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
Controlling a laser with Linux is crazy, but everyone in this room is crazy in his own way. So if you want to use Linux to control an industrial welding laser, I have no problem with your using PREEMPT_RT.
Torvalds quotes
It has nothing to do with dinosaurs. Good taste doesn't go out of style
Torvalds
Your problem has nothing to do with git, and everything to do with emacs. And then you have the gall to talk about "Unix design" and not gumming programs together, when you yourself use the most gummed-up piece of absolute sh*t there is!




Torvalds Linus quotes
I think Leopard is a much better system [than Windows Vista] … but OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary.
Torvalds Linus
But this is definitely another of those "This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Al-biwan Ke-Viro, you're my only hope" issues. Al? Please don't make me wear that golden bikini.
Linus Torvalds quotes
Which mindset is right? Mine, of course. People who disagree with me are by definition crazy. (Until I change my mind, when they can suddenly become upstanding citizens. I'm flexible, and not black-and-white.)
Linus Torvalds
Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?
[…]
I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got minix.
Torvalds Linus quotes
Modern PCs are horrible. ACPI is a complete design disaster in every way. But we're kind of stuck with it. If any Intel people are listening to this and you had anything to do with ACPI, shoot yourself now, before you reproduce.
Torvalds
I started Linux as a desktop operating system. And it's the only area where Linux hasn't completely taken over. That just annoys the hell out of me.
Torvalds Linus
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.
Linus Torvalds
Oh fuck. If I kill this guy, I'll have millions of nerds on my case.




Linus Torvalds quotes
[In response to] Good job. More public indecency, less TSA, that's what I say.
Linus Torvalds
For example, the GPLv2 in no way limits your use of the software. If you're a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2'd software for your evil plans to take over the world ("Sharks with lasers on their heads!!"), and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And that's OK by me. I like sharks with lasers. I just want the mad scientists of the world to pay me back in kind. I made source code available to them, they have to make their changes to it available to me. After that, they can fry me with their shark-mounted lasers all they want.
Torvalds quotes
Software is like sex; it's better when it's free.
Torvalds Linus
You know you're brilliant, but maybe you'd like to understand what you did 2 weeks from now.
Torvalds Linus quotes
The NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here) is a disease.
Linus Torvalds
Toto, I don't think we're talking white-socks-and-sandals any more.
Linus Torvalds quotes
I claim that Mach people (and apparently FreeBSD) are incompetent idiots.
Linus Torvalds
I'd like to say that I knew this would happen, that it's all part of the plan for world domination.
Torvalds Linus
I realize that lawyers are brought up (probably from small children) to think that "technically true" is what matters, but when you make public PR statements, they should be more than "technically" true. They should be honest. There's a big f*cking difference.


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