Maybe I'm just naive, but I don't think "Linus is as likely to be 'wrong' about desktop Linux as most others who use the desktop." While I agree that other people might be overestimating the importance of Linus's opinion on desktop Linux, I believe he's less likely to be wrong about these things than a whole bunch of people. It's not the same as with "rocket ships, film production, oil recovery techniques", because he has a lot more to do with Linux in general than those other topics.

Yes, it's important not to jump on a bandwagon, but that goes both ways: it seems to be increasingly fashionable to attack "celebrities" in our field through thinly veiled ad hominems. Calling Linus a "grumpy-head" or describing Stallman as "waddling" and having a "beard matted into a bizarre pizza crust flapping off the end of his chin" [1] are just recent examples. It's ruse and it does not truly contribute to the point the author is trying to make anyway.

As @math and @forgottenpaswrd mentioned in their comments, Linus is a smart guy who, furthermore, has a non-negligible level of expertise and credibility when it comes to Linux-related topics in general. I'll pay attention to his opinions and try to extract facts from them, in order to form my own. I understand that the author is frustrated with people who don't do that, but dissing Linus is not the way to rectify the situation.

In the end, I don't care what Linus uses on his computer as much as why he uses (or refuses to use) it and how that might applied in general.

[1]: http://brooklynhacker.com/post/35445721578/that-moment-when-...

> But how much of it is truly your own conclusion

You can not make an informed opinion on _everything_. There is too much information out there to fact check all bits of it. Sooner or later you will have to take somebody elses opinion on faith, i.e. to trust that he has fact checked something so you dont have to.

Then you are better off looking at a bunch of reviews rather than listening to a single point/article online. Instead of blindly trusting Linus or someone else, finding out what most people think about a particular solution/system/device is usually a lot more helpful. I am not saying that "the majority holds the truth", but you are less likely to go wrong by following several advices than just one.

That is true about facts, e.g. I trust that other people have verified the fact that the earth is round.

Unfortunately, ideas like "is open-source good" are usually very difficult to turn into pure facts, and are therefore opinions. And these are usually very different depending on what different people think the world is or should be - there is no "correct" fact which I can trust someone else to verify.

Please write the sequel to my book, I will not be including my book, but someone who has read my book will provide a review.

The review may be in a language you speak (and may be in a language they speak,) and they may have understood my book, but I am a clever author and they were the cheapest reviewer I could find. They are not themselves an author, nor can they read, but they have talk to authors before and have looked at the pictures in my book (I had not realized they were there!) and asked me questions I did not understand.

Oh, and I will not correct, evaluate or pay you for your sequel but readers of my book can choose to also read your book. I can cancel or up the fee for my book whenever I feel like it, so future readers may not exist.

I would say that it is a "correct fact" that it is a disadvantage to undertake the project I suggest even though you may on occasion succeed. Similarly, I would suggest you avoid building on your own dime on a closed source framework. But hey, I can't prove that golfing in lightning storms is a bad plan, so go nuts..

following your reasoning, Linus was a kernel hacker, he had no idea about other fields of computer science like distributed revision control systems, right? Good luck with your argument.

The reality is that Linus is good at kernels and DRCS for the same reason and is not mere "knowledge", and for the same reason you should pay attention when he talks about software in general.

> The reality is that Linus is good at kernels and DRCS for the same reason

OP says that whatever makes him good at kernels doesn't help to make him good at version control systems (X->K but X-/->V), whereas you say that there is a third factor that makes him good at both (X->K and X->V): I say that it is his long experience with managing a zillion patches and branches for the kernel that made him good at version control (K->V).

Handling a lot of patches does not make you automagically a good candidate to rewrite the history of revision control systems in two years, IMHO. So there is still this X Factor that Linus has.

Otherwise I could counter-argument that people that use a lot Desktop features in their day to day work are in line to create the best desktop ever, which is not true.

For Linus handling a lot of patches was just the motivation and what also gave him the required background (that is not enough) and the opportunity to be an user itself of his ideas on RCS.

Another argument is that Git does not offer incredible advantages only to big projects, it is winning actually because its wast advantages can "scale down" very easily to small projects.

First, the truth is what works ,iOS, Visual Studio, Photoshop... Many proprietary software products have huge amounts of dedicated zealots. Why ? Because they're great.

The bandwagon effect in OSS is a truth, but this is not a cult behavior, this is skills recognition. Just look at how languages and tools have changed in the last ten years, these changes are driven by users not by BDFLs.

When I compare software to, let's say politics or the media, I'm not ashamed of the open source community.

Then, when you're challenging open-source it's a whole different thing, you're criticizing a philosophy, you can't just bash it, you have to refute it logically.

I think the fact that you had to put that disclaimer in the post-script at the end exemplifies your point. We have to do that around here because people will immediately stop reading once you've disagreed with a "cult" teaching and begin attacking you/defending their teaching. You shouldn't have to put a "PS I promise I'm not saying anything bas about open source I'm just using it as an example so please don't miss my point" at the end of your comment. We should all be able to be reasonable and thoughtful and not have these knee-jerk reactions whenever someone even looks at something we like funny.

Exactly.

I knew if I don't do that others will turn the comment thread into a open source vs proprietary war and the main point will be dismissed.

So I thought I'd highlight that I'm just using that as an example that everyone has seen and can relate to so that people will keep the conversation around the bigger picture.

For a cult, we're not very good followers. There's barely anyone who doesn't use proprietary software, even if there are OSS solutions, as long as the closed version is sufficiently better.