Just the other day I had the great pleasure of conducting an interview with Hal Davis, the project lead and inspiration behind an up and coming project, MilSpecLinux. He’s a really cool guy who I’ve long since considered a good friend. He’s one of those open source advocates who you really gotta know due to his knowledge base, willingness to support the open source community, and he’s just plain awesome!
1. Tell as much as you’re willing about your “real life” like name, age, gender, location, family, religion, profession, education, hobbies, etc.
My name is Hal Davis. I was active athletically in high school, did
weightlifting and wrestling. I started in the computer industry around 1987,
in a store by the name of Computerland. It was a franchise originally,
headquartered in California. I’m 40 (ish), male, Christian, my political
alignment is Constitutional conservative. I was raised in North Carolina, the
son of a math and science teacher.
2. When and how did you become interested in computers? in Linux?
Originally my hobby in high school was electronics and physics, and I started
studying logic circuits. At that time, open source consisted primarily of me
handing a sheet of paper to my brother with a program on it hand written in
Basic. Everything was pretty much proprietary, and computers were a hobbyist
phenomenon, supported by companies like Radio Shack (Color Computer, 64K),
Commodore 64, and later, IBM XT.
While in college, I designed an on-paper computer composed of discrete
transistor centric logic circuits. Of course at the time it was quite crude,
but it taught me alot about the nature of cpus. It also showed me that it was
very expensive to build a computer system out of separate transistor based
logic circuits. I did however have an excellent approach to the heat problem
with regard to the discrete circuit boards.
In 1987, I started working as a setup technician at Computerland, and we were
setting up IBM PS/2 Model 80′s for a pharmaceutical firm. By 1988 I was in
charge of the setup department and training techicians for service oriented
work. By 1990 I was in charge of the service department and in charge of
creating the first Computerland assembly line for clones.
With the assistance of a new parts supply firm in Dallas Texas we were able to
produce some of the first IDE based IBM clones on the market that weren’t being
produced by Compaq.
In 1990, I had the privilege of attending a set of Unix administration classes
in Herndon, VA hosted by a very capable SCO Unix sensei by the name of John
Spencer. The experience was to forever change my entire world with regard to
computers. John Spencer was an excellent instructor, and introduced us to a
new universe. The new universe was Unix.
3. When did you first get the idea of “MilSpecLinux”?
The first concept of a new distro came to me when I was in the #fedora irc
channel helping a Fedora newbie get his Nvidia card working with the RPMFusion
repository supplied Nvidia rpms. He couldn’t get his glx working to get his
games functional, and after going thru the install process and making sure the
32 bit libs were installed, it still wasn’t working. The longtime “gurus” on
the #fedora “support” channel blamed the evil proprietary Nvidia driver with
it’s evil binary blob. According to them, the entire evil was emanating from
the fact that the driver was proprietary, and the user should accept the
substandard crappy open source driver instead. After all, what could he
possibly need the manufacturer’s native drivers for?
From my perspective, I saw that the poor newbie was being led to the
slaughter, especially since I had three machines on site running “the evil
proprietary nvidia drivers’ successfully, without incident. At that point, I
pulled the user aside and introduced him to another repository, namely
Atrpms.net, which was an alternative to the monopoly-like rpmfusion
repository. I had been having problems with rpmfusion sourced nvidia
manufacturer’s drivers, and had long ago switched to atrpms.net, with total
success, so I got him to uninstall the rpmfusion nvidia drivers and install
the nvidia drivers from atrpms.net. Since he was on 64 bit, I also got him to
install the i686 nvidia lib driver rpm.
His system lit up like a Christmas tree finally, and he was ecstatic. However
before I could stop him he raced back to the #fedora channel to share the
fantastic news of his problem, solved. As I expected, they told him that the
atrpms repo was evil, almost as evil as the proprietary drivers themselves,
and that he was to uninstall the atrpms packages forthwith.
The newbie of course was dumbfounded. “But it’s working….?!” he managed to
type.
The end of the story was that, of course the newbie kept the atrpms packages
and the evil but mysteriously functional nvidia manufacturer’s drivers, and
lived happily ever after in opengl land.
I’m being slightly sarcastically glib, due to the absurdity of the ‘gurus’ in
the #fedora channel, but the lesson that I took away from the experience was a
profound one. Basically I realized that no matter how effective I would ever
be as a support to Fedora newbies, it would never make up for the circle jerk
style corruption inclement in the #fedora channel, or the rampant religious
fascism of anti capitalist Stallman fanatics in that channel or on their
forums. It was at that point that I realized the futility of working within a
corrupt system, and the inspiration to create a new system that would be more
resistant to newbie abuse and corruption, by design.
