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]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
2-06-2008 @ 11:40AM
Justin said...
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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2-06-2008 @ 11:43AM
Angel said...
Agree. Why did he say that?
2-06-2008 @ 11:58AM
Alan said...
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.
2-06-2008 @ 1:39PM
Simon Arch said...
"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+.
2-06-2008 @ 3:23PM
Fritz Laurel said...
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.
2-06-2008 @ 5:00PM
Kevin Ballard said...
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.
2-06-2008 @ 5:01PM
Kevin Ballard said...
Frankly, Linus just acts like an unruly child sometimes.
2-06-2008 @ 11:54AM
Russell said...
This is probably some of his problems with HFS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_File_System#Problems
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2-06-2008 @ 12:02PM
Marcos said...
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.
2-06-2008 @ 12:09PM
drp said...
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.
2-06-2008 @ 11:55AM
Rory said...
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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2-06-2008 @ 11:58AM
Brandon Martinez said...
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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2-06-2008 @ 12:12PM
Majd said...
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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2-06-2008 @ 11:36PM
Michael Rose said...
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.
2-06-2008 @ 12:22PM
JiN said...
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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2-06-2008 @ 12:26PM
Kieran said...
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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2-06-2008 @ 12:35PM
Ken said...
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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2-06-2008 @ 12:43PM
Paul Grave said...
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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2-06-2008 @ 12:44PM
darkfusion said...
Big shock to see Linus complain about something.... well not really. He bitches about everything.
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2-06-2008 @ 12:56PM
NutMac said...
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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