Linus Torvalds: Doing

Linus Torvalds is Finnish-American software engineer and hacker. Explore interesting quotes on doing.

Linus Torvalds: 300 quotes28 likes

“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.”

Linus Torvalds

Microsoft Patches Linux; Linus Responds, 2009-06-22, Torvalds, Linus, 2009-06-26 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7439, 2000s, 2009

“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

unknown, news:1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI, Post, news:comp.os.minix, Google Groups, 1991-08-25, 2006-08-28, Torvalds, Linus http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=1991Aug25.205708.9541%40klaava.Helsinki.FI, This was the launch of Linux. 1990s, 1991-94

“If you still don't like it, that's OK: that's why I'm boss. I simply know better than you do.”

Linus Torvalds

Post to comp.os.linux.advocacy newsgroup, 1996-07-22, Torvalds, Linus, 2006-08-28 http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=4sv02t%24j8g%40linux.cs.Helsinki.FI, 1990s, 1995-99

“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.”

Linus Torvalds

2000s, 2007

“People say that you should not micro-optimize. But if what you love is micro-optimization… that's what you should do.”

Linus Torvalds

2010s, Audience Q&A following interview panel at Aalto University Center, 2012

“WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE!”

Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds - LKML, Torvalds, Linus, 2012-12-23, 2012-12-29 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75, 2010s, 2012

“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.”

Linus Torvalds

Source: Linux Times, 2004-10-25 http://web.archive.org/web/20050404020308/http://www.linuxtimes.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=145,

“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.”

Linus Torvalds

, announcing Linux version 0.02. The Hurd 0.0 was released in August 1996 and as of 2015, is still not complete.
1990s, 1991-94

“Hey, that's not a bug, that's a feature! You know what the most complex piece of engineering known to man in the whole solar system is? Guess what – it's not Linux, it's not Solaris, and it's not your car. It's you. And me. And think about how you and me actually came about – not through any complex design. Right. "Sheer luck". Well, sheer luck, and:
• Free availability and crosspollination through sharing of "source code", although biologists call it DNA.
• A rather unforgiving user environment, that happily replaces bad versions of us with better working versions and thus culls the herd (biologists often call this "survival of the fittest").
• Massive undirected parallel development ("trial and error").
I'm deadly serious: we humans have never been able to replicate something more complicated than what we ourselves are, yet natural selection did it without even thinking. Don't underestimate the power of survival of the fittest. And don't ever make the mistake that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit. Quite frankly, Sun is doomed. And it has nothing to do with their engineering practices or their coding style.”

Linus Torvalds

2000s, 2000-04

“" the most important part of open source is that people are allowed to do what they are good at" and " all that [diversity] stuff is just details and not really important."”

Linus Torvalds

Torvalds, Linus, 2015-01-15, <nowiki>Linus Torvalds on why he isn’t nice: &quot;I don’t care about you&quot;</nowiki>, 2015-01-20 http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-why-he-isnt-nice-i-dont-care-about-you/, 2010s, 2015

“Please, as you emerge from your holiday-induced food coma, do give it a quick test so that we can all be happy about the final release next weekend.”

Linus Torvalds

Torvalds, Linus, 2022-01-02, <nowiki>Linux 5.16-rc8</nowiki>, 2022-01-06 https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wg=3dEpPGhz8YvJUDWhFW_GUeASBGmqyw3aPQRfB3ki9w@mail.gmail.com/, 2010s, 2022