Linus T..... (choose wisely)

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.

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

He did a video about trying out linux from a novice perspective. It felt pretty disingenuous and likely led many people to conclude they shouldn't even try it for themselves. The part that was most egregious is that he installed steam in a weird way and on that particular OS config there was a warning that said essentially "IF YOU INSTALL THIS YOUR OS WILL PROBABLY BE BRICKED. CONTINUE?" He concluded a regular user wouldn't read that message, which I find not believable. It was a very scary warning. He continued with the install and then acted surprised when the system wouldn't boot anymore afterward, citing it as evidence that linux was not good for the average user. Many pointed out that if he'd installed steam in several other more common ways of doing so, none of that would've happened. I think he was doing it exclusively on cli, which a novice would try to avoid.

Also I saw a couple videos others did showing how LTT had hired someone from a big hardware company (forget which) and around that time started giving better reviews to that company's products and fudging benchmark numbers of competitors to look worse. When others couldn't recreate those benchmark results and released all the data to prove it, he shrugged it off without really admitting wrongdoing at first, vaguely talking about how they'd done their best. That was a pattern of behavior.

Also one of their former employees felt uncomfortable as a woman in their workplace, saying it felt really toxic and bad for mental health. Fuck that guy and that company.

Sources:

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-recent-criticism-of-linus-tech-tips-explained/

https://www.pcgamer.com/linus-tech-tips-temporarily-halts-operations-puts-out-apology-video-linus-made-a-clear-and-egregious-judgment-error/

There are very few things right.

Worker abuse, sexual harassment, blatant disregard with the truth, stealing review equipment from small companies, returning said equipment damaged when threatened legal action…

The only good thing about it is that they dress their lies in pretty videos.

If you want a tech channel that is actually worth your time, check out Gamers Nexus. I’m not even a gamer but their content drags me in and their commitment to the truth is what all other technical publications should have.

He's an imbecile and knows nothing about tech. I watched him interconnect buildings then run Windows file transfer to test it. You know, instead of a legitimate tool like iperf. He constantly gets shit wrong about linux as others pointed out. Videos I saw on Android TV boxes were also extremely inaccurate so he could push Google's product. Like literally everything he does with linux and android is dumb as fuck. I thought at least he was accurate with the gaming industry videos as I don't know enough about it. But then that gamernexus video dropped and I was like holy shit... this guy can't do anything right.

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.

"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.

I'm dumb, thank you

No they are different.

Yes. That's literally what they said

Did she mention why? I was expecting her to start doing videos again at some point...

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.

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.

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 wrote a kernel that is free, widely considered as secure and paves a way for secure computer interaction among the general public. A tremendous accomplishment.

He may be abrasive and unkind but the Linux kernel has been a real positive contribution to all.

Well he was about to name it freax or somethin and someone else named it linux iirc

Open up to some third party coming in and publicly investigate and share their findings. Wasn't this entire investigation behind closed doors with LMG giving the final "Yeah they said we're good" message?

If that's the case, that's like me being accused of a crime and hiring my own prosecutor, judge, and jury in a closed court. No shit I'm gonna say I did nothing wrong lol.

Admittedly didn't look to closely, but weren't they the ones funding the third party investigation group? Seems like conflict of interest, I mean those findings would seem legit if the third party was agreed to by both sides.

Thats how that works no? Who should pay for it?

Well yeah. That's what I'm doing.

I won't argue with you there. Don't get me wrong, Linus Torvald's contribution to the world is huge. And the Linux kernel being an open source project, I'm sure he had to deal with his share of angry dickwads.

In his defence, he did take a break and did some anger management therapy.

But, if he's an angry asshole, than that's what it is. I still prefer an tolerant and inclusive asshole than one that won't own up to his mistakes and make women feel physically threatened.

So the real choice here is between a shit sandwich or a douche.

A former LTT employee made claims of sexual harassment and poor working environment. LTT paid a third party to investigate those claims and unsurprisingly didn't find evidence that supported those claims. A lot of LTT stans use this as "evidence" that the accuser was lying. Assuming that is clearly false logic, investigating yourself isn't proof of innocence.

I think a group of people found a dead horse they like beating. They enjoy it, so they will keep going.

Of course

C'mon man DDG ain't that bad and Google search ain't that good anyways

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

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.

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)

Do they still have 3 sponsors per video?

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.

Spouting shit and not providing any proof. Are you a republican?

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

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.

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.

Um, ackshually its GNU/House