27 Facts About Linus Torvalds

Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and, historically, the lead developer of the Linux kernel, used by Linux distributions and other operating systems such as Android.

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

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

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".

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Linus Torvalds first encountered the GNU Project in fall of 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Subsurface is software for logging and planning scuba dives, which Linus Torvalds began developing in late 2011.

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

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.

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

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

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