Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish-American software engineer who is the creator and, historically, the principal developer of the Linux kernel, which is the kernel for GNU/Linux operating systems and other operating systems such as Android and Chrome OS. He also created the distributed version control system Git and the scuba dive logging and planning software Subsurface.
He was honoured, along with Shinya Yamanaka, with the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize by the Technology Academy Finland "in recognition of his creation of a new open source operating system for computers leading to the widely used Linux kernel." He is also the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award and the 2018 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award.
Life and career
Early years
Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland, on 28 December 1969. He is the son of journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds, and the grandson of statistician Leo Törnqvist and of poet Ole Torvalds. His parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s. His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. Torvalds was named after Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize-winning American 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".Torvalds attended the University of Helsinki between 1988 and 1996, graduating with a master's degree in computer science from the NODES research group. His academic career was interrupted after his first year of study when he joined the Finnish Army Uusimaa brigade, in the summer of 1989, selecting the 11-month officer training program to fulfill the mandatory military service of Finland. In the army he held the rank of Second Lieutenant, with the role of an artillery observer. Torvalds bought computer science professor Andrew Tanenbaum's book , in which Tanenbaum describes MINIX, an educational stripped-down version of Unix. 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. His MSc thesis was titled Linux: A Portable Operating System.
His interest in computers began with a Commodore VIC-20, at the age of 11 in 1981, initially programming in BASIC, but later by directly accessing the 6502 CPU in machine code. He did not make use of assembly language. After the VIC-20 he purchased a Sinclair QL, which he modified extensively, especially its operating system. "Because it was so hard to get software for it in Finland, Linus wrote his own assembler and editor " for the QL, as well as a few games. He wrote a Pac-Man clone named Cool Man. On 5 January 1991 he purchased an Intel 80386-based clone of IBM PC before receiving his MINIX copy, which in turn enabled him to begin work on Linux.
Linux
The first prototypes of Linux were publicly released later in 1991. Version 1.0 was released on 14 March 1994.Torvalds first encountered the GNU Project in 1991, after another Swedish-speaking computer science student, Lars Wirzenius, took him to the University of Technology to listen to free software guru Richard Stallman's speech. Torvalds used Stallman's GNU General Public License version 2 for his Linux kernel.
After a visit to Transmeta in late 1996, Torvalds accepted a position at the company in California, where he would work from February 1997 until 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 Dunthorpe, Oregon, to be closer to the OSDL'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. In 1999, he was named by the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the world's top 100 innovators under age 35.
In 1999, Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading developers of Linux-based software, presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation. That same year both companies went public and Torvalds's share value temporarily shot up to roughly US$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.
Although Torvalds believes "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 was criticized for his use and alleged advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software for version control in the Linux kernel. Torvalds subsequently wrote a free-software replacement for BitKeeper called Git.
In 2008, Torvalds stated that he used the Fedora distribution of Linux because it had fairly good support for the PowerPC processor architecture, which he had favored at the time. His usage of Fedora was confirmed in a later 2012 interview. He has also posted updates about his choice of desktop environment, often in response to perceived feature regressions.
Currently, the Linux Foundation sponsors Torvalds so he can work full-time on improving Linux.
Linus Torvalds is known for disagreeing with other developers on the Linux kernel mailing list. Calling himself a "really unpleasant person", he later explained "I'd like to be a nice person and curse less and encourage people to grow rather than telling them they are idiots. I'm sorry – I tried, it's just not in me." His attitude, which Torvalds considers necessary for making his point clear, has drawn criticism from Intel programmer Sage Sharp and systemd developer Lennart Poettering, among others.
On Sunday, 16 September 2018 the Linux Kernel Code of Conflict was suddenly replaced by a new Code of Conduct based on the Contributor Covenant. Shortly thereafter, in the release notes for Linux 4.19-rc4, Linus apologized for his behavior, calling the personal attacks of the past "unprofessional and uncalled for" and announced a period of "time off" to "get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately". It soon transpired that these events followed The New Yorker approaching Linus with a series of questions critical of his conduct. Following the release of Linux 4.19 on 22 October 2018, Linus went back to maintaining the kernel.
The Linus/Linux connection
Initially, Torvalds wanted to call the kernel he developed Freax, but his friend Ari Lemmke, who administered the FTP server where the kernel was first hosted for download, named Torvalds's directory linux.Authority and trademark
As of 2006, approximately two percent of the Linux kernel was written by Torvalds himself. Because thousands have contributed to the Linux kernel, this percentage is one of the largest contributions to it. However, he stated in 2012 that his own personal contribution is now mostly merging code written by others, with little programming. Torvalds retains the highest authority to decide which new code is incorporated into the standard Linux kernel.Torvalds holds the "Linux" trademark and monitors the use of it, chiefly through the Linux Mark Institute.
Personal life
Linus Torvalds is married to Tove Torvalds —a six-time Finnish national karate champion—whom he first met in late 1993. Linus was running introductory computer laboratory exercises for students and instructed the course attendees 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, two of whom were born in the United States. The Linux kernel's reboot system call accepts their dates of birth as magic values.Torvalds has described himself as "completely a-religious—atheist", adding that "I find that people seem to think religion brings morals and appreciation of nature. I actually think it detracts from both. It gives people the excuse to say, 'Oh, nature was just created,' and so the act of creation is seen to be something miraculous. I appreciate the fact that, 'Wow, it's incredible that something like this could have happened in the first place. He later added that while in Europe religion is mostly a personal issue, in the United States it has become very politicized. When discussing the issue of church and state separation, Torvalds also said, "Yeah, it's kind of ironic that in many European countries, there is actually a kind of legal binding between the state and the state religion." However, in a story about the March LinuxWorld Conference titled "Linus the Liberator", Torvalds is quoted as saying "There are like two golden rules in life. One is 'Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.' For some reason, people associate this with Christianity. I'm not a Christian. I'm agnostic. The other rule is 'Be proud of what you do.
In 2010, Torvalds became a United States citizen and registered to vote in the United States. He is unaffiliated with any U.S. political party, saying, "I have way too much personal pride to want to be associated with any of them, quite frankly."
Linus developed an interest in scuba diving in the early 2000s and went on to achieve numerous certifications, which later led to him creating the Subsurface project.
Awards and achievements
Media recognition
has recognized Torvalds multiple times:- In 2000, he was 17th in their poll.
- In 2004, he was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
- In 2006, the magazine's Europe edition named him one of the revolutionary heroes of the past 60 years.
In summer 2004, viewers of YLE placed Torvalds 16th in the network's 100 Greatest Finns. In 2010, as part of a series called The Britannica Guide to the World's Most Influential People, Torvalds was listed among The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time.
On 11 October 2017, the Linux company SUSE made a song titled "Linus Said".