Thursday, November 21, 2024 Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Linus Torvalds


Computer programmer, best known as the creator of the Linux kernel.
Linus Torvalds
So LSM stays in. No ifs, buts, maybes or anything else. When I see the security people making sane arguments and agreeing on something, that will change. Quite frankly, I expect hell to freeze over before that happens, and pigs will be nesting in trees. But hey, I can hope.
Torvalds quotes
… even if the Hurd didn't depend on Linux code (and as far as I know, it does, but since I think they have their design heads firmly up their *sses anyway with that whole microkernel thing, I've never felt it was worth my time even looking at their code), I don't believe a religiously motivated development community can ever generate as good code except by pure chance.
Torvalds
Yeah. And as Linus once said: most numerical problems today in pure CPU cycles are actually 3D games. … It's not "incorrect" to say that you want the result faster, even if that result doesn't match your theoretical models.




Torvalds Linus quotes
There are "extremists" in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I don't call what I do "free software" any more. I don't want to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred.
Torvalds Linus
So the whole "We have a list and we're not telling you" should tell you something. Don't you think that if Microsoft actually had some really foolproof patent, they'd just tell us and go, "nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!"?
Linus Torvalds quotes
95 percent of all software developers believe they are in the top 5 percent when it comes to knowledge and skills.
Linus Torvalds
Somebody is trying to kill all the kernel developers.
Torvalds Linus quotes
You try to claim that the GPLv3 causes "More developers", and that, my idiotic penpal, is just crazy talk that you made up.
Torvalds
If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened.
Torvalds Linus
I'm a huge believer in evolution (not in the sense that "it happened" – anybody who doesn't believe that is either uninformed or crazy, but in the sense "the processes of evolution are really fundamental, and should probably be at least thought about in pretty much any context").
Linus Torvalds
My name is Linus Torvalds and I am your god.




Linus Torvalds quotes
An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program.
Linus Torvalds
Personally, I'm not interested in making device drivers look like user-level. They aren't, they shouldn't be, and microkernels are just stupid.
Torvalds quotes
C++ is in that inconvenient spot where it doesn't help make things simple enough to be truly usable for prototyping or simple GUI programming, and yet isn't the lean system programming language that C is that actively encourages you to use simple and direct constructs.
Torvalds Linus
First off, I'm actually perfectly well off. I live in a good-sized house, with a nice yard, with deer occasionally showing up and eating the roses (my wife likes the roses more, I like the deer more, so we don't really mind). I've got three kids, and I know I can pay for their education. What more do I need? The thing is, being a good programmer actually pays pretty well; being acknowledged as being world-class pays even better. I simply didn't need to start a commercial company. And it's just about the least interesting thing I can even imagine. I absolutely hate paperwork. I couldn't take care of employees if I tried. A company that I started would never have succeeded – it's simply not what I'm interested in! So instead, I have a very good life, doing something that I think is really interesting, and something that I think actually matters for people, not just me. And that makes me feel good.
Torvalds Linus quotes
If you have ever done any security work – and it did not involve the concept of "network of trust" – it wasn't security work, it was – masturbation. I don't know what you were doing. But trust me, it's the only way you can do security, it's the only way you can do development.
Linus Torvalds
Crying that it's an application bug is like crying over the speed of light: you should deal with reality, not what you wish reality was.
Linus Torvalds quotes
Those that can, do. Those that can't, complain.
Linus Torvalds
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.
Torvalds Linus
Nobody actually creates perfect code the first time around, except me. But there's only one of me.


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