29 Facts About Linus Torvalds

1.

Linus Torvalds 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.

FactSnippet No. 518,265
2.

Linus Torvalds's parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s.

FactSnippet No. 518,266
3.

Linus Torvalds's family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland.

FactSnippet No. 518,267
4.

Linus Torvalds was named after Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize-winning American chemist, although in the book Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, he is quoted as saying, "I think I was named equally for Linus the Peanuts cartoon character", noting that this made him "half Nobel Prize-winning chemist and half blanket-carrying cartoon character".

FactSnippet No. 518,268
5.

Linus Torvalds attended the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 1996, graduating with a master's degree in computer science from the NODES research group.

FactSnippet No. 518,269
6.

Linus Torvalds gained the rank of second lieutenant, with the role of an artillery observer.

FactSnippet No. 518,270
7.

Linus Torvalds bought computer science professor Andrew Tanenbaum's book Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, in which Tanenbaum describes MINIX, an educational stripped-down version of Unix.

FactSnippet No. 518,271
8.

In 1990, Linus Torvalds resumed his university studies, and was exposed to Unix for the first time in the form of a DEC MicroVAX running ULTRIX.

FactSnippet No. 518,272
9.

Linus Torvalds started programming for it in BASIC, then later by directly accessing the 6502 CPU in machine code.

FactSnippet No. 518,273
10.

Linus Torvalds then purchased a Sinclair QL, which he modified extensively, especially its operating system.

FactSnippet No. 518,274
11.

Linus Torvalds first encountered the GNU Project in 1991 when another Swedish-speaking computer science student, Lars Wirzenius, took him to the University of Technology to listen to free software guru Richard Stallman's speech.

FactSnippet No. 518,275
12.

Linus Torvalds used Stallman's GNU General Public License version 2 for his Linux kernel.

FactSnippet No. 518,276
13.

Linus Torvalds 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.

FactSnippet No. 518,277
14.

Linus Torvalds's personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux, which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the Linux kernel's mascot.

FactSnippet No. 518,278
15.

Linus Torvalds was criticized for his use and alleged advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software for version control in the Linux kernel.

FactSnippet No. 518,279
16.

Linus Torvalds subsequently wrote a free-software replacement for it called Git.

FactSnippet No. 518,280
17.

In 2008, Linus Torvalds stated that he used the Fedora Linux distribution because it had fairly good support for the PowerPC processor architecture, which he favored at the time.

FactSnippet No. 518,281
18.

Linus Torvalds has posted updates about his choice of desktop environment, often in response to perceived feature regressions.

FactSnippet No. 518,282
19.

Linus Torvalds is known for vocally disagreeing with other developers on the Linux kernel mailing list.

FactSnippet No. 518,283
20.

Linus Torvalds retains the highest authority to decide which new code is incorporated into the standard Linux kernel.

FactSnippet No. 518,284
21.

Linus Torvalds holds the Linux trademark and monitors its use, chiefly through the Linux Mark Institute.

FactSnippet No. 518,285
22.

On 3 April 2005, Linus Torvalds began development on Git, version control software that later became widely used.

FactSnippet No. 518,286
23.

Linus Torvalds is married to Tove Linus Torvalds, a six-time Finnish national karate champion, whom he met in late 1993.

FactSnippet No. 518,287
24.

Linus Torvalds was running introductory computer laboratory exercises for students and instructed the course attendees to send him an e-mail as a test, to which Tove responded with an e-mail asking for a date.

FactSnippet No. 518,288
25.

Linus Torvalds has described himself as "completely a-religious—atheist", adding, "I find that people seem to think religion brings morals and appreciation of nature.

FactSnippet No. 518,289
26.

In 2010, Linus Torvalds became a United States citizen and registered to vote in the United States.

FactSnippet No. 518,290
27.

Linus Torvalds is unaffiliated with any U S political party, saying, "I have way too much personal pride to want to be associated with any of them, quite frankly.

FactSnippet No. 518,291
28.

Linus Torvalds developed an interest in scuba diving in the early 2000s and has achieved numerous certifications, leading him to create the Subsurface project.

FactSnippet No. 518,292
29.

In 2005, Linus Torvalds appeared as one of "the best managers" in a survey by BusinessWeek.

FactSnippet No. 518,293