Linus T..... (choose wisely)

People always call Linus Torvalds an asshole, but I've yet to see anything from him that didn't make sense. And the fact that he eventually took community feedback and decided to take time off to deal with his anger issues is commendable.

Linus TT can go and fuck itself though.

He’s definitely a fuck your feelings type. No nonsense and sometimes harsh but like you said it’s almost always justified. I’ll take that over fake ass, greedy LTT Linus “oops I got caught so now I’ll apologize or try to hide it and then apologize” any day of the week.
- LTT could have just said fuck you're right my bad, every single time he gets caught fucking up.
  Honey: yeah we really wanted to do but that NDA was nasty and have you seen their lawyers, sorry guys We have ousted sponsors before but it just didn't make business sense in this case. 99% would have went "yeah we get you"
  Billit labs: We did not mean to fuck these guys over, erm twice. We have (repurchase the prototype off who we sent it to or compensated them for the price of machining a new part too sufficiently high tolerance) and if they provide us with a another piece and exact instructions we'll cover them in a future video gratis.
  These things didn't need to turn into PR disasters.
Only an asshole when talking about contributing to Linux from what I've seen
- That may be, don't think I've heard him talk about anything else. One of my favorite clips ever is his message to nvidia. Some things are worth being angry about. And because of his angry public reaction, I became aware of nvidia's anti-FOSS efforts. So it's not all bad imo.
- You spend all your adult life nurturing a baby like the Linux kernel, a lot of it unpaid, and you'll be a bit touchy about what goes into it too.
- True.
  Here's a dataset of most of his rants from the LKML along with the "hate" rating of each.
  https://github.com/corollari/linusrants?tab=readme-ov-file#linusrants
Linus is giving away home made guitar pedals to kernel contributors
https://lkml.org/lkml/2025/1/19/281
Nive guy
For an embarrassingly long time I thought they were the same person, and I wondered why anyone would look up to that tool, and call him a genius, when he couldn't even benchmark an HDMI cable correctly (literally the only video of his I watched, and yes, I know that it wouldn't have mattered even if he did do it properly).
Now that I know that its 2 separate assholes, I feel like LTT is even more of a tool who leans into the identity confusion on purpose for more internet clout.
- I don't follow youtube or youtuber drama but you cannot really retroactively change the details I wrote below.
  https://lemmy.world/comment/14665903
He can be rude but that's what working with people leads to.
EDIT: I apologize to everyone who has so far read this comment. I misunderstood what Linus Torvalds meant in the interview I mentioned. I thought he was just calling the Russian kernel contributors "Internet trolls", be he was actually referring to Russian "troll farms" taking advantage of the controversy generated by how the Linux Foundation removed the Russian devs from kernel development without saying a word, to entice outrage and try to get the Foundation's decision reversed. (afaik they had to do it because the US government ordered them to, and the foundation is hosted in the US.) I'm leaving the post in its original form for posterity.
I think the way Torvalds treated the Russian kernel maintainers that got silently removed from development (a situation that, by itself, was completely mishandled) was awful to say the least. In a interview, he said they were all Internet trolls, and referenced conflicts between Finland and Russia to "explain" his disdain for Russians. Say what you want, but I usually call a person that judges others based on their country of birth alone, an asshole. Not just that, but such behaviour sounds extremely ungrateful when we are talking about people who contributed in extremely important ways to Torvalds' biggest project of his life. I used to have a positive view of Torvalds, but this kind of ruined it for me.
- He didn't call the maintainers trolls.
  In brief, the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel stated that the dismissals were simply made in line with the policy of sanctions on the Russian aggressors in the Ukraine war.
  Moreover, Torvalds didn’t pull any punches when he said “lots of Russian trolls” were working to make the recent decision look unpopular. Torvalds directly accused Russia of wielding its army of social media bots in an attempt to fake a grassroots campaign and reverse the Russian maintainer cull.
  This tracks with other Russian social media efforts.
but I’ve yet to see anything from him that didn’t make sense.
He supports tivoization.
- "He doesn't think he should fight it as a top priority" is not the same as "he supports it".
- I looked at the wiki page, but I'm still not sure why/how he supports that. Got a link I can read up on?
  Edit: read some more and googled more and I don't see him supporting it, rather it seems he takes issue with trying to dictate to hardware makers what they can do.

