Linus Torvalds calls Intel’s Spectre/Meltdown patches utter garbage

Linus Torvalds is the mastermind behind Linux, and well known for his very colourful opinions on things, like the time he flipped NVIDIA the finger. Yeah, he did that.

This time, Torvalds is getting rather vocal about his views on the patches released by Intel to deal with Spectre and Meltdown. I’m going to have to sensor some of the quotes in this article, but you can read the full flavoured ones for yourself.

“You seem to have bought into the cool-aid. Please add a healthy dose of critical thinking. Because this isn't the kind of cool-aid that makes for a fun trip with pretty pictures. This is the kind that melts your brain.”

Another such example being, “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? And that's ignoring the much _worse_ issue, namely that the whole hardware interface is mis-designed by morons.”

Torvalds made these statements and many others in a rather long message sent out in the unofficial Linux Kernel Mailing List archive on Sunday, Jan. 21. I would also like to add that the main homepage for the website itself, is not without its sass, reading,

“LKML.ORG?

In case you haven't read the title bar of your web browser's window: this site is the (unofficial) Linux Kernel Mailing List archive. This mailing list is a rather high-volume list, where (technical) discussions on the design of, and bugs in the Linux kernel take place. If that scares you, please read the FAQ.”

That said, none of this really should be many surprises.

Torvalds ends off his post by saying, “I think we need something better than this garbage.”

So, Torvalds once again has made headlines in the tech world for coming out and being very colourful in his opinions, but, often people support his reasoning and his logic for his rants.