I was at the talk, and it's strange this what people take from it. You should watch the whole thing and see what he built over years.
I was a bit disappointed that most of the questions ignored his talk about a very cool jukebox he built and focused on OS drama.
He built a jukebox with all hit songs he could find in it 1900-2000 and for prerecorded music, got a player piano and sheet music and midi and integrated the whole thing. Touch screens, voice activation and so on. Hardware and software and data hoarding project.
He said he has massive cabinets of CDs, all the music he ripped and tested audio encoders with his own ears.
Ken is 80, and still building cool side projects and scratching his own itch! That's the story.
Be like Ken by building something cool, not by using whatever OS.
I was there too and, at first, was wondering if the music thing was just a warm up to the main talk. But soon enough I settled into the flow of it.
His slides were incredibly minimal throughout and then, at the end, he played a video of maple leaf rag pouring forth from his player piano midi setup and it was like choirs of angels singing.
How many boring ass talks have I sat through that I’ll never remember — but I suspect I’ll remember his talk for a long long time.
Edit: I've put a placeholder up there for the time being until we get a better suggestion. Submitted title was "Unix legend Ken Thompson announces he's switching From macOS To Raspbian Linux". I agree with the parent that this is trivializing (also cherrypicking and editorializing) and we should focus on the substance of the talk.
I have to say I was disappointed by the question at 59:23. They seemed to expect a retrospective on Ken’s career or some grand philosophical statement on software or open source. To be honest, I was pretty surprised by the direction of the talk myself, but I ultimately enjoyed it.
You see, Ken decided to talk about his 75 year project: his music collection. He talked about audio formats, collecting music from different groups, sourcing metadata, building hardware to play music and more. He was deeply interested in the topic and honestly probably a bit obsessive for multiple decades. This was very humanizing. And to be completely honest he reminded me a lot of my girlfriend’s father who we think is undiagnosed autistic.
Ultimately, I think the reason why Ken was so prolific over such a long time is his ability to be deeply interested in problems. He was not too fussy about tools. He didn’t push Go or Linux or UNIX. He wasn’t self aggrandizing. He just wanted to tell people about his project that he’s been working on. Honestly, I thought it was a great lesson that might have gone over a lot of people’s heads.
I recall reading an interview many years ago where he mentioned downloading large quantities of music to build his personal collection and that his employer, AT&T, did not object.
Thompson: It's kind of a personal/research hobby/project. Let me explain it from an external point of view. Basically, I'm just collecting music. I'm getting lists from various sources—top 10s, top 50s—and I try to collect the music.
Right now, my list has around 35,000 songs, of which I've collected around 20,000. I compress the songs with a Bell Labs-invented algorithm called PAC [Perceptual Audio Coding] and store them on a jukebox storage system. I started this before MP3 was heard of on the network. PAC is vastly superior to MP3.
My collection is not generally available because of the legal aspects. I went to legal and told them I was collecting a lot of music, but I don't think they realized what I meant by "a lot." Anyway, they said that in the case of research there's something similar to fair use and that they'd back me, but wouldn't go to jail for me. So I can't release it generally. But it's pretty impressive. It's split-screen like a Web browser; you can walk down lists, years, or weeks.
Computer: It's a personal hobby.
Thompson: It's hard to differentiate since, if you haven't noticed, almost everything I've done is personal interest. Almost everything I've done has been supported and I'm allowed to do it, but it's always been on the edge of what's acceptable for computer science at the time. Even Unix was right on the edge of what was acceptable at Bell Labs at the time. That's almost been my history.
I feel privileged to watch this. I live in north Africa and I feel like taking a flight to California to go visit him, inquire about his health, tell him about my children progress at school, show him how much I love him and how much I'm grateful.
completely agree with you. ken and the not so big group of people who has positively shaped all our technology really need more appreciation from us users, although i'm sure he would be weirded out by it like any proper geek. That been said: thanks ken!
It's also worthy to note that shortly after that part of the video, he notes (from another question) that he has over 50 Raspberry Pis (including 12 stacks of 4xPi4s). So his choice of Raspberry Pi Linux is likely the result of that.
The announcement is in the Q&A after the talk - but the talk itself is definitely is worth watching. It starts at 10:56 (link below), and covers his "75-year project". It's kind of an amazing story that his life has spanned so many different eras of technology.
I was using a combination of windows/linux for a while until my archlinux laptop shit the bed after an update and I decided to say, fuck it, I'm finally buying a macbook because at least then I can still do unix shit without having to worry about everything working the next day.