Torvalds is a C programmer who didn't even consider himself accomplished until he made Git, long after Linux.

Sebastian is a warehouse manager who still thinks he's better than everyone else because he worked at ~~NZXT~~ NCIX lol.

NCIX = NZXT?
- No they are different.
- I'm dumb, thank you

LTT needs Emily back in front of the camera to provide a proper Linux perspective.

I pretty much stopped watching after Emily stopped being on camera and unsubbed entirely after the harassment and overworking allegations came out.
And I'm not even a Linux person 99% of the time! I do run a home server, but my daily driver is windows. Emily was just one of the only people on the channel that not only seemed to know exactly what she was talking about, but also didn't behave like a total tech dude bro the entire time
Emily left a couple months ago
Needed to search who Emily is. I was totally out of the loop.
Yeah she was the best.
- Sorry about that. I don't know the right way to reference a trans person who was famous under their former identity but not their real one.
Context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-owBhLGaH4
People probably know Anthony. They are the same person.
- I know people know "Anthony;" I was just uncertain of the appropriateness of mentioning that name.
  Also, LOL at this comment on the video:
  @jeffc3051 1 year ago
  Oh thank god. I thought you were going to say you started using Windows.

Linus Torvalds is still a Git

At least he wasn’t caught promoting a browser extension that turned out to be a huge scam that stole money from both regular people and other content creators trying to earn some affiliate revenue.
- A lot of creators were tricked into that. The problematic part was that they realized the issue and completely went silent about the issue instead of raising awareness of the scam. Alerting about that fact would have been a great tech tip.
He does tend to name things after himself doesn't he?
- Well he was about to name it freax or somethin and someone else named it linux iirc
Hey, but he admits it!

Uhm aktchewally, its the GNU-Linus Tech Tip system, a complete free software advice and content engine

Linus Tech Tips is just one of many distros that run on the Linus Media Group kernal
free only as in beer, however

you speak of foss yet you use Google curious /s

Yes. I use Google because it gives me the best results of all the FOSS (but shitty) search engines I've tested. I won't change the tools in my workflow until the replacements work the same or better.
- C'mon man DDG ain't that bad and Google search ain't that good anyways

What's wrong with LTT?

