Linus Torvalds
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Linus Benedict Torvalds (born December 28, 1969) began the development of Linux, an operating system kernel, and today acts as the project coordinator (or Benevolent Dictator for Life). Inspired by the demo-system Minix developed by Andrew Tanenbaum, he felt the need for a capable UNIX operating system that he could run on his home PC. Torvalds did the original development of the Linux kernel primarily in his own time and on his equipment.
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2 The Linus / Linux connection 3 Further reading 4 External links |
Biography
Torvalds was born in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, as the son of Nils and Anna Torvalds. Both of his parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s, his father a Communist who in the mid-1970s spent a year studying in Moscow. This caused embarrassment to Linus at the time since other children would tease him about his father's politics.
His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority (roughly 6% of Finland's population). Torvalds was named after Linus Pauling. He attended the University of Helsinki from 1988 on.
Linus Torvalds currently lives in San Jose, California with his wife Tove (six times national Karate champion in Finland), whom he first met in fall 1993, his cat Randi (short for Mithrandir, the Elvish name for Gandalf, a wizard in The Lord of the Rings), and his three daughters:
- Patricia Miranda (born December 5, 1996)
- Daniela Yolanda (born April 16, 1998)
- Celeste Amanda (born November 20 2000).
His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux, widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of the Linux kernel.
Linus's law, a tenet inspired by Linus and coined by Eric S. Raymond is, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." A deep bug is one which is hard to find, and with many people looking for it, the hope (and so far most experience) is that no bug will be deep. Both men share an open source philosophy, which has been in part (and implicitly) based on this belief.
Unlike many open source "evangelists", Torvalds keeps a low profile and generally refuses to comment on competing software products, such as Microsoft's commercially dominant Windows operating system. He is neutral enough to even have been criticized by the GNU project, specifically for having worked on proprietary software with Transmeta and for his use and alleged advocacy of Bitkeeper. Nevertheless, Torvalds has occasionally reacted with strong statements to what has been widely perceived as anti-Linux (and anti open source) FUD from proprietary software vendors like Microsoft or SCO.
For example, in one e-mail reaction to statements by Microsoft Senior-VP Craig Mundie, who criticized open source software for not being innovative and destructive to intellectual property, Torvalds wrote: "I wonder if Mundie has ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton? He's not only famous for having set the foundations for classical mechanics (and the original theory of gravitation, which is what most people remember, along with the apple tree story), but he is also famous for how he acknowledged the achievement: If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants ... I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks up the room less."
The Linus / Linux connection
Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system which he replaced by his own OS; he gave a working name of Linux (Linus' Minix); but thought the name to be too egotistical and planned to have it named Freax (a combination of "free", "freak", and the letter x). His friend Ari Lemmke encouraged Linus to upload it to a network so it could be easily downloaded. Ari gave Linus a directory called linux on his FTP server, as he did not like the name Freax.
In August of 1991, he publicized his creation on the USENET newsgroup comp.os.minix:
Message-ID: 1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.helsinki.fi
From: torvalds@klaava.helsinki.fi (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
To: Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Hello everybody out there using minix-I'm doing a (free)
operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional
like gnu) for 386 (486) AT clones. This has been brewing since
april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it
somewhat
Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
Linus
Only about 2% of the current Linux kernel is written by Torvalds himself, though he remains the ultimate authority on what new code and innovations are incorporated into the Linux kernel [1]; other operating system aspects (both user visible and invisible) such as the X windowing system, gcc, and various package management schemes are run by others. Many Linux distributions even have their own versions of the kernel. Torvalds tends to stay out of non-kernel-related debates, even among their developers. The Linux kernel written/supervised by him, when combined with software developed by many others (mainly the GNU system) results in a so-called Linux distribution. Many people refer to this combination as just Linux, and others refer to it as "GNU/Linux."
Torvalds owns the "Linux" trademark, and monitors [1] use (or abuse) of it chiefly through the non-profit organization Linux International. Needless to say, 'many eyeballs make trademark abuse difficult'; he gets help on this from the entire worldwide Linux community.
In Time Magazine's Person of the Century Poll, Linus was voted at #17 at the poll's close in 2000. In 2001, he shared the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Well-Being with Richard Stallman and Ken Sakamura. In 2004, he was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time Magazine.
Further reading
- Linus Torvalds, David Diamond: Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary, New York, HarperBusiness, 2001, ISBN 0066620724
External links
- Wikiquote - Quotes by Linus Torvalds
- Linus' home page
- The Rampantly Unofficial Linus Torvalds FAQ
- Leader of the Free World - How Linus Torvalds became the benevolent dictator of Planet Linux, the biggest collaborative project in history (Wired News)
- Benevolent Dictator. A slightly skeptical unauthorized biography and the first ten years of Linux (Softpanorama)
- The famous "LINUX is obsolete" thread from the comp.os.minix newsgroup
- Interview with Linus, March 01, 1994