Linus Torvalds - a classic example of the love-it-or-hate-it type of person. Brilliant programmer, of course, and the father of one of the most extraordinary software projects in the world, but sometimes, he can be utterly arrogant any annoying, yet the other moment completely sensible and utterly spot-on in his statements. CBR listed the ten best Linus Torvalds quotes.
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2005-11-15
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2005-11-12
Is when Linus did a talk about git and why CVS is so evil and bad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8
Dont take it to seriously and him to.
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2005-11-12
I like the "Flash no worky" quote in reference to Fedora 9. He wasn't interested in Flash for himself but his wife was unable to watch youtube videos. Using the Adobe plugin I was able to get Flash from no-worky to mostly-worky-but-crashy.
Edited 2008-06-06 23:47 UTC
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2006-09-30
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There are a lot of neat free software projects. If your pet project has a leader who produces amusing quotes, you should make a list of them and submit it.
This is a way of saying that you are dramatically off-topic. Would you like the artible to be changed to read "...father of one of the most extraordinary software projects in the world. BSD ports are another extraordinary project. But sometimes, he..." ? Does that not sound just the slightest bit incredibly stupid to you?
If you feel that linux is not a remarkable project, then I'm sure we would all be fascinated to see you present evidence to that effect. If you feel that there are projects which are more remarkable - you might notice that the article didn't say there aren't - then I'm sure everybody would like to read a quantitative analysis of which open source projects are the most incredible.
And seeing that Linus was the right man in the right place, and made the right decisions to enable free software to really take off, during a time period when BSD was bogged down for years with licensing issues, I know that I would be very interested to learn why he is not, in fact, a big hero.
Member since:2008-06-07
Can you be more specific what you don't like in the Linux kernel? I think you're wrong, I think Linus is a great architect, but the kernel is quite old large general low-level piece of software, and that means it can be a lot complicated. I think you're confusing ugliness from complexity and ugliness from bad design.
Member since:2006-02-15
I just took offense to the original article calling him a "Brilliant Programmer"
Well, it is an opinion and you are of course entitled to have your opinion, but IMHO he is still a brilliant programmer. He did after all start a kernel that changed the OSS scene forever, he did write Git which is now used all over the net for source code management and so forth..
I work on "his" kernel every day and it really is the biggest POS on the planet!
Explain, what exactly is wrong with Linux kernel? Just spouting "it's POS" won't make anyone listen to you.
Member since:2005-08-29
Well, it is an opinion and you are of course entitled to have your opinion, but IMHO he is still a brilliant programmer. He did after all start a kernel that changed the OSS scene forever, he did write Git which is now used all over the net for source code management and so forth..
You raised a question I like to ask. Are you giving him credit to what you see in the current kernel we use, or the ideology or methodology he used (or both?)? I ask because I wonder how much of the code in there is written by him, and how much is written by others who deserve credit too (maybe less, maybe more)
Edit: Because I see many others saying the exact thing about Bill Gates as an example, when, IMHO, he's more of a business man than a programmer and many others deserve the credit he is taking.
Edited 2008-06-07 11:13 UTC
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Phew - I'm sure everyone must feel better now that you've given them permission to hold personal opinions.
Awww, who took the baby's bottle away?
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2005-07-06
"If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won."
Linus Torvalds
"We're back to the times when men were men and wrote their own device drivers."
-- Linus Torvalds
"Gnome seems to be developed by interface nazis,"
-linus
"Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it."
-- Linus Torvalds
"There are literally several levels of SCO being wrong. And even if we were to live in that alternate universe where SCO would be right, they'd still be wrong."
"Note that nobody reads every post in linux-kernel. In fact, nobody who expects to have time left over to actually do any real kernel work will read even half. Except Alan Cox, but he's actually not human, but about a thousand gnomes working in under-ground caves in Swansea. None of the individual gnomes read all the postings either, they just work together really well."
"The NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here) is a disease."
"We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds."
"Gaah. I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful?" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not."
"it's all part of the plan for world domination."
Edited 2008-06-07 00:02 UTC
Member since:2006-11-08
I found this one in fortune, so I can't be sure if it is correct this way.
- Walk around your computer widdershins 3 times, chanting "Linus is overworked, and he makes lousy patches, but we love him anyway". Get your spuouse to do this too for extra effect. Children are optional.
- Apply the patch included in this mail
- Call your system "Super-67", and don't forget to unapply the patch before you later applying the official 1.3.68 patch.
- reboot
Member since:
2006-03-31
How about his abhorrent quotes about microkernels, especially in regards to his debate with Tanenbaum? I wonder how he feels about the success of QNX. (By success, I don't mean widespread acceptance. I mean they successfully accomplished creating a fast microkernel.)
Member since:2005-07-06
Linus has won. Microkernels are still a work in progress in terms of widespread adoption and still give you significant performance problems and developer overhead for little to no benefit whatsoever. Tanenbaum admitted that himself sixteen years later by coming up with the same arguments as to how microkernels are better and have improved.