they're probably just mad that his Linux videos do a terrible job representing Linux.
- I watched his videos on Linux and tried using Ubuntu myself a little while back and tbh I kinda had a similar experience to him.
  Being asked to restart fairly often and finding it difficult to instal more niche things with command line even if I could just copy paste stuff. I like the lack of Microsoft bullshit but the programs I used for uni and games weren't compatible at the time.
  That being said I tried about a year before steam deck became a thing and I got that a year+ ago and haven't had too many issues like that (still some though). Looking forward to general steamos release cause I definitely want to try again
- I think they were mostly fine. Could be better but not terrible.
https://lemmy.zip/comment/13100245
Here's a quick roundup of some, but not all of the issues people have with LTT.
- All these things listed are blunders (some quite big ones) but I think the person who responded to that comment with the opposing view makes a lot of sense. They added the nuance to the situation that the comment you linked to I think glasses over since they obviously don't like Linus. Personally their (the response comments) take is where I stand on these issues too.
  Obvious, as LTT has grown they have made mistakes but they have always explained their reasoning or otherwise apologised and tried to make things right.
  Overall I think they are a force for good in the world. They teach millions about tech, how to use it, and how you can save money. As they become more corporate their passion may fade but I think it's still there and I'll probably keep watching their stuff for the time being
Long story short, he's an ignorant asshole. Sorry I don't have enough time atm to list all the detaills lol. Gamer Nexus recently made another post about him and his company which was also going around on lemmy.
Edit: someone else made a good summary https://lemmy.zip/comment/13100245
https://gamersnexus.net/gn-extras/our-response-linus-sebastian
- Gamers nexus was easily proven wrong too. Trusting gamers nexus on anything these days is just gonna make you look bad. Steve has clearly no problem with attacking LTT no matter what he has to make up in order to do so. LTT aren’t saints, but they aren’t making up shit in order to attack other creators. It’s just not possible to trust GN to be proper journalists anymore.
- Tbh, whether GN is right or not I do find his reporting practices kinda wack. Not asking for comment before a video is put out is disengenuous even if the response. Regardless of what a response to that would be I think it's fair to ask for comment at least
A former employee alleged that she was harassed and mistreated while working for him.
- The work load stuff they seem to have improved (from what I can tell) but the result of the sexual harassment investigation they had been carried out is unknown to the public as far as I know (I assume by now it's concluded). Not sure we'll ever know what really happened cause that sort of info probably won't become public.
  Given there are other women what continue to work there (I implore them to speak up if they feel the same) hopefully it was just an isolated incident and whoever was responsible was fired.
From what I've discerned, the fame; internet clout; and money got to their heads to the point they drifted from mostly impartial and helpful information to a more biased perspective, with which benefits their sponsors more than their viewers or the community as a whole.
- Tbh, I don't think I agree. The only times I feel they can't really be impartial "even if they say they are" is when they use a sponsors parts to build something. Or otherwise the whole video is sponsored but they kinda are reviewing the fevice. I don't really like those videos but they are very clear about the fact that it is sponsored so viewers can at least down some salt whilst they watch the video. They also do state some issues they have with the products when they arise which is good (though obviously they may not say everything that's wrong with it)
LTT is a joke, but that's why it's interesting to watch.
Honestly I didn't really care about the allegations until Steve Burke alleged that Linus told him he's "less autistic then he used to be". Its also annoying how he clearly has a superiority complex.
They're a bunch of Windows power-user clowns cosplaying as tech experts.
Only 3 reasons to watch their type of vids, preview/review of shiny new tech product, technical expertise or entertaining hosts.
But these days, other channels have the same access to new products, they are definitely not experts in the subjects they cover, and I find all the hosts pretty dull.
- Do they still have 3 sponsors per video?
I like LTT videos personally. They are always fun to watch even if they aren't perfect.

Steve called out LTT for knowing about the Honey marketing scam but not saying anything because it would harm his business (This isn't speculation. Linus said it publicly.) LTT called for peace with Gamer's Nexus using the veiled threat that Gamer's Nexus comments are causing material harm to his business.
Steve responded by posting an old text exchange he had with Linus regarding a LTT Wan show that copied a Gamer's Nexus video without even mentioning they they were using Gamer's Nexus script (almost identical in topic order, format and words) for their show. If Steve was a serious business instead of a fan running a channel as a business, that's where lawyers would have been brought in to sue LTT. Instead Steve only asked for acknowledgment- which Linus never gave.
- Could be mistaken, but supposedly Linus knew about the part where Honey was screwing over affiliates (like himself), and claims that was public-enough knowledge in the creator community at the time that he didn’t feel compelled to say more, not the part where Honey was screwing over customers, too. Also, didn’t he credit Steve via a pinned comment to that video?
- The part about honey is a complete misread of the facts. There were posts on the LTT forum about honey scamming creators, and Linus himself said that within the creator community he thought the news got around enough to not warrant a video about it.
  So many linux people have a hate boner for the guy because he's got a prickly personality and makes videos for the unwashed masses, but he still has integrity.
- almost identical in topic order, format and words
  Apparently, that specific conversation was in Mandarin, and Steve was the only member of the media present who spoke Mandarin. I'm pretty sure that appending a simple "thank you Steve from Gamers Nexus for translating" would've been sufficient, especially since Linus wants to look like they're such good buddies.

akchually one might lead to the other

You sound like a member of the FSF

That would be having the haunted house on both sides
- Um, ackshually its GNU/House

Luke's Tech Tips

The Linus from tech tips is such a sleazeball. If I knew him in person I would probably dislike him enough to walk on the opposite side of the street. Too bad he's associated with Linux via the name.

Fake news but yeah keep spreading false info