Linus Torvalds

Linus Benedict Torvalds (born December 28, 1969)

Computer programmer , creator of the Linux kernel

Sourced

• "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." (1991 )
  • Source: [1]
  • Notes: This was the launch of Linux.

• "I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves 'why?'. Hurd will be out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got minix." (1991 )
  • Source: [2]
  • Notes: Hurd in fact would not come out until at least 14 years later.

• "Dijkstra probably hates me." (1991? )
  • Source: [3].

• "Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of Minix ." (1992 )
  • Source: [4].
  • Notes: to Andrew Tanenbaum (author of Minix ).

• "If you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program." (1995 )
  • Source: [5]

• "You know you're brilliant, but maybe you'd like to understand what you did 2 weeks from now." (1995 )
  • Source: [6]

• "An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program." (1995 )
  • Source: [7]

• "The main reason there are no raw devices [in Linux] is that I personally think that raw devices are a stupid idea." (17 Oct 1996)
  • Source: [8]

• "Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had." (1996 )
  • Source: [9]
  • Notes: Comment made about people who did not like Linux's mascot, Tux .

• "Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp , and let the rest of the world mirror it." (1996 )
  • Source: [10].

• "[...] the Linux philosophy is "laugh in the face of danger". Oops. Wrong one. "Do it yourself". That's it." (1996 )
  • Source: [11]
• "See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too ;-)" (1996 )
  • Source: [12]

• "My name is Linus, and I am your god." (1998 )
  • Source: at the Linux Expo, Durham, North Carolina

• "Portability is for people who cannot write new programs." (1992 )
  • Source: [13], The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate [14]

• "When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows ", people just stare at you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*"." (1995 )
  • Source: [15]

• "The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children." (1995? )
  • Source: [16].

• "If you still don't like it, that's ok: that's why I'm boss. I simply know better than you do." (1996 )
  • Source: [17].

• "Note that nobody reads every post in linux-kernel. In fact, nobody who expects to have time left over to actually do any real kernel work will read even half. Except Alan Cox , but he's actually not human, but about a thousand gnomes working in under-ground caves in Swansea. None of the individual gnomes read all the postings either, they just work together really well." (2000 )
  • Source: [18].

• "Talk is cheap. Show me the code." (2000 )
  • Source: [19].

• "In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." (2001 )
  • Source: [20].

• "They are smoking crack." (2003 )
  • Source: eWeek interview.
  • Notes: said about SCO .

• "I allege that SCO is full of it." (2003 )
  • Source: eWeek interview.

• "Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." (2003 )
  • Source: The New York Times interview.

• "Modern PCs are horrible. ACPI is a complete design disaster in every way. But we're kind of stuck with it. If any Intel people are listening to this and you had anything to do with ACPI, shoot yourself now, before you reproduce." (2003 )
  • Source: Transcript of the Q&A portion of Linus' talk on 2003 Linux Lunacy cruise

• "I was an ugly child."
  • Source: Opening sentence in Just for Fun by Torvalds and David Diamond

• "There are literally several levels of SCO being wrong. And even if we were to live in that alternate universe where SCO would be right, they'd still be wrong." (2004 )
  • Source: Kerstetter, Jim, "Linus Torvalds: SCO Is 'Just Too Wrong'," _BusinessWeek Online_, 2004-02-02

• "Ok, I admit it. I was just a front-man for the real fathers of Linux, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus." (2004 )
  • Source: LinuxWorldExclusive: Linus Torvalds Makes Startling Admission, Discloses *Real* Fathers of Linux
  • Notes: In response to Alexis de Tocqueville Institution 's claim that Linus Torvalds is not the real father of Linux.

• ""regression testing"? What's that? If it compiles, it is good, if it boots up it is perfect." (1998 )
  • Source: [21]

• "Let's put it this way: if you need to ask a lawyer whether what you do is "right" or not, you are morally corrupt. Let's not go there. We don't base our morality on law." (2004 )
  • Source: [22]

• "Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small _trivial_ project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision. So start small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's almost certainly over-designed. And don't expect people to jump in and help you. That's not how these things work. You need to get something half-way _useful_ first, and then others will say "hey, that _almost_ works for me", and they'll get involved in the project. " (2004 )
  • Source: Linux Times Interview (October 25, 2004).

• "The NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here) is a disease." (2004 )
  • Source: c|net - news.com Interview (December 21, 2004).

• "Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested. 99% of that I run tends to be open source, but that's _my_ choice, dammit." (October 26, 2004)
  • Source: [23]

• "A lot of people still like Solaris, but I'm in active competition with them, and so I hope they die." (February 1, 2005 )
  • Source: [24]

• 2.6.<odd>: still a stable kernel, but accept bigger changes leading up to it (timeframe: a month or two).
• 2.<odd>.x: aim for big changes that may destabilize the kernel for several releases (timeframe: a year or two)
• <odd>.x.x: Linus went crazy, broke absolutely _everything_, and rewrote the kernel to be a microkernel using a special message-passing version of Visual Basic. (timeframe: "we expect that he will be released from the mental institution in a decade or two").
  • Source: [25]

Attributed

• "Software is like sex; it's better when it's free."
  • Source: [26]

• "I'm basically a very lazy person who likes to get credit for things other people actually do."
  • Source: Supposedly one of his favorite phrases; Referenced in Eric S. Raymond 's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".

• "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds."
  • Linus Torvalds about the superiority of Linux on the Amsterdam Linux Symposium

• "If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system."

Quotes about Linus Torvalds

• "Given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow." (1997 )
  • Source: "The Cathedral and the Bazaar " by Eric S. Raymond .
  • Notes: Called Linus's Law .