Lin Us

Linus Benedict Torvalds born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finland-Swedish 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.

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Torvalds in 2002[1] Born December 28, 1969 (1969-12-28) (age 39) Helsinki, Finland Residence Portland, Oregon Nationality Finnish Occupation Employer

Software engineer Linux Foundation

Known for Linux kernel, Git Spouse(s)

Tove Torvalds

Parents

Nils Torvalds (father)

Anna Torvalds (mother)[2] Relatives

Ole Torvalds (grandfather)

Website www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/torvalds/

Linus Benedict Torvalds (Sv-Linus_Torvalds2.ogg pronunciation (help·info); [ˈliːnɵs ˈtuːrvalds]; born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finland-Swedish 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. Contents [hide]

* 1 Biography o 1.1 Early years o 1.2 Later years * 2 The Linus/Linux connection * 3 Authority on Linux * 4 Linux trademark * 5 Recognition * 6 See also * 7 Notes * 8 References * 9 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early years

Linus Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland, the son of journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds,[3] 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".[4] 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.[5] 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.[6]

His interest in computers began with a Commodore VIC-20.[7] 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.[8] 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[9] 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.[4]

[edit] 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.[10] 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.[4] Tove and Linus were later married and have three daughters, Patricia, Daniela, and Celeste.[11]

After a visit to Transmeta in late 1996,[2] 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.[12] In 1999, both companies went public and Torvalds' net worth shot up to roughly $20 million.[13][14]

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.[15] 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.[16][17] However, Torvalds thought KDE 4.0 was a "disaster" because of its lack of maturity, so he switched temporarily to GNOME.[18]

[edit] The Linus/Linux connection Main article: History of Linux

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.

[edit] Authority on Linux

About 2% of the Linux kernel as of 2006 was written by Torvalds himself.[14] 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.[19]

[edit] Linux trademark

Torvalds owns the "Linux" trademark, and monitors[20] use of it chiefly through the Linux Mark Institute.

[edit] Recognition

* In 1996 Asteroid 9793 Torvalds was named after Linus Torvalds. * In 1998 he received an EFF Pioneer Award.[21] * 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.[22] * In 2000 he was awarded the Lovelace Medal.[23] * In the Time magazine's Person of the Century Poll, Torvalds was voted at #17 at the poll's close in 2000.[24] * In 2001, he shared the Takeda Award for Social/Economic WellBeing 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, 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.[25] * In August 2005, Torvalds received the Vollum Award from Reed College.[26] * 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.[27] * In 2006, Time Magazine—Europe Edition named him one of the revolutionary heroes of the past 60 years.[28] * In 2008, he was inducted into the Hall of Fellows of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.[29][30]

[edit] See also

* Linus's Law * Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate * Revolution OS * Just for Fun

[edit] Notes

1. ^ McMillan, Robert (December 2002). "The Great Dictator · Linus Torvalds: The Benevolent, Brilliant Keeper of the Kernel". FEATURES (Linux Magazine). Archived from the original on 2003-03-04. http://web.archive.org/web/20030304160629/http://www.linuxmag.com/2002-12/linus_01.html. Retrieved on 2009-06-09. 2. ^ a b Linux Online - Linus Torvalds Bio 3. ^ TORVALDS, 2001 4. ^ a b c Moody, Glyn (2002). Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution. Perseus Books Group. pp. 336. ISBN 0738206709. http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/perseus/book_detail_redirect.do?i mprintCid=BA&isbn=0738206709. 5. ^ Torvalds, 2001, page 29 6. ^ Torvalds, 2001, page 53 7. ^ TORVALDS, 2001, pages 6-7 8. ^ TORVALDS, 2001, pages 41-46 9. ^ Torvalds, 2001, page 60 10. ^ TORVALDS, 2001, page 123

11. ^ Torvalds' bio on nndb.com 12. ^ Gumbel, Peter (2006). Torvalds "Linus Torvalds: By giving away his software, the Finnish programmer earned a place in history"]. 60 Years of Heros. TIME. http://www.time.com/time/europe/hero2006/torvalds.html Torvalds]. Retrieved on 2008-06-14. 13. ^ Rivlin, Gary. "Leader of the Free World". Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/linus_pr.html. Retrieved on 2008-06-14. 14. ^ a b Linus Torvalds: A Very Brief and Completely Unauthorized Biography 15. ^ Linus Torvalds at Google, on Git, 9:50-10:00 16. ^ Printing dialog and GNOME 17. ^ Linus versus GNOME 18. ^ "it was a half-baked release (...) I'll revisit it when I reinstall the next machine"Q&A: Linux founder Linus Torvalds talks about opensource identity 19. ^ Henrik Ingo. Open Life: The Philosophy of Open Source. Ingram, 2005. 42-45. Online version 20. ^ Linus Explains Linux Trademark Issues 21. ^ Torvalds, Stallman, Simons Win 1998 Pioneer Awards 22. ^ Torvalds, 2001, page 28 23. ^ Talking to Torvalds, British Computer Society, September 2007. 24. ^ The Person of the Century Poll Results 25. ^ The Best & Worst Managers Of The Year 26. ^ Linux creator Linus Torvalds honored with Reed College's Vollum Award 27. ^ 10 people who don't matter 28. ^ Linus Torvalds

29. ^ "The Computer History Museum Announces the 2008 Fellow Awards Recipients". 2008-06-18. http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/080618/0407491.html. Retrieved on 2008-0620. 30. ^ "Fellow Awards: Linus Benedict Torvalds". 2008-10-21. http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/index.php?id=123. Retrieved on 2008-10-23.

[edit] References

* Himanen, Pekka; Linus Torvalds, and Manuel Castells (2001). The Hacker Ethic. Secker & Warburg. ISBN 0-436-20550-5. * Torvalds, Linus; David Diamond (2001). Just For Fun: The story of an accidental revolutionary. New York, New York, United States: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-662072-4. * TORVALDS, Linus; David Diamond (2001). Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary. London, UK: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06662073-2.

[edit] External links Sister project Linus Torvalds

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Sister project Torvalds

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Linus

* Linus' blog * Torvalds's home page (quite outdated) * Leader of the Free World - How Linus Torvalds became the benevolent dictator of Planet Linux, the biggest collaborative project in history (Wired News)

* The birth of Tux: Why Linus Torvalds chose a penguin as the Linux mascot * What would you like to see most in minix?, 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 * Linus Torvalds and His Five Entrepreneurial Lessons * Linux Journal - 1 March 1994 * Linux Journal - 1 November 1999 * Fresh Air radio interview - 4 June 2001 * Linus' mailing list activity