The enemy of humanity itself has always been elitism. It was the reason for
the exodus to the Americas from Europe, and the reason for the American
Revolution. The primary problem with Linux today is the same problem that
mankind has always had; elitism. It’s evident when you see somebody on IRC
talk down to someone of lesser knowledge, or when somebody that’s been there
too long can’t tell the difference between trolling and newbies anymore(or
doesn’t care), and attacks them both the same way. It’s evident when you see
abject arrogance and/or the blind push towards the mediocrity of substandard
(but Stallman approved) solutions. Alsa or Pulseaudio, for example.
MilspecLinux is my answer to the abuse of newbies, the arrogance of elitists
against new ideas, the religious fanaticism of Stallman zealots, and the
hostility of those zealots to proprietary software such as ATI or Nvidia
drivers. It is yet another shout for true freedom.
4. Are you a member of the Ubuntu Linux Community? If so, how do you contribute? If not, do you plan on becoming one?
I’ve been helping Ubuntu users for the last 4 years, even though I myself don’t
run the distro. I do it out of respect for the Ubuntu community, and to help
newbies that have been unable to get help in other places for whatever reason.
5. What distro’s do you regularly use? What software? What’s your favorite application? Your least favorite?
Time to me is valuable and too easily diluted or wasted, so historically I
have concentrated my attention on one distro at a time. For the last 5 years
or so it has been Fedora. Before that it was Mandrake Linux, and before that
it was Red Hat, and before that it was Slackware, and before that it was SCO
Unix.
Your question about favorite applications, that’s a tough one. If you said
drivers it would be easy, because I despise Alsa and Pulseaudio with a
passion. On the other hand I think OSSv4 should be in the kernel by default
because of it’s technical superiority.
Most used applications? Opera 64 bit, Mplayer, K3b, Konversation, Dolphin,
Kdevelop, Gvim, Knotes, Smplayer, Kmail, Konsole, Zenmap, Ktorrent, Wicd, and
Openoffice Writer. I try to stick close to qt based stuff.
Despised applications: NetworkManager, and anything else that requires a
gnome library.
6. What’s your fondest memory of starting MilSpecLinux?, or from Linux overall? What’s your worst?
The best memory ever that I have of Linux, I’d have to say, was seeing
Neverwinter Nights 2 run for the first time on Fedora 8 with Cedega, several
years ago. That was incredible.
The worst experience I ever had was when I took two days to gather accumulated
data together on a backup drive so that I could start a new Fedora
installation, and after forgetting to detach the backup drive, it got
formatted during the Fedora install. I lost 4 years of data.
The moral of the story is what Ben Franklin so aptly said: “Haste makes
waste.”
7. What luck have you had introducing new computer users to Linux/OpenSource?
Windows is kind of like alcoholism. If the person has been exposed and has a
weakness for the drug or mental disease, then it is only they that can make
the decision to withdraw from the disease. As Linux advocates, we can present
the OS in the best possible light, but if they (the new user) waffle on “getting
it done” or fall short of having a full commitment to making it work, then
it’s not going to happen; permanently, I mean. I’ve seen alot of former Doze
users fall off the wagon, back into the Doze tarpit. It’s mostly attributable
to laziness and an unwavering acceptance of mediocrity.
On the other hand, if the user has never been exposed to an OS and becomes
acclimated to Linux to begin with, then they shun Windows permanently and
totally. Switching is never even an option even after they experiment with it
for a time.
That demonstrates to me in another graphic way the total superiority of the
Linux solution.
8. What would you like to see happen with Linux in the future? with MilSpecLinux?
Truthfully I’d like to see MilspecLinux become the Ubuntu of the System V half
of the Linux world.
9. If there was one thing you could tell all new Linux users, what would it be?
I would warn them to steer clear of the Richard Stallman religious cult and
politics, and support what other Linux users want to run on their systems, be
it proprietary or open source. The Stallmanists have made Windows synonymous
with proprietary. Don’t be fooled, they are two different things; the first is a
deceptive ideology and the second protects your right to own your own work.
Make sure you understand the distinction. True freedom is running what you
want to run on your system by your own judgement, and not what self-appointed
elitists tell you is correct to run.
Remember that there are two deceptive ideologies in play; the Windows people,
who tell you that you don’t need to know (Security by obscurity), and the
Stallmanists, who tell you that they know better (than you do). The synopsis:
Open source and proprietary software both have their places, and they are not
mutually exclusive.
Thanks Zach. 
Filed under: Interviews, Ubuntu in General
