Linus Torvalds

Linus Benedict Torvalds (born December 28, 1969) is best known for initiating the development of Linux. He now acts as the project's coordinator (or Benevolent Dictator for Life).

Biography

Torvalds was born in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, as the son of Anna and Nils, and the grandson of poet Ole Torvalds.

Related Topics:
Helsinki - Finland - Nils - Ole Torvalds

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His family belonged to the Swedish-speaking minority (roughly 6%) of Finland's population. Torvalds was named after Linus Pauling, the American Nobel Prize-winning chemist. Both of his parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s. His father was a Communist who in the mid-1970s spent a year studying in Moscow.

Related Topics:
Swedish - Linus Pauling - Nobel Prize - University of Helsinki - 1960s - 1970s - Moscow

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Torvalds attended the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 1996, graduating with a master's degree in computer science. He wrote his M.Sc. thesis, titled Linux: A Portable Operating System, on Linux.

Related Topics:
University of Helsinki - 1988 - 1996 - Computer science - Linux

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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 assembler 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. In 1990 he purchased an Intel 80386-based IBM PC and spent a few weeks playing the game Prince of Persia before receiving his Minix copy which in turn enabled him to begin his work on Linux.

Related Topics:
Commodore VIC-20 - Sinclair QL - Assembler - Text editor - Pac Man - Intel 80386 - IBM PC - Prince of Persia - Minix

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Linus is married to Tove Torvalds (nee Minni). She is a six-time Finnish national Karate champion, whom he first met in fall 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. They have three daughters, Patricia Miranda (born December 5, 1996), Daniela Yolanda (born April 16, 1998) and Celeste Amanda (born November 20 2000), and a cat named Randi (short for Mithrandir, the Elvish name for Gandalf, a wizard in The Lord of the Rings).

Related Topics:
Karate - 1993 - E-mail - December 5 - 1996 - April 16 - 1998 - November 20 - 2000 - Mithrandir - Elvish - The Lord of the Rings

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Torvalds moved to San Jose, California and lived there for several years with his family. In June of 2004, Torvalds and his family moved to Lake Oswego, Oregon. Finally, they moved to Portland, Oregon to be closer to Linus' place of work.

Related Topics:
San Jose, California - June - 2004 - Lake Oswego, Oregon - Portland, Oregon

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He worked for Transmeta Corporation from February 1997 until June 2003, and is now seconded to the Open Source Development Labs, a Beaverton, Oregon based software consortium.

Related Topics:
Transmeta Corporation - February - 1997 - June - 2003 - Open Source Development Labs - Beaverton, Oregon

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His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux, which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of Linux.

Related Topics:
Penguin - Tux - Linux

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Linus's law, a tenet inspired by Torvalds but coined by Eric S. Raymond in his paper The Cathedral and the Bazaar, 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.

Related Topics:
Linus's law - Eric S. Raymond - The Cathedral and the Bazaar - Open source

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Unlike many open source "evangelists", Torvalds keeps a low profile and generally refuses to comment on competing software products. He has been criticized for his neutrality by the GNU project, specifically for having worked on proprietary software with Transmeta and for his use and alleged advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software. Despite his neutral nature, Torvalds has vehemently defended open-source and free software against what he perceives as slander or lip service by proprietary software vendors.

Related Topics:
Open source - GNU - Transmeta - BitKeeper

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