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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>He said he has massive cabinets of CDs, all the music he ripped and tested audio encoders with his own ears.<p>Ken is 80, and still building cool side projects and scratching his own itch! That's the story.<p>Be like Ken by building something cool, not by using whatever OS.
<i>JUKEBOX MUSIC COLLECTION<p>Computer: You're also collecting music?<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Computer: It's a personal hobby.<p>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><p>Source: <a href="http://genius.cat-v.org/ken-thompson/interviews/unix-and-beyond" rel="nofollow">http://genius.cat-v.org/ken-thompson/interviews/unix-and-bey...</a>
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.
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.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/kaandEt_pKw?t=656">https://www.youtube.com/live/kaandEt_pKw?t=656</a>
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
jump past the intro:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/kaandEt_pKw?feature=share&t=672">https://www.youtube.com/live/kaandEt_pKw?feature=share&t=672</a><p>announcement:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/kaandEt_pKw?feature=share&t=3475">https://www.youtube.com/live/kaandEt_pKw?feature=share&t=347...</a>
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 feel the swing of the pendulum here.<p>I own mostly but Apple gear right now but I’m being pulled back towards more open and extensible hardware and software.<p>The GPU is a big one. Nvidia hardware unlocks a lot of gaming, graphics, video and machine learning stuff.<p>Open vs closed is another one. Android development unlocks so much more hardware and software and peripheral and protocol support.<p>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.<p>Open and hackable and extensible for the win.
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.<p>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.
I moved from 15+ years of Mac to FreeBSD about 2 years ago for similar reasons. It's too locked-down, too opinionated, too iOS for me now.<p>Very happy with FreeBSD + KDE which gives me configuration choices again.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
While a raspi is not a great dev env, maybe raspbian on a modern laptop is fantastic precisely because it has been developed for constrained envs.<p>I have to give this a try.
Apple claimed “Unix” because Mach shipped with BSD tools for testing and research purposes.
Now even Windows has a Linux compatibility layer now too and everyone but RTOS all run containers and VMS.<p>Funny story: even Apple switched to Linux in the Data Center. They doubled down on Appliances (which happen to run an OS).<p>Are people pressed that an appliance won’t fit hacker workstation/embedded needs!?
Well good for him. But we have to let go of this notion that for GNU/Linux to win, Apple has to lose. I'm paraphrasing but can't shake that feeling when I hear those claps in the video. When are we ever going to grow up?
My main three asks for Ubuntu to replace my mac is -<p>1. Alternative to magnet or any window management systems that does not require elaborate tmux setup.<p>2. More adoption of snapstore and auto-updates.<p>3. Comparable performance and battery life to today's arm laptops.
Timestamp for the OS question (but the whole talk is great): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaandEt_pKw&t=3470s">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaandEt_pKw&t=3470s</a>
I have used Linux for most of my adult life: I don't get the sens of control over my own computing with other operating systems. It's not clear though why exactly Thomson is switching.
when asked what language ken used, he seemed to answer "Algol"? I'm surprised there's no further discussion or clarification in the comments. if anybody heard clearer, or has some feedback on what he actually might've been using, I'd appreciate a response.<p>the other question that I have about the video is, which one is "the alligator talk"?
<i>"8GB ought to be enough for anybody"</i>, I guess?<p>Also, he said "Raspbian", rather than the "Raspberry Linux" in the title...which I don't think is a thing.
I watched this whole video, (except the front bit). At the risk of being flamed, the audience came off as being incredibly rude. Perhaps this is par for the course with this crowd; if so, I am glad that I am not one of them.
For those who might prefer text over video:<p><pre><code> Q: What's your operating system of choice, today?
A: I have for most of my life, because I was sort of born into it, run Apple. Right now, recently, meaning within the last five years, I’ve become more and more and more depressed and [Laughter] what Apple is doing to something which should allow you to work is just atrocious, but they are taking a lot of space and time to do it so it’s ok. [Laughter] And I have come within the last month or two to say even though I’ve invested a zillion years in Apple, I’m throwing it away and I’m going to Linux -- to Raspbian in particular. [Applause]. Anyway, I'm half transitioned now.</code></pre>
Raspbian* apparently. That's really interesting; even the highest tier Raspberry Pi still feels pretty sluggish as a desktop thanks to the limitations of SD card throughput/latency/queue depth/etc. I wonder what his usage looks like.
As a lazy developer I also dislike what’s slowly happening to macOS. Apple wants you to switch to sandboxed apps but they don't provide a way for you to do even half the things a traditional app can (because they can’t imagine them all up front). That’s just frustrating and lazy on their part and makes the developer UX shitty.<p>But, as an end user, what Apple is doing (bringing sandboxed apps and better security to the desktop) is inarguably the right thing to do. It’s a far superior position for the user and it greatly raises the bar for malware.<p>As developers, to me, it feels a little bit backwards. I guess my critique is that there must be a nuanced way to say “hey Apple you need to do a better job at supporting valid developer use cases” (and I’ll be the first to admit I have many grievances) while at the same time acknowledging that the increased complexity of modern computing systems is moving the needle meaningfully from a security standpoint and so we should be okay with having to work harder to keep our users secure. Like, I’d truly hope if we all switched to Linux, we’d find a way to make secure boot and code signing standard. Not just say “ah isn’t the old dying way of user-domain permissions nice let’s live here forever”.<p>Even Microsoft is pushing code signatures and sandboxed apps. We should be making a stink and pushing for these platforms to allow custom root signing keys and fully secure/sandboxed replacements for the functionality they’re taking away. Not just throwing up our hands and saying fuck security I’ll just use Linux. Not a great image…
I wonder why he'd transition to Raspbian and work on a Raspberry Pi.<p>Maybe to get that nostalgic "let's wait 4 minutes for our 20 line program to compile" feeling again that he must have had in the late 60's and early 70's :P<p>People: "Linux is not ready for the desktop."<p>Ken: "You know nothing. Compared to what I'm used to, it's been ready since version 0.01."
Before spending time around here, I used to think it would be an embarrassing reveal for most programmers if it came out they used Apple hardware. Like being a WWII expert and rooting for Germany. Couldn't believe that people who could appreciate the beautiful magic of coding and OSS could still even like hyper-commodity computers. But I understand now how naive that was.