Agree, I don't want to start a war about this, I only think it's a bit rash on Linus - if he hadn't replied to those particular posts in a week, and still replied to others (i.e. he wasn't on vacation, and hadn't yet stopped monitoring the thread) -- then maybe I would agree in the 'ignore' part. But never mind, it's not a big deal. I myself certainly don't reply to any and every question right away in threads (mail threads, forum threads, etc).

Am I the only one who finds it a bit funny that Linus Torvalds' 65 year old writer/politician dad bought an N900?

I keep hearing about how the N900 is a geek phone and how it isn't ready for the masses etc etc, and people keep saying, "I'm a geek, so I love the N900, but I wouldn't recommend it to my mom," but this is quite a humorous role reversal in my eyes...

Maybe Linus senior can get his son to write him a fart app

I think Linus' choice of the N1 fits with his past actions. He has always promoted the right tools for the right jobs over zealotry... A good example is BitKeeper, which he had to write Git to replace only when licensing became an issue (it was never FOSS). His use of Gnome or KDE is another good example, as he jumps between them based on how well they suit his purposes. The blogs just make for great reading on the last 30 mins on Friday before pub time

If anyone is expecting RMS zealotry from a FOSS developer/public figure then look to RMS and not Linus. The whole GPLv2 vs GPLv3 (especially Tivo) should have really highlighted this.

The N900 is a great gadget, but it needs work before it can meet the reqs of users like Linus who have specific needs.

What is so very frustrating for me is that, in terms of my requirements, the n900 is the worst phone, except for every other phone on the market.

I'm kind of glad he didn't buy the N900... given what he expected from a phone.

Several people already noticed - this sounds more like a religious debate than anything else. So what if Linus decided to get a Nexus One? Does the Earth stop spinning? No. Does that mean that Android is `better` Linux than N900? No. The man has chosen what he finds the most suitable for his needs, and that's fine. I wouldn't hold it against him even if he'd chosen an iPhone.

And Linus is not Linux. He might have written the original kernel, and contributed to it greatly, but he's just a man. If you really need someone to worship (and you shouldn't), worship Richard Stallman - he is the most responsible person for what we came to identify as Linux and FOSS. With or without Linus, somebody would eventually write a kernel relying on GNU tools; without RMS there would be no GNU at all. And in this day and age, when someone thinks of Linux, he thinks of GNU/Linux, not just the kernel itself. In that aspect, Maemo is far more of a `Linux platform` than Android.

Don't be such iTools, Linus is not Jobsy - I can understand Apple hard-core fans being disappointed and revolted if Jobsy used, let's say, Windows on his computer, as he is a self-proclaimed Messiah - Linus never claimed that he knows what's best for you, nor he held a monopoly on the notion of what Linux is, and if someone has a long-term memory he'll remember that Linus always went with what he thinks is useful for him, not necessarily what platform does it use or how GNU/FOSS/Linux compliant it is.

BTW, what phone RMS has?

"Stallman recommends not owning a mobile phone,[69] as he believes the tracking of cell phones creates harmful privacy issues.[70] [...] For personal reasons, he does not actively browse the web from his computer; rather, he uses wget and reads the fetched pages from his e-mail mailbox.[72]" (Wikipedia);

"Richard Stallman does not own a mobile phone because he can fashion a crude convex dish and shout into it at the exact resonant frequency of the ozone, causing a voice to seemingly come from the sky above his intended recipient." from http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/...w_chuck_norris

I thought it was weird that I never owned a mobile phone until the N900 (and I am still a very reluctant mobile phone owner now).

It is good to see that the Geek Gods are even weirder.

If I were him, I wouldn't buy the N900, either.

If he had, and was in the middle of the road when he run out of credits he would realize there is no way to access his SIM card menu to get or transfer credits from his operator.

Of course the credits would have being drained because he was trying to use Maps/GPS without realizing that the maps were being downloaded from the network.

Or, because his zillion e-mails, many of which full of tarballs and patches atachments, were also being fully downloaded without him having a way to control it.

Sometimes "just works" is nice.

This makes sense (as opposed to the Android vs. Maemo privacy rants). No phone and a tablet. I'm happy with my N810 for now but the news that Archos just released SDE firmware based on the Angstrom Linux distribution for the Archos 5 Android internet tablet makes me a bit itchy for a new toy.