QNX has filled a niche, nothing more, and a pretty debateable niche at that. If your priorities have shifted to the point where you need to guard against any unknown and theoretical crash or problem in your system against the rest, then a microkernel is probably what you need.
However, if you're worried about that then you already have a problem before you even start because you know and expect it to fail, and worse, you expect it to fail at a kernel level. If a service crashes in the kernel then it's a big problem, regardless of what other kernel services it does or doesn't take with it. Given that there are dependencies and message passing between these services, and there have to be, if one goes missing it is still a big problem that doesn't guarantee that everything else will work fine at all. A microkernel will not recover itself if a filesystem or SCSI driver process crashes. You can kill a driver process in QNX and still crash the system. This is why Linus doesn't believe that kernel development should be 'easy'.
That's why I'm always highly dubious of the claims of QNX's stability on that basis. QNX is reasonably successful and stable because the kernel as a whole works, not because it is a microkernel that recovers from crashes and keeps the system running after a service crash every day of its life.
For their purposes, yes. For the purposes of what Linux and other systems do you'd see some pretty significant problems and complaints from developers and end users. QNX has a notoriously slow TCP stack.
Edited 2008-06-07 23:05 UTC
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http://photon.qnx.com/download/download/8107/QNX_High_Availability_...
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2008-06-07
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From Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate:
Andy Tanenbaum:
I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is
a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not
get a high grade for such a design :-)
"Well, I probably won't get too good grades even without you: I had an argument (completely unrelated - not even pertaining to OS's) with the person here at the university that teaches OS design. I wonder when I'll learn 
" -- Linus Torvalds
"Well, with a subject like this, I'm afraid I'll have to reply. Apologies to minix-users who have heard enough about linux anyway. I'd like to be able to just "ignore the bait", but ... Time for some serious flamefesting!" -- Linus Torvalds
Edited 2008-06-07 01:12 UTC
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2006-08-15
"Me, I just don't care about proprietary software. It's not "evil" or "immoral," it just doesn't matter. I think that Open Source can do better, and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is by working on Open Source, but it's not a crusade -- it's just a superior way of working together and generating code.
It's superior because it's a lot more fun and because it makes cooperation much easier (no silly NDA's or artificial barriers to innovation like in a proprietary setting), and I think Open Source is the right thing to do the same way I believe science is better than alchemy. Like science, Open Source allows people to build on a solid base of previous knowledge, without some silly hiding.
But I don't think you need to think that alchemy is "evil." It's just pointless because you can obviously never do as well in a closed environment as you can with open scientific methods. "
-- Linus Torvalds
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2006-08-15
"People said "why did you do that?" specially in the U.S but also in Finland, that people just did not understand the concept of creating a program because you like programming." -- Linus Torvalds
I love that part in this interview:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=X2pGnBzMbZY
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pcbbOcquHZ4
Linus rocks!
Member since:
2006-02-19
I like this advice Linus gives to programmers:
"Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small _trivial_ project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision.
So start small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's almost certainly over-designed. And don't expect people to jump in and help you. That's not how these things work. You need to get something half-way _useful_ first, and then others will say "hey, that _almost_ works for me", and they'll get involved in the project."
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2008-06-07
1. "People can trust me because they doesn't have to." (that's not quite exact, but I can't find the source) - It was about Linux kernel, but it's in fact a very general and very enlightening statement about how any social system should be designed to work well. For example, to really trust politicians, you must have means to vote them from the office or approve what they do in referendum. If you don't have these means, you cannot trust them. This statement is really about balance of power.
2. "The difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships." - This is the best advice he ever gave to programmers.
(It's no wonder they're not there, they focus on attention-grabbing quotes like "I am God", and ignore really deep thoughts)
Member since:
2008-04-10
Sure, he did a great job on the kernel, but I think he gets a little too much credit. I'm not one of these "It's GNU/Linux!" people, but I think the GNU tools are probably more important to users of Linux than the kernel is. I don't want to spark a naming debate, but I just think Linus Torvalds doesn't deserve all the credit he gets.
Member since:2005-07-06
Linus Torvalds *is* the actual Linux mascot, not Tux. He accepted this role quite early and on the whole I think he has done a wonderful job at it. Linus, AFAIK, hasn't done a whole lot of programming in the last years except for Git(and I really respect him for having created Git- he stirred up a hornets nest of bad feelings with the whole BitKeeper saga-when the shit hit the fan he turned around and wrote what has become one of the most used distributed version control systems around). He manages the contributions of others-that is his primary Linux role nowadays.