I'm not happy about "Apple Silicon", it does feel restrictive and often times the only way to get around it is to use licensed VMs, which feels like a bit of a rip off. At the same time, my laptop runs phenomenally well, does everything I need it to do, and it never dies or gets overheated under normal use. I can't really complain.
Archlinux is a rolling release distro. Which mean you are supposed to:
- update them very frequently
- check the news before any update which mention any manual intervention needed
This is definitely a distro for people who want to get involved in the sysadmin part of it. A distro like Fedora will have a new release every 6 months and each release and ~390 days of support. You aren't expect to do manual intervention, just let it update itself upon reboot/poweroff from times to times and do a major upgrade, every 6 months to 1 year. Debian has 2y releases cycles and +- 3y of support, in the ubuntu world it is like Fedora or LTS (5y of support). If you want the longest extended lifecycle, RHEL and its clones have pretty much 10years of support without any fuss. Add to that the immutable distros like Fedora Silverblue, OpenSUSE MicroOS and some others where it is virtually impossible to make it shit the bed, even while being stupid.
So in the linux world you can definitely choose your poison, from the less eventful one to the one needing more attention. It looks like you didn't choose wisely. If I had to setup a distro for the least knowledgeable people, I would set it up with an RHEL or Almalinux and install a more modern browser through Flatpak. As long as the hardware is supported from day 1 they would expect a desktop that do not change at all for 10years.
I would love to know more about what you mean by 'archlinux shit the bed'. If you dont remember the exact error code, any text from the error screen, or even vague description is fine.
I believe that spending 15mins on the arch forums or IRC would probably result in somebody helping you out with the right pacman incantation. YMMV, my personal experience.
On a tangent, I would love to hear more about any Debian stable users out there and their experience with the conservative approach to updating.
I am particularly fond of this Debian wiki article on DontBreakDebian: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
You might like your macbook's hardware more than you think. It's a pretty open platform with a standardized instruction set and on open bootloader than can run Linux with pretty good hardware support for such a new platform.
So you went from archlinux, a system explicitly telling you you have to get involved in your own computer to make sure it works, to a macbook where everything is taken care of for you. What did you expect with archlinux exactly ?
That is a hacker's hacker. Hacked a 50s jukebox that combines LCD display with manual switches and supports voice input to play the chosen song on a player's piano - from a catalog that spans a century.
Also loved the video of his wife enjoying the setup - straightforward and effective.
What an incredible guy. Him, Dennis, the rest of Bell Labs, and all the other less known influential computing pioneers are such treasures. We're a fortunate field to have the kind of people that we do.
To those who are complaining about the lack of power/issues with Raspberry pi, don't forget, this is not one of your run-of-the-mill tinkerers, this is Ken Thompson.
I just wish there were hardware to support a full switch to Raspbian. Ken has a lot of RPi 4. Those are usable as an interactive desktop but it's not a great experience, the hardware is just barely capable of being a responsive desktop OS.
I really like what Google has been doing with ChromeOS and Chromebooks. I wish there were a program like Chromebooks for a Linux desktop. Arguably that is ChromeOS itself, but the Linux environment you use is a VM.
Have lived with MacOS on a “late 2014” Mac Mini until it became so slow as to be virtually unusable (amongst other things). Now happily run Linux on it.
Exactly. Everyone is missing the big picture, focusing on Ken's jukebox, when its pretty shocking that Ken's giving up on a BSD-inspired (UNIX v7-descended) OS. Frankly, I was ready to throw my employer's mac against the wall when it refused to allow me to install gdb. The move towards gatekeeper and putting everything inside its own private walled garden will definitely ruin open source tools that can access any file on the system, making apple superior to all developers. I am pretty sure that some of these gestapo changes have been rolled back.
I’ve given strong thought to switching away from macOS. I too have been a Max user all my life, a Macintosh Plus being the first computer in our house. I would get fed up at Apple’s hardware choices or its limitations on users.
I have had a dozen Linux computers with various systems on them. I don’t know if it’s because they were Dell machines, or if it’s an Ubuntu thing, but I have had almost every single one turn into a brick after a Canonical-issued update.
The kind of brick where you have to boot into the boot loader and into single user mode (?) and start issuing arcane commands to try to recover your system with some old kernel.
The thing that keeps me on my Mac is that I can mess around with Unix computing all day, and then go back to being with done when I want to get back to using my computer. I don’t feel confident like that with Linux.
My experience is that what holds Linux back is NVidia. Their proprietary drivers work great when you first install them, but inevitably break on update bringing you to a text mode emergency command line. When I made the switch to Linux in 2018 I made the conscious decision to avoid Nvidia hardware and it has worked out really well.
