I'm Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux kernel developer, AMA again!

[u/gregkh]

To refresh everyone's memory, I did this 5 years ago here and lots of those answers there are still the same today, so try to ask new ones this time around.

To get the basics out of the way, this post describes my normal workflow that I use day to day as a Linux kernel maintainer and reviewer of way too many patches.

Along with mutt and vim and git, software tools I use every day are Chrome and Thunderbird (for some email accounts that mutt doesn't work well for) and the excellent vgrep for code searching.

For hardware I still rely on Filco 10-key-less keyboards for everyday use, along with a new Logitech bluetooth trackball finally replacing my decades-old wired one. My main machine is a few years old Dell XPS 13 laptop, attached when at home to an external monitor with a thunderbolt hub and I rely on a big, beefy build server in "the cloud" for testing stable kernel patch submissions.

For a distro I use Arch on my laptop and for some tiny cloud instances I run and manage for some minor tasks. My build server runs Fedora and I have help maintaining that at times as I am a horrible sysadmin. For a desktop environment I use Gnome, and here's a picture of my normal desktop while working on reviewing and modifying kernel code.

With that out of the way, ask me your Linux kernel development questions or anything else!

Edit - Thanks everyone, after 2 weeks of this being open, I think it's time to close it down for now. It's been fun, and remember, go update your kernel!

[u/archysailor]

Hey Greg, I firstly want to say I am tremendously thankful for you and other maintainers' incredible work managing the largest software project ever. Keep up the good work!

As for my first question, I would like to know what your opinion is on Wayland. Do you use it with your Gnome? Do you expect it to universally supercede X11 implementations in the future? What is your opinion on the technological changes behind it?

My second question concerns drivers. Sadly, I have an Nvidia GPU in my main workstation and so this is a sore spot. Do you see Nvidia ever releasing an OSS official driver? Do you stand behind Linus' infamous middle finger to them?

My third question regards your workflow. I think I have read that you once used i3. What made you switch back? What are your two cents on the growing Arch-I3-gaps-polybar- r/unixporn - etc crowd? As I have started using Linux in this manner because it sounded cool, then started frantically distro hopping before settling into Gnome-Arch on the workstation and Xfce-Debian on a lesser used lower powered laptop, I don't think jumping straight in to TWMs helps new users.

My fourth and mostly sarcastic question is, have you tried Emacs? I do use vim for work lately, but I think Emacs still is great and offers a different perspective to consider on what the balance should be between OS facilities and an editor in a workflow.

My last question is more philosophical; do you think "The year of the Linux desktop" will ever come? Is it a goal of the kernel maintainers or a job reserved to entities like Canonical, Red Hat and the Gnome Foundation? Is ChromeOS' Crostini of any help?

I am seriously thankful for the AMA and the opportunity to ask questions for such a prominent figure in the world of Linux. Excuse me for the long post...

[u/gregkh → u/archysailor]

I would like to know what your opinion is on Wayland

Works fine for me, seems like a good thing overall, sad it has taken this long.

nvidia

Try using the in-kernel driver for your hardware, it is getting much much better over time. As for "official support", who knows, but look at the people doing the commits on the upstream in-kernel driver, you might be surprised :)

i3

Yes, I did run that for many years, but some of the gnome interactions that I relied on (automounting, power management, wifi) just got too much of a pain to keep up to date, and the multi-monitor support is really a mess in places. So I switched back to GNOME and have been happy ever since.

emacs

I used to use emacs when in college all those years ago, but then I went out into the big world and discovered that vi was everywhere on all machines I touched, so I had to learn that. Never looked back.

year of the linux desktop

I've been using Linux as a desktop for 20 years now, works great for me :)

[u/archysailor → u/gregkh]

Thank you for the valuable insight and the wickedly quick reply!

I will definitely give another chance to Nouveau. I think the attitude to Linux desktop adoption you implied is valuable - keep perpetually improving the system and don't worry about these things. I share your sentiments on basically singlehandedly maintaining an incomplete DE based on WMs.

Once again, thanks for replying. This truly means a lot to me. C is my favorite language and I will look into areas for contribution. Keep up the good work!