Certainly 3.11 is more evocative a number in that context than 10.4 or 6.1 or 3.0.
Perhaps true. On the other hand: http://www.osnews.com/story/21887/Linus_Microsoft_Hatred_Is_...
While I like linux, and I am writing this on an Ubuntu 13.10 install, there's really nothing very innovating about Linux, for anyone that has a unix history, it's just another variant, like the myriad of other ones [1].
Regarding your first paragraph, you cannot make a tribute inadvertently. The definition of the word tribute requires a certain intention. In layman's terms, if Linus did not intend something to be a tribute, then it is not a tribute.
So, it seems like you're agreeing with me, that Linus was making a tribute to windows? It's unclear what you're trying to say really.
There's plenty of innovation in every modern "unixlike" OS. IllumOS, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, to take some common examples, have each taken different paths in different functional areas, and rarely is one objectively worse than any other unless you have the constraint of a particular set of hardware to run the kernel on and/or software to run under the kernel.
Filesystems, for instance. ZFS and Btrfs (to a lesser extent, mainly because it's years from being feature complete) are innovative compared to earlier mainstream filesystems. Yet, a typical desktop user would not notice any innovation. Typical users are not concerned with snapshots, sending snapshot diffs between devices, or scrubbing a raid array for errors. ZFS has been criticized for being a resource hog, and both have been criticized for being slow. There are always trade offs. Getting a modern filesystem with COW and block checksums or hashes has performance costs, particularly on rotating disks. The only thing a desktop user will notice about a 5 year old computer running linux or BSD with a ZFS or btrfs filesystem is that it's slow. Slowness isn't innovative, right?
Of course there's kernel innovation, my point was that this is true for all variants - not just Linux which gets all the attention.
>Of course there's kernel innovation
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Perhaps ease up a bit on the hyperbole, you just took 2 polar opposite positions in the space of as many comments.
>ZFS - Linus had nothing to do with that
harshreality wasn't saying that Linus had anything to do with ZFS, he was noting it as an example of 'innovation [in something] that "looks like unix"' in order to counter your odd implication that that all unix variants are pretty much the same and devoid of innovation. To break down your argument, you say that: 1 - "Linux isn't innovative" 2 - "It's just another variant" 3 - "Like the myriad of other ones"
So Linux isn't innovative, and since all of the other ones (Solaris, BSDs, etc.) are alike, that they are neither innovative. You basically denied that there has been any innovation in Unix since it left Bell Labs. The ZFS example was a counter to that implicit claim.
Windows had a window manager too, and you could swap it out. There weren't nearly as many options.
Anyway, I for one am excited about Mir, because it means that my tf-101 or the replacement some years in the future may rejoin the convergence zone. They are making steps to live in the Android ecosystem, at least according to the article summaries I've come across that give any inkling of information about Mir.
If you google ASUS Transformer Ubuntu and follow some of the howtos you find, it's an absolute joke trying to get a windowed environment that resembles any netbook, laptop, or desktop you could buy last year or the year before that. "Now use Android VNC client to connect..." WTF?
Nobody else seems to be heading back to the convergence zone. Maybe wayland will get there at the same time. That's my rant.
Could have been either that, or "competition is bad, we already have the best way." You're right I think, it is probably characteristic of a manager to try to tell people what way to spend their time.
I really wish I could use control-F on paper books.
I don't remember what book it was in, I think maybe the Art of Unix Programming or Just for Fun, but somebody remarked that the real innovation of Linux was the modern open source model of software development. And I think that's mostly true.
There was minix, which was a lot more innovative (microkernel), but Tanenbaum wanted to keep it strictly for educational purposes, simple and easy, and didn't want to turn it into a big system with all the bells and whistles that linux got.
Had FreeBSD been released earlier, that might have had the position that linux has now.
All that came tacked on later and thus had inherent security issues because of backward compatibility.
So, calling Linux (which was always build around both, multi user and networking) "For Workgroups" in this 3.11 iteration is 100% sarcastic. Seeing as they (Linux) wouldn't even have to add that "For Workgroups" as it goes without saying that Linux is capable of it.