The fact remains, the media needed a figurehead and Linus accepted this role. Traditionally major tech developments have either been done major corporations or groups of scientists. In both cases individuals are sought out who are supposed to embody this "greatness". In the case of corporations it is usually the CEO(Bill Gates, Steven Jobs etc.). The people who are doing the actual programming are generally unknown with only a few exceptions, and these exceptions are only known in insider circles(eg. Gosling). How many people know the names of the Microsoft employees most responsible for the code in Microsoft Office ?.
Linus, himself, is not particularly representative of FOSS programmers in general, and not even of those working on the Linux kernel. Yet he has an interesting personality, he likes to stir up controversy and he genuinely seems to like all the attention he gets. Until the advent of the blogosphere we outsiders had little access to the individuals who write the software we use.
It is also interesting to note that GNU has specifically chosen the path of anonymity- we all know Richard M. Stallman, but who else, of the thousands of people working on GNU software, are known-Ulrich Depper is one name-but most of the GNU folks do not wish to draw this kind of personal attention to their own accomplishments. Thanks to the blogs I know the names of almost all the major contributors to the software which I use on my desktop-GNOME. And I know the names of a lot of the KDE developers. But who wrote sed or grep or cut or find or.......
Linus is the "Poster boy" of Linux. Linux changed the rules of the game for the entire software industry-every single corporation in the proprietary software world has had to acknowledge and adapt to the effects that Linux has had in the marketplace. In so doing Linux became a tangible threat to the thousands of individual programmers who earned their living by selling proprietary software. I can only imagine how many of these programmers HATE Linus, or more importantly what he represents.
Linus is dogmatically anti-dogmatic. This wins him points in the eyes of many who see him as a pragmatist. In this role he is a perfect counterpart to Stallman, who is rightfully, very, very dogmatic. Ironically there is nothing pragmatic about what Linus has done, although nowadays FOSS is becoming pragmatic, it certainly did not start out this way, and certainly was not this way when Linus first wrote the Linux kernel. Between the two of them, Linus and Richard, they have a very broad appeal, which has been instrumental to the success of the GNU/Linux.
All the world is a stage, we are merely players, performers or portrayers.
Member since:2006-02-15
Wow, you sure are missing the whole point of the article :O Those were just meant to be funny quotes, nothing, _NOTHING_ more. Linus just happens to be a celebrity in the tech circles, he often says something funny, and he is a personality people can easily like, so I don't really see anything wrong with the article.
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"I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work if it just results in what I consider to be a better system.[...] Because I'm a bastard, and proud of it!"
http://lwn.net/2000/0914/a/lt-debugger.php3
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2005-08-29
These are some of the quotes I'd like to see.. And this is why IMHO I think he's a selfish man and why I don't like him.
"And I'm not your Mom. You can use a
kernel debugger if you want to, and I won't give you the cold shoulderbecause you have "sullied" yourself. But I'm not going to help you use one, and I wuld frankly prefer people not to use kernel debuggers that
much. So I don't make it part of the standard distribution, and if the existing debuggers aren't very well known I won't shed a tear over it."
"And quite frankly, I don't care. I don't think kernel development should be "easy"."
"My biggest job is to say "no" to new features, not trying to find them."
"It's a cold, callous argument that says that there are two kinds of people, and I'd rather not work with the second kind. Live with it."
"I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work if it just results in what I consider to be a better system." (notice.. what I consider...)
"And I'm not just saying that. I'm really not a very nice person. I can say "I don't care" with a straight face, and really mean it."
And these I just got from one of his emails.. I cannot imagine how many others are there..
Member since:2008-06-07
You know someone who isn't selfish? What about yourself? Either you are selfish, or you don't like yourself.
Maybe he is selfish, but everybody is. At least he is honest about it.
Actually, I think he exaggerated his words a little in the quotes you gave, because he wanted to convey a point. I think he wants a quality kernel, and that's why he is a little harsh. It's a psychological game, nothing else, and you have to understand it in this way.
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Finnish humor is kinda weird...
Sometimes i still don't know if we are joking or saying it for real...
I agree, finnish humour is very weird and in my case often very, VERY, pervert and sexually oriented 
Anyway, I do understand Linus's sense of humour where he often parodies (I am not sure about how to spell this word in english properly) himself: he tries to explain his inner motives through mocking his own actions and achievements which may not have (yet?) resulted in the hoped end-result.
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Unfortunately I don't have the direct quote but it was during an interview and it went something like...
Like all other programmers out in the world I knew I was the worlds best.
This quote really helped me improve my coding methods. Because I could focus on the computer science not trying to prove myself, because it would be impossible to prove myself as everyone else thinks that they are the best and thus will just be critical to anything that threatens their point of view.
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2008-04-15
always good for a laugh...
Ahoy!
She's good to go, hoist anchor!
Here's some real booty for all you land-lubbers.
There's not too many changes, with t'bulk of the patch bein' defconfig updates, but the shortlog at the aft of this here email describes the details if you care, you scurvy dogs.
Header cleanups, various one-liners, and random other fixes.
Linus "but you can call me Cap'n"
