Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds; born December 28, 1969) is a Finnish-American software engineer who is the creator and, for a long time, principal developer, of the Linux kernel, which became the kernel for operating systemssuch as GNU and years later Android and Chrome OS. He also created the distributed revision control system git and the diving logging and planning software Subsurface. He was honored, along with Shinya Yamanaka, with the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize by the Technology Academy Finland "in recognition...
NationalityFinnish
ProfessionEngineer
Date of Birth28 December 1969
CityHelsinki, Finland
CountryFinland
I started Linux as a desktop operating system. And it's the only area where Linux hasn't completely taken over. That just annoys the hell out of me.
People who are doing things for fun do things the right way by themselves.
I personally think of Linux development as being pretty non-localized, and I work with all the people entirely over e-mail - even if they happen to be working in the Portland area.
I don't see myself as a visionary at all.
I lose sleep if I end up feeling bad about something I've said. Usually that happens when I send something out without having read it over a few times, or when I call somebody names.
The primary issue is just to make people comfortable with Linux.
Part of doing Linux was that I had to communicate a lot more instead of just being a geek in front of a computer.
I get the biggest enjoyment from the random and unexpected places. Linux on cellphones or refrigerators, just because it's so not what I envisioned it. Or on supercomputers.
I am very happy about Android obviously. I use Android, and it's actually made cellphones very usable.
I've tried it a couple of times over the years, mainly because the thing Ubuntu did so well was make Debian usable. I always felt that Debian was a pointless exercise because to me, the point of a distribution is to make everything easy. Easy to install, to be pretty and to be friendly and Ubuntu did that to Debian.
I've been employed by the University of Helsinki, and they've been perfectly happy to keep me employed and doing Linux.
Linux has definitely made a lot of sense even in a purely materialistic sense.
I do get my pizzas paid for by Linux indirectly.
See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too.