. Apple only makes a VERY small portion of the software that Mac OS X users use. Honestly, what is the most common software that Apple makes the people use? iLife. Know what else? Comes with every Mac. There are a lot of free, well made applications for Mac OS X, just like Linux. And besides, with a little finagling, you can get a Linux app to run on Mac OS X anyway.
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Majd said 12:12PM on 2-06-2008
Cory, no offense or anything, but please don't make TUAW another "The Apple Blog" which is just blind, hypnotic fanboyism at its greatest. I am a self proclaimed fanboy myself, but when you say "We'll refrain from commenting on various drawbacks of Linux distributions when compared to Mac OS X" it really makes you sound childish and uninformed. Something better would have been maybe: While Mac OS X has its flaws, it's benefits far outweigh the disadvantages of the chosen HFS+ system".
All systems have their disadvantages, OSX has the least :)
Keep up the good work (btw, i love your applescript and automator articles)
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Michael Rose said 11:36PM on 2-06-2008
Majd, the "we'll refrain from commenting" was added to Cory's post by me. Since I linked to a complete series of posts about switching to Linux (and since Linus was being a bit of a whiny brat anyway) I didn't feel that it was fanboyish.
We like Linux fine here at TUAW, we just like Mac OS X better. No shame in that.
JiN said 12:22PM on 2-06-2008
Watched his talk at Google about git and he couldn't answer a few of the questions on why would a company want to de-centralize their source code repository? He kept saying "...if you are not using Git you are stupid!". That's great. I'll put that into my request for changing our current system. The only reason I see him dumping on HFS+ is that he's pissed about Apple's move to ZFS and needed to do something to get some press.
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Kieran said 12:26PM on 2-06-2008
Why did he say that?
He's annoyed because HFS makes life a bit harder in certain respects for git, his dvcs platform.
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Ken said 12:35PM on 2-06-2008
Lol, we're mac users, so why would you care what a Linux user said?
He also doesn't use a cell phone, only uses text based email and at one time thought Power Point was the best software ever written.
It's just an opinion people.
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Paul Grave said 12:43PM on 2-06-2008
Linus has a big mouth. For him things are either black or white. If something doesn't fit exactly with his expectations then it's 'crap'. He had a similar opinion of Subversion, which he also said was crap, mainly because it didn't fit in with his workflow.
Regarding his Leopard comments. Hey may or may not be right, but why should a user of Leopard care about the FS? It's mostly irrelevant to the end user. As a user should I choose Ext3, UFS or HFS+? As long is they are all stable and have reasonable performance, it doesn't matter.
Apple is using its OS to propel hardware sales? Since when was making money a crime.
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darkfusion said 12:44PM on 2-06-2008
Big shock to see Linus complain about something.... well not really. He bitches about everything.
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NutMac said 12:56PM on 2-06-2008
Git (Software) entry from Wikipedia:
Linus Torvalds has quipped about the name "git", which is British English slang for a stupid or unpleasant person:
"I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git."
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