Linus Benedict Torvalds; born December 28, 1969) is a Finnish American software engineer,
who was the principal force behind the development of the Linux kernel. He later became the chief
architect of the Linux kernel and now acts as the project's coordinator. He also created
the revision control system Git as well as the diving log software Subsurface. He was
honored, 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.
Biography Early years
Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland. He is the son of journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds,
and the grandson of poet Ole Torvalds. Both of his parents were campus radicals at the
University of Helsinki in the 1960s. His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority.
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 NODES research group. His academic career was interrupted
after his first year of study when he joined the Finnish Army, 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 a ballistic calculation officer. 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 M.Sc. thesis was titled Linux: A Portable
Operating System. 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
5, 1991 he purchased an Intel 80386-based IBM PC before receiving his MINIX copy, which
in turn enabled him to begin work on Linux. The first prototypes of Linux was publicly
released later that year. Version 1.0 was released on 14 March 1994.
Later years 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' share value temporarily 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.
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 favoured at the time. His usage of Fedora was confirmed in a later 2012 interview.
Currently, the Linux Foundation sponsors Torvalds so he can work full-time on improving Linux.
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' 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 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 owns 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 the autumn of 1993. Linus 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 Miranda, Daniela Yolanda, and Celeste Amanda,
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 describes 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 America 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." 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." Recognition
IEEE Computer Pioneer Award On 23 April 2014, the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers named Torvalds as the 2014 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's
Computer Pioneer Award. The Computer Pioneer Award was established in 1981 by the IEEE
Computer Society Board of Governors to recognize and honor the vision of those whose efforts
resulted in the creation and continued vitality of the computer industry. The award is presented
to outstanding individuals whose main contribution to the concepts and development of the computer
field was made at least 15 years earlier. Internet Hall of Fame
On April 23, 2012 at Internet Society's Global INET conference in Geneva, Switzerland, Torvalds
was one of the inaugural inductees into the Internet Hall of Fame, one of ten in the Innovators
category and thirty-three overall inductees. Millennium Technology Prize
On April 20, 2012, Torvalds was declared one of two winners of that year's Millennium Technology
Prize, along with Shinya Yamanaka. The honor is widely described as technology's equivalent
of the Nobel Prize. Academics
In 1997, Torvalds received his Master degree from the Department of Computer Science at
the University of Helsinki. Two years later he received honorary doctor status at Stockholm
University, and in 2000 he received the same honor from his alma mater. University of Helsinki
has named an auditorium after Torvalds and his computer is on display at the Department
of Computer Science. In August 2005, Torvalds received the Vollum
Award from Reed College. Industry
In 1998 Torvalds received an EFF Pioneer Award. In 2000 he was awarded the Lovelace Medal
from the British Computer Society. In 2001, he shared the Takeda Award for Social/Economic
Well-Being with Richard Stallman and Ken Sakamura. In 2008, he was inducted into the Hall of
Fellows of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. He was awarded
the C&C Prize by the NEC Corporation in 2010 for "contributions to the advancement of the
information technology industry, education, research, and the improvement of our lives".
Media Time magazine has recognized Torvalds multiple
times: In 2000, he was 17th in their Time 100: The
Most Important People of the Century Poll. In 2004, he was named one of the most influential
people in the world. In 2006, the magazine's Europe edition named
him one of the revolutionary heroes of the past 60 years.
InfoWorld presented him with the 2000 Award for Industry Achievement. In 2005 Torvalds
appeared as one of "the best managers" in a survey by BusinessWeek. 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 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. Space
In 1996, the asteroid 9793 Torvalds was named after him. In 2003, the naming of an asteroid
moon was motivated in part by the fact that the discoverer was an enthusiastic Linux user.
Patents As of March 2011, Torvalds has been granted
35 patents worldwide. Desktop environment criticism
In 2005, on the official GNOME developmental mailing lists, Torvalds encouraged users to
switch to K Desktop Environment 3 rather than use GNOME. However, Torvalds thought KDE Plasma
Desktop 4.0 was a "disaster" because of its lack of maturity, and so he had switched to
GNOME by 2009. Dissatisfied with his perceived loss of productivity, he switched to Xfce
after the GNOME 3 release, making another harsh post against GNOME. After improved KDE
versions were made, he switched back to KDE Plasma Desktop 4 but soon switched back to
GNOME 3 stating that "it has been getting less painful" with Frippery and gnome-tweak-tool
which he suggested to be merged into GNOME. Possible NSA approach
In September 2013, Torvalds was asked at the LinuxCon conference whether he had been approached
by a US government agency to add backdoors into Linux; he responded with a verbal "no"
while nodding his head "yes". He later confirmed that it was obviously a joke. However, Linus'
father Nils states:
When my oldest son [Linus Torvalds] was asked the same question: “Has he been approached
by the NSA about backdoors?” he said “No”, but at the same time he nodded. Then he was
sort of in the legal free. He had given the right answer, [but] everybody understood that
the NSA had approached him.
See also Linus's Law
Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate References
Bibliography Torvalds, Linus; David Diamond. Just For Fun:
The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary. New York, New York, United States: HarperCollins.
ISBN 0-06-662072-4. Further reading
Himanen, Pekka; Linus Torvalds, and Manuel Castells. The Hacker Ethic. Secker & Warburg.
ISBN 0-436-20550-5. External links
Linus' blog at blogspot.com Linus Torvalds on Google+
Linus Torvalds and His Five Entrepreneurial Lessons
Young, Robert. "Interview with Linus, the Author of Linux". Linux Journal.
Fresh Air radio interview – June 4, 2001 Ten years of NODES
Linus Torvalds: Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust
Torvalds interview