Like Linus the creator of Linux? Is he really doing "very little"?

Admittedly he does very little with his computer. He often said these days it's mostly reading and writing emails and merging patches. And he often stated he does not know nor care much about how his desktop works. He uses stock Fedora and spends his time inside his Micro Emacs clone, and laments he's not even doing much coding these days.

I wouldn't be surprised if he had a harder time than an average sweng to set up a LAMP server or troubleshoot networking issues.

Being central to the kernel development doesn't automatically mean you're a computer wiz.

Writing version 0.1 of a kernel from scratch very much does mean you are a computer wiz, how else are you going to make it run? You need to program the base hardware of the computer manually!

Of course if to you a computer wiz is someone who knows how to write a web page, or how Windows works, or how you use Photoshop, then no that’s not what you need. Then again the people who know that probably aren’t enough of a computer wiz to write a kernel from scratch.

This is the problem with Bay/Valley normies.

More often than not did a CompSci degree (or perhaps a full-stack bootcamp?) because they wanted to work in IT - not for the love of Computer Science.

They push for more and more of the computing world to be abstracted by Web/JavaScript frameworks and equate being productive with the ability (or will) to use and develop within this ecosystem.

Corporate pawns who take for granted those who work in low-level environments and spent decades developing technology to enable them their pretty bells & whistles environments.

Just look at the hostility from Microsoft and Apple zealots because people dare to deviate from what they consider normal and technologically superior.

JavaScript/TypeScript/Swift kernels when?

Nice straw man you've built there, not sure what's the point of this rant against "normies."

Not really it does not. We differ on the definition of wiz: you mean one that knows really well how the hardware works, in this context I mean someone that knows how to "program" a computer. This is why I used the very generic word "wiz" and not software engineer. I mean being generally proficient, and he said he is not.

Knowing the exact procedure to enter protected mode in x86 doesn't mean knowing how to troubleshoot network issues, setting up a Wireguard connection or figuring out why systemd doesn't want to start that process.

And in any case, as I mentioned, Linus hasn't been doing much coding these days. These days Linus is a world class product manager. This is main role, and he has admitted that himself. His main responsibilities and daily duties have evolved since 1991, and so has the computing world.

In my opinion a computer wiz has enough talent and knowledge about tech that he can very quickly learn how to do all these things. And I don’t doubt for a second that Linus would be able to learn Wireguard, systemd or any networking system within a few days to a level far exceeding most people, insofar he doesn’t already know.

Linus didn’t just build the most used kernel on the planet, he also built the most used revision control system on the planet and has proven to be an effective project manager, whatever people think about his style. You’d probably be short sighted to dismiss any of his abilities.

you are right and I agree with you on fast learning path, knowledge and being smart in general. The original point though, it all started with

> It’s very easy to be minimalistic when you’re doing very little.

Still makes sense even for Linus, as he probably not need to have say Hadoop running in Docker Desktop, Chromecast playing videos/casting and whatever beyond things related to kernel development on the coding machine vs general case machine.

Standards change.

I don't need nor desire desktop software written with web technologies or other bloated UIs to be productive, thank you.

If you enjoy the bloat of Electron and using your toy mouse to make your computer do what many people do in a terminal then that's your choice. I won't begrudge someone their TOMY computer experience.

Do I understand it right that taskset you need to cover with computer is quite static and not that much focused on collaboration with others? For example - other team members have daily stand up in Slack's huddle, with screen sharing and even drawing from time to time, but you are not actively involved or even cannot attend at all?

Wider question - how it makes your productivity/life better?

I used Slack for the first time the other day and I don't see the fascination and buzz behind it. I'd rather an open source / in-house solution, regardless of whether it's for a business or non-profit project; Mattermost or Zulip, for example. Perhaps even IRC.

I wouldn't be drawing anything with a mouse or trackpad, that much is certain - perhaps a tablet with a stylus would be more suitable for those things. I could use a digitiser tablet with Gimp or Krita if I wanted to do some drawing.

That said, I have access to a web browser which allows participation in Slack, Zoom, etc if required as well as any other GUI programs I may want to run in my minimalist environment. Even in the screenshot I have IRC and Matrix - those are used for collaboration, it's just the clients aren't written in JavaScript/TypeScript.

Some people consider Discord essential for collaboration - those people are probably bad dangers.

I'm more productive and my life is better because I know every file on my computer and what it is doing or what it is communicating with at any one time; I can customise everything to be used in the way I find most optimal/efficient without permission from anyone :)