Arguably there can be no perfect Linux PC, but what we can build is the perfect Linux PC for the creator of Linux who
There can be only
Or hear me out you guys could just build a PC together. Oh, oh, okay
That could work that could work for the folks too young to catch the Highlander reference
The joke is that we are both Linus and this can only end with one of us losing our heads. My mind is blown
So maybe that counts guys when I shot my shot asking the
Original tech Linus to come and do a collab with us. I had no idea what he'd say
I mean he's kind of a big deal known for minor contributions to modern technology like get and the Linux kernel
But he's here The granddaddy of the operating systems that power everything from the Android phone in your hand to data centers around the world to more
Recently your new gaming PC all thanks to the incredible work of open-source developers and corporate sponsors like valve
And I get to build a computer with them and ask them some of your questions
And you think I'm the awkward one. Sorry look, I know that fan girling does make you a little bit uncomfortable
Yes, but you are here right now in my studio and this is so cool
So I'll tell you what sure if you could just quickly sign my copy of this and then I'll settle down. I promise, okay
He made it out to fake Linus
From the real one this is officially more valuable to me than this message from our sponsor
You
Haven't written anything more recent autobiographically, so I went with this and the Wikipedia page
So that's about yeah, that's fine I mean this was literally what we talked about earlier that I'll do anything once like right come here
I really enjoyed it. Okay. No, I enjoyed the writing part
I do want to point out the David Diamond part I actually wanted him to have the same font sizes my name. Oh really the publisher said no they were right
It was very much a collab He made that very clear in the parts that the italicized parts that are kind of his version of the telling of the story
But I really enjoyed this and I'm looking forward to hopefully
Asking you questions that are not thoroughly covered by your own autobiographical works, but from 25 years ago
I was gonna ask you that is one of my questions is
Do you feel as detached from what you wrote then as I might be from something that I wrote when I was 19?
I actually don't remember what I wrote as much as I remember the process of writing it because that was that was literally
Why I ended up doing it because I was like this could be interesting and we did all these things
With David together and and we made the whole writing experience literally a process
So I remembered that much more than I remember what I actually wrote. Oh, okay
So then you might have forgotten the meaning of life for instance. Oh, yeah, because that's in there. That's in there
Yeah, it's entertainment by the way. Yeah, and and and sex is a perfect example
It started for survival. Yeah, and then it became for a society
And then also entertainment say yeah the entertainment part. No, you were quite explicit in both meanings. Okay, anything once anything once, right?
We're not done yet. So you still have to do more
When you say Linus just to clarify say false Linus or something fake Linus. Yeah today
I can live with that now you did an interview with ZD net a number of years back about your daily driver
Computer which you built yourself and we actually replicated that build. What did you think of our video? Oh the one I never saw yeah
Yeah, sorry, I knew that was gonna happen. And so the next thing I was gonna ask you is what about this video?
Are you going to watch this video? I probably won't because I will be feeling way too self-conscious to to actually watch it
But I might have to just because I will probably get emailed comments
And then I will have to wonder about the comments and I love that comments to you our email
It's the only media I use yeah, I don't do I don't do the whole social media thing
So it's text for my family or email for everybody else right so I can text you
You actually can't text me. Oh That's actually pretty cool. So you know what even though I am not one of the couple of dozen Torvalds's on the planet
I also have a made-up last name
So my mom broke from her family
Changed her name and then got my dad to agree to use her name for me
So I'm also Linus with also a last name with no
Genealogy whatsoever attached to it, which I thought was a weird thing for us to have a strange yeah
I mean there's there's literally maybe 20 Torvalds's in the whole world because yeah
My grandfather made that name up for very similar reasons. This is so much fun. You are
Actually doing amazing It's nothing like that night that you barely slept before your first major speaking engagement right you really did read the book
Of course good on you What do you think I would fake it? I don't know
Shame shame shame on people who collaborate with people and don't actually read their book ahead of time
Well, I didn't watch your videos. So that's fine. I
Am the beta Linus today, so I fully accept that that's going to be what happens
What else is gonna happen is we are actually going to build a computer at some point here
And if you watched our last video, that's fine You didn't but if you have your computer then this may be familiar to you
We are starting with an AMD threadripper this time a 99 60x
This is a 24 core 48 thread CPU that I imagine is going to absolutely rip it up for writing emails
It's not the only thing I do but I do spend a lot of time actually reading emails more than writing them because
You can fit so much email in this bad boy But of course you do have some high performance demanding needs like say for example
Yeah, I do compile the kernel a lot So it's part of my test requirements that
When I merge other people's code because I don't code myself very much anymore
One of the things I do between every single merge is compile the whole kernel with every module
I can and that's where you want something fairly powerful
And I mean, I'm sure you know NVIDIA is probably working on a way to make code compilation
GPU accelerated, but is CPUs still the way to go? Yeah, and I can use as many cores as they can give me
Why did we cheap out on him? Oh because I also I actually I mean people ask me what I want
And I was like I don't want the crazy high-end because I want it to be quiet! and reliable and not like
Insane in any particular direction. So you know what we actually take a very similar approach with our editing workstations
The you know the writers or whatever they can play around with the latest generation stuff. They're always
One step down because I just want it to work
I think I've never I've always wanted to have something that just is
Reliable and that's to me. I mean that comes first. It needs to be something I can
Trust and work with and then within that envelope. It needs to perform well and not be crazy
Bleeding edge and he's letting me build it Yeah, that may be
Let's see. I'm having way too much fun today. This is like the best day. I've had in the office in
Like a very long time seriously, okay. I'm sorry. I said I would stop I'm okay. I'm done
I'm done choosing a motherboard for Linux is pretty straightforward
You want all of the usual things you want out of a motherboard nice robust cooling good power delivery
All the IO that you want But of course you want to make sure that all of the onboard components are supported by Linux
One of the big things that we looked for in a platform for you was support for ECC memory as well
Yeah, can you talk a little bit about why that's so important?
I don't understand why people don't require ECC in their machines because being able to trust your machine is like
The number one thing and without ECC your memory will go bad
It's not a question of when it's or it is a question of when I mean it just might take a few years
So when I built the machine you apparently built the video
Shut up video around that was
Maybe five years ago. I forget it was during the COVID
Availability night. Yeah, so I could not get ECC and I said whatever I'll
get reasonable RAM and It worked fine. It worked fine for a couple of years and then two years goes by and I
Starts seeing oopses. I start seeing
Segmentation violations. I'm obviously doing this on
Modern Linux kernel that is being developed right now and my first reaction is oh, no, we have a bug
and I spent days on
Trying to figure out what the bug was until I just realized no it wasn't a bug at all
It was my machine was not reliable So for you, this is not a question of you know, I have to reboot my system because my game crashed
All right, this is a question of I am working on software that millions of people around the world rely on I
Need to know right. I absolutely need to trust my machine