Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "The mind behind Linux | Linus Torvalds | TED" video.

  1. I think it was about Linus explaining why he likes silent computers.
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  2. Without Linux there wouldn't be Wikipedia, Facebook, Google, Youtube or Twitter. All those services are based on having LOTS of servers running Linux. Also, 100% of current top 500 supercomputers run Linux nowadays.
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  3. It's good to understand your limits :D
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  4. As I see it, the biggest problem with Edison was that he took credit for the work by other people. Also, he used very questionable marketing tricks such as killing a lot of animals with electric shocks in public demonstrations while trying to defame competing AC technology which ultimately won because Edison's DC technology was not suitable for the transmission lines of that day. Even today, DC is used only for special cases for long distance power transmission because the technology required is so expensive even by modern standards.
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  5. In my experience, Stallman doesn't give interviews, he gives lectures. Both in good and bad.
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  6.  @madyogi6164  If you do "git clone ..../linux" you'll end up with about 950 MB of source code and about 1.5 GB of history as git repository. It is possible to compile "modular" kernel that allows booting the system with 5-10 MB kernel image but its driver support will be really really limited without additional kernel modules. My current Ubuntu system has kernel image about 9.1 MB and boot also requires initrd image sized 67 MB which contains my system drivers. In addition, the kernel package contains about 350 MB worth of other hardware drivers so that when I plug my random USB device to the system it will just magically work without having to install any drivers - instead the kernel will use that ~ 350 MB driver collection to automatically load the required drivers. And for some cases Linux doesn't have "native" support for a given device but it does have generic support for the USB controller and another generic driver for the microchip at the other end of that USB connection. That's the major difference with device drivers on Linux vs Windows (et al): Linux device drivers mostly control hardware parts not full devices.
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