I'm sorry to hear about your experience! I feel like noting that my primary driver has been Kubuntu on an (nvidia) laptop for a few years now, and it's been the most pleasant experience. Sure, you get rough edges every now and again, but I was honestly getting rougher edges on the Mac (it's been a long time since they 'just worked', alas).
Certainly no involuntary grub prompts to date, thankfully! Happy as a clam with my Linux laptop as a daily driver, including for gaming (!) and work.
Here I am waiting for apple to finally introduce side loading (and with that hopefully easier ways to jailbreak) in iOS so that I can switch to a better smartphone experience.
[+] [-] adamgordonbell|3 years ago|reply
I was a bit disappointed that most of the questions ignored his talk about a very cool jukebox he built and focused on OS drama.
He built a jukebox with all hit songs he could find in it 1900-2000 and for prerecorded music, got a player piano and sheet music and midi and integrated the whole thing. Touch screens, voice activation and so on. Hardware and software and data hoarding project.
He said he has massive cabinets of CDs, all the music he ripped and tested audio encoders with his own ears.
Ken is 80, and still building cool side projects and scratching his own itch! That's the story.
Be like Ken by building something cool, not by using whatever OS.
[+] [-] superposeur|3 years ago|reply
His slides were incredibly minimal throughout and then, at the end, he played a video of maple leaf rag pouring forth from his player piano midi setup and it was like choirs of angels singing.
How many boring ass talks have I sat through that I’ll never remember — but I suspect I’ll remember his talk for a long long time.
[+] [-] dang|3 years ago|reply
(By 'good' I mean accurate, neutral, and representative of the talk as a whole.)
((The submitted URL was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaandEt_pKw&t=3473s, but our software swapped in the canonical URL, which has no timestamp.))
Edit: I've put a placeholder up there for the time being until we get a better suggestion. Submitted title was "Unix legend Ken Thompson announces he's switching From macOS To Raspbian Linux". I agree with the parent that this is trivializing (also cherrypicking and editorializing) and we should focus on the substance of the talk.
[+] [-] klyrs|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asddubs|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agent281|3 years ago|reply
I have to say I was disappointed by the question at 59:23. They seemed to expect a retrospective on Ken’s career or some grand philosophical statement on software or open source. To be honest, I was pretty surprised by the direction of the talk myself, but I ultimately enjoyed it.
You see, Ken decided to talk about his 75 year project: his music collection. He talked about audio formats, collecting music from different groups, sourcing metadata, building hardware to play music and more. He was deeply interested in the topic and honestly probably a bit obsessive for multiple decades. This was very humanizing. And to be completely honest he reminded me a lot of my girlfriend’s father who we think is undiagnosed autistic.
Ultimately, I think the reason why Ken was so prolific over such a long time is his ability to be deeply interested in problems. He was not too fussy about tools. He didn’t push Go or Linux or UNIX. He wasn’t self aggrandizing. He just wanted to tell people about his project that he’s been working on. Honestly, I thought it was a great lesson that might have gone over a lot of people’s heads.
---
This comment was copied from lobste.rs. https://lobste.rs/s/htwiag/ken_thompson_reveals_his_surprisi...
[+] [-] 1vuio0pswjnm7|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Simplicitas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hedora|3 years ago|reply
Hmmm. I meant for that to be snarky, but it is a better headline.
[+] [-] pmarin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway25135|3 years ago|reply
Computer: You're also collecting music?
Thompson: It's kind of a personal/research hobby/project. Let me explain it from an external point of view. Basically, I'm just collecting music. I'm getting lists from various sources—top 10s, top 50s—and I try to collect the music.
Right now, my list has around 35,000 songs, of which I've collected around 20,000. I compress the songs with a Bell Labs-invented algorithm called PAC [Perceptual Audio Coding] and store them on a jukebox storage system. I started this before MP3 was heard of on the network. PAC is vastly superior to MP3.
My collection is not generally available because of the legal aspects. I went to legal and told them I was collecting a lot of music, but I don't think they realized what I meant by "a lot." Anyway, they said that in the case of research there's something similar to fair use and that they'd back me, but wouldn't go to jail for me. So I can't release it generally. But it's pretty impressive. It's split-screen like a Web browser; you can walk down lists, years, or weeks.
Computer: It's a personal hobby.
Thompson: It's hard to differentiate since, if you haven't noticed, almost everything I've done is personal interest. Almost everything I've done has been supported and I'm allowed to do it, but it's always been on the edge of what's acceptable for computer science at the time. Even Unix was right on the edge of what was acceptable at Bell Labs at the time. That's almost been my history.
