Video download link (see this series' index for more)



Summary: Things aren't rosy at Intel because the hires aren't suitable for the job of documenting and/or presenting GNU/Linux-centric products (whose target audience is Free software developers)

THE situation at Intel seems grim because everywhere one looks there are Microsoft boosters who deal with GNU/Linux like it's just Windows. They don't understand GNU/Linux and probably never used it.

This is clearly a recipe for disaster.

"...Intel is choosing Microsoft, not GNU/Linux, and Intel snubs software freedom except when it needs openwashing PR perks, shoehorned for money by the Linux Foundation (another faker full of people who never even used Linux)."Before we proceed to the second 'phase' of this series -- a phase that deals with other kinds of documents -- we explain in some brevity the sort of scenario GNU/Linux professionals find themselves in when they work for Intel. They're basically surrounded if not besieged by people who don't understand Free software and don't even wish to understand it. They impose bad practices on everybody else and it should come as no surprise that many skilled and experienced developers are leaving (I personally know two who left last year).

As we shall show in the next so-called 'phase', Intel is choosing Microsoft, not GNU/Linux, and Intel snubs software freedom except when it needs openwashing PR perks, shoehorned for money by the Linux Foundation (another faker full of people who never even used Linux).

Intel is risking becoming a fossil, circling down the abyss of irrelevance. Hours ago Phoronix published "Itanium IA-64 Was Busted In The Upstream, Default Linux Kernel Build The Past Month," saying that:

While Intel formally discontinued the Itanium processors just under two years ago, the Linux software support for IA-64 continues. However, as a possible sign of the times, the Linux 5.11 kernel build for it has been broken the past month.

As what might set off Linus Torvalds on a Monday morning, it turns out since the Linux 5.11 merge window the Itanium "IA64" kernel code has been broken and unable to even successfully carry out a "defconfig" default configuration kernel build. This wasn't due to some foreign change within the kernel regressing the support but a change made by IBM to the IA64 Kconfig to enable SPARSEMEM by default.

The world is moving past the Intel monopoly (and by extension x86). The Wintel monoculture won't save Intel anymore because this monoculture too is rapidly eroding, becoming perhaps a mere niche some time later in this decade. ⬆