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.
Both of
his parents were campus radicals at the University of
Helsinki
in the 1960s. 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".
Torvalds
attended the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 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 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. 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 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
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 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.
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.
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 thought
KDE 4.0 was a "disaster"
because of its lack of maturity, so he temporarily switched 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.
Personal life
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.
In an interview 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.” I think we can have morals without getting religion
into it, and a lot of bad things have come from organized religion
in particular. I actually fear organized religion because it
usually leads to misuses of power." He also added that religion has
become too politicized in America, while in Europe it is mostly a
personal issue.
Recognition
- In 1996 Asteroid 9793 Torvalds was
named after Linus Torvalds.
- In 1997 he received his Master degree (Laudatur Grade) from
Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki.
- 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.
- In 2004, he was named one of the most influential people in the
world by the Time magazine
article "Linus Torvalds: The Free-Software Champion" by
Lawrence Lessig
- 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
Notes
References
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