Source: http://genius.cat-v.org/ken-thompson/interviews/unix-and-bey...
[+] [-] slim|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramrunner0xff|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jasoneckert|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Macha|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blibble|3 years ago|reply
(with no random dude on github deciding to add microsoft directly into apt's trusted keys/repository list)
[+] [-] jonas21|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/live/kaandEt_pKw?t=656
[+] [-] DiscourseFan|3 years ago|reply
I'm not happy about "Apple Silicon", it does feel restrictive and often times the only way to get around it is to use licensed VMs, which feels like a bit of a rip off. At the same time, my laptop runs phenomenally well, does everything I need it to do, and it never dies or gets overheated under normal use. I can't really complain.
[+] [-] prmoustache|3 years ago|reply
This is definitely a distro for people who want to get involved in the sysadmin part of it. A distro like Fedora will have a new release every 6 months and each release and ~390 days of support. You aren't expect to do manual intervention, just let it update itself upon reboot/poweroff from times to times and do a major upgrade, every 6 months to 1 year. Debian has 2y releases cycles and +- 3y of support, in the ubuntu world it is like Fedora or LTS (5y of support). If you want the longest extended lifecycle, RHEL and its clones have pretty much 10years of support without any fuss. Add to that the immutable distros like Fedora Silverblue, OpenSUSE MicroOS and some others where it is virtually impossible to make it shit the bed, even while being stupid.
So in the linux world you can definitely choose your poison, from the less eventful one to the one needing more attention. It looks like you didn't choose wisely. If I had to setup a distro for the least knowledgeable people, I would set it up with an RHEL or Almalinux and install a more modern browser through Flatpak. As long as the hardware is supported from day 1 they would expect a desktop that do not change at all for 10years.
[+] [-] textread|3 years ago|reply
I believe that spending 15mins on the arch forums or IRC would probably result in somebody helping you out with the right pacman incantation. YMMV, my personal experience.
On a tangent, I would love to hear more about any Debian stable users out there and their experience with the conservative approach to updating. I am particularly fond of this Debian wiki article on DontBreakDebian: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
[+] [-] wbear|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rakoo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tpoacher|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noisy_boy|3 years ago|reply
Also loved the video of his wife enjoying the setup - straightforward and effective.
[+] [-] jjice|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asah|3 years ago|reply
announcement: https://www.youtube.com/live/kaandEt_pKw?feature=share&t=347...
[+] [-] noisy_boy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voytec|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.youtube.com/live/kaandEt_pKw?t=3469s
[+] [-] ggop|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nzoschke|3 years ago|reply
I own mostly but Apple gear right now but I’m being pulled back towards more open and extensible hardware and software.
The GPU is a big one. Nvidia hardware unlocks a lot of gaming, graphics, video and machine learning stuff.
Open vs closed is another one. Android development unlocks so much more hardware and software and peripheral and protocol support.
For the first time in a decade do have an Android device I develop on, and am very close to building a PC with a GPU and am considering a Steam Deck.
Open and hackable and extensible for the win.
[+] [-] 5e92cb50239222b|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] binkHN|3 years ago|reply
Seconded. However, with each release of Android, Google tends to lock things down further.
[+] [-] NelsonMinar|3 years ago|reply
I really like what Google has been doing with ChromeOS and Chromebooks. I wish there were a program like Chromebooks for a Linux desktop. Arguably that is ChromeOS itself, but the Linux environment you use is a VM.
[+] [-] Koshkin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wkat4242|3 years ago|reply
Very happy with FreeBSD + KDE which gives me configuration choices again.
[+] [-] williamDafoe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zvmaz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sircastor|3 years ago|reply
I have had a dozen Linux computers with various systems on them. I don’t know if it’s because they were Dell machines, or if it’s an Ubuntu thing, but I have had almost every single one turn into a brick after a Canonical-issued update.
The kind of brick where you have to boot into the boot loader and into single user mode (?) and start issuing arcane commands to try to recover your system with some old kernel.
The thing that keeps me on my Mac is that I can mess around with Unix computing all day, and then go back to being with done when I want to get back to using my computer. I don’t feel confident like that with Linux.
[+] [-] fanatic2pope|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] troad|3 years ago|reply
Certainly no involuntary grub prompts to date, thankfully! Happy as a clam with my Linux laptop as a daily driver, including for gaming (!) and work.
[+] [-] pjmlp|3 years ago|reply
Use whatever you like.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] prime17569|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sureglymop|3 years ago|reply