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Linus Benedict Torvalds (; ; born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer best known for having initiated the development of the Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator.
Early years
Linus Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland, the son of journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds, and the grandson of poet Ole Torvalds. His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority (5.5%) of Finland's population.
Discussion
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Quotations
Most days I wake up thinking I'm the luckiest bastard alive.
Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.
Encyclopedia
Linus Benedict Torvalds (; ; born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer best known for having initiated the development of the Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator.
Biography
Early years
Linus Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland, the son of journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds, and the grandson of poet Ole Torvalds. His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority (5.5%) of Finland's population. Torvalds was named after Linus Pauling, the American Nobel Prize-winning chemist, although in the book Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, Torvalds is quoted as saying, "I think I was named equally for Linus the Peanuts cartoon character," noting that this makes him half "Nobel-prize-winning chemist" and half "blanket-carrying cartoon character".
Both of his parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s.
Torvalds attended the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 1996, graduating with a master's degree in computer science. His M.Sc. thesis was titled Linux: A Portable Operating System. His academic career was interrupted after completing his first year of study when he joined the Finnish Army, selecting the 11-month officer training program, thus fulfilling the mandatory military service of Finland. In the army he held the rank of second lieutenant, with the role of fire controller, calculating positions of guns, targets, and trajectories, finally telling the guns where to shoot. In 1990, he resumed his university studies, and was exposed to UNIX for the first time, in the form of a DEC MicroVAX running ULTRIX. In June 2000, the University of Helsinki issued Torvalds an honorary doctorate.
His interest in computers began with a Commodore VIC-20. After the VIC-20 he purchased a Sinclair QL which he modified extensively, especially its operating system. He programmed an assembly language and a text editor for the QL, as well as a few games. He is known to have written a Pac-Man clone named Cool Man. On January 2, 1991 he purchased an Intel 80386-based IBM PC and spent a month playing the game Prince of Persia before receiving his MINIX copy which in turn enabled him to begin his work on Linux.
Later years
Linus Torvalds is married to Tove Torvalds (née Monni) — a six-time Finnish national Karate champion — whom he first met in the autumn of 1993. Torvalds was running introductory computer laboratory exercises for students and instructed the course attendants to send him an e-mail as a test, to which Tove responded with an e-mail asking for a date. Tove and Linus were later married and have three daughters, Patricia, Daniela, and Celeste.
After a visit to Transmeta in late 1996, he accepted a position at the company in California, where he would work from February 1997 through June 2003. He then moved to the Open Source Development Labs, which has since merged with the Free Standards Group to become the Linux Foundation, under whose auspices he continues to work. In June 2004, Torvalds and his family moved to Portland, Oregon to be closer to the consortium's Beaverton, Oregon-based headquarters.
From 1997 to 1999 he was involved in 86open helping to choose the standard binary format for Linux and Unix.
Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading developers of Linux-based software, presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation. In 1999, both companies went public and Torvalds' net worth shot up to roughly $20 million.
His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux, which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of the Linux kernel.
Torvalds generally stays out of non-kernel-related debates. Although Torvalds believes that "open source is the only right way to do software", he also has said that he uses the "best tool for the job", even if that includes proprietary software. He has been criticized for his use and alleged advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software for version control in the Linux kernel. However, Torvalds has since written a free-software replacement for BitKeeper called Git. Torvalds has commented on official GNOME developmental mailing lists that, in terms of desktop environments, he encourages users to switch to KDE. However, Torvalds thinks KDE 4.0 was a "disaster" because of its lack of maturity, so he switched temporarily to GNOME.
The Linus/Linux connection
Initially Torvalds wanted to call the kernel he developed Freax (a combination of "free", "freak", and the letter X to indicate that it is a Unix-like system), but his friend Ari Lemmke, who administered the FTP server where the kernel was first hosted for downloading, named Torvalds' directory linux.
Authority on Linux
About 2% of the Linux kernel as of 2006 was written by Torvalds himself. Since Linux has had thousands of contributors, such a percentage represents a significant personal contribution to the overall amount of code. Torvalds remains the ultimate authority on what new code is incorporated into the standard Linux kernel.
Linux trademark
Torvalds owns the "Linux" trademark, and monitors use of it chiefly through the Linux Mark Institute.
Recognition
- In 1996 Asteroid 9793 Torvalds was named after Linus Torvalds.
- In 1998 he received an EFF Pioneer Award.
- In 1999 he received honorary doctor status at Stockholm University.
- The 1999 novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson features several characters who use "Finux", a Unix-like operating system developed in Finland.
- In 2000 he received honorary doctor status at University of Helsinki.
- In 2000 he was awarded the Lovelace Medal.
- In the Time magazine's Person of the Century Poll, Torvalds 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.
- The 2001 film Swordfish contains a Finnish character – the number one computer hacker in the world – named Axl Torvalds.
- In 2004, he was named one of the most influential people in the world by the Time magazine article by Lawrence Lessig, Time Magazine, posted Monday, Apr. 26, 2004, retrieved October 3, 2006.
- In the search for the 100 Greatest Finns of all time, voted in the summer of 2004, Torvalds placed 16th.
- In 2005 he appeared as one of "the best managers" in a survey by BusinessWeek.
- In August 2005, Torvalds received the Vollum Award from Reed College.
- In 2006, Business 2.0 magazine named him one of "10 people who don't matter" because the growth of Linux has shrunk Torvalds' individual impact.
- In 2006, Time Magazine—Europe Edition named him one of the revolutionary heroes of the past 60 years.
- In 2008, he was inducted into the Hall of Fellows of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
See also
External links
- (quite outdated)
- , thread begun by the first Usenet post by Linus Torvalds referencing his new project, followed by the advice and requests for features he received in those early weeks when Linux was first being planned
- - 1 March 1994
- - 1 November 1999
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