Quotes by Linus Torvalds

About Linus Torvalds:

Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish American software engineer, who was the principal force behind the development of the Linux kernel that became the most popular kernel for operating systems. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel and now acts as the project's coordinator. He also created the distributed revision control system git. 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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

In many cases, the user interface to a program is the most important part for a commercial company: whether the programs works correctly or not seems to be secondary.

Linus Torvalds

Linux has definitely made a lot of sense even in a purely materialistic sense.

Linus Torvalds

Non-technical questions sometimes don't have an answer at all.

Linus Torvalds

I used to be interested in Windows NT, but the more I see it, the more it looks like traditional Windows with a stabler kernel. I don't find anything technically interesting there.

Linus Torvalds

There were open source projects and free software before Linux was there. Linux in many ways is one of the more visible and one of the bigger technical projects in this area, and it changed how people looked at it because Linux took both the practica...

Linus Torvalds

Software patents, in particular, are very ripe for abuse. The whole system encourages big corporations getting thousands and thousands of patents. Individuals almost never get them.

Linus Torvalds

To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy something, don't you? Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.

Linus Torvalds

I lose sleep if I end up feeling bad about something I've said. Usually that happens when I send something out without having read it over a few times, or when I call somebody names.

Linus Torvalds

An individual developer like me cares about writing the new code and making it as interesting and efficient as possible. But very few people want to do the testing.

Linus Torvalds

It's a personality trait: from the very beginning, I knew what I was concentrating on. I'm only doing the kernel - I always found everything around it to be completely boring.

Linus Torvalds

What I find most interesting is how people really have taken Linux and used it in ways and attributes and motivations that I never felt.

Linus Torvalds

In many ways, I am very happy about the whole Linux commercial market because the commercial market is doing all these things that I have absolutely zero interest in doing myself.

Linus Torvalds

No-one has ever called me a cool dude. I'm somewhere between geek and normal.

Linus Torvalds

Fairly cheap home computing was what changed my life.

Linus Torvalds

I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm also not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords.

Linus Torvalds

Shareware tends to combine the worst of commercial software with the worst of free software.

Linus Torvalds

Hey, I'm a good software engineer, but I'm not exactly known for my fashion sense. White socks and sandals don't translate to 'good design sense'.

Linus Torvalds

I see myself as a technical person who chose a great project and a great way of doing that project.

Linus Torvalds

See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too.

Linus Torvalds

In my opinion MS is a lot better at making money than it is at making good operating systems.

Linus Torvalds

Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.

Linus Torvalds

Author Bio

  • NameLinus Torvalds
  • DescriptionFinnish-American software engineer and hacker
  • AliasesLinus Benedict Torvalds
  • BornDecember 28, 1969
  • CountryUnited States Of America; Finland
  • ProfessionProgrammer; Software Developer; Writer; Engineer; Blogger
  • WorksLinux Kernel; Git; Subsurface
  • AwardsMillennium Technology Prize; Computer Pioneer Award; Suuret Suomalaiset; Lovelace Medal; Honorary Degree; EFF Pioneer Award