Stats:
Birthdate: December 28, 1969
Death date: N/A
Birthplace: Helsinki, Finland
Current Job: Benevolent Dictator for Life for the Linux kernal
The life and times of Linus
Born in Finland, Linus' interest in computers began with a Commodore VIC-20. After that he bought and proceeded to heavily modify a
Sinclair QL. He wrote a few programs for the Sinclair until in 1990 he purchased an Intel 80386-based IBM PC and after receiving his
Minix copy he began his work on Linux. Linus Torvalds attended the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 1996, graduating with a master's
degree in computer science. His M.Sc. thesis was titled Linux: A Portable Operating System. After inventing the Linux kernel the
companies Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading developers of Linux-based software, presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude
for his creation. In 1999, both companies went public and Torvalds' net worth shot up to roughly $20 million. His personal mascot is a
penguin nicknamed Tux, which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of the Linux kernel.
Unlike many open source evangelists, Torvalds keeps a low profile and generally refuses to comment on competing software products.
Torvalds generally stays out of non-kernel related debates. He has been criticized for his neutrality by the free software movement,
usually for having worked on proprietary software with Transmeta and for his use and alleged advocacy of the BitKeeper
software (for version control in the Linux kernel, BitKeeper was replaced by git in June, 2005). Torvalds has commented on official GNOME
developmental mailing lists that, in terms of desktop environments, he encourages users to switch to KDE. Despite the fact that GNOME can
be superior. Currently only about 2% of the current Linux kernel is written by Torvalds himself. Despite the relative size of his
contribution, Torvalds remains the ultimate authority on what new code is incorporated into the Linux kernel.
Contributions to the IT Field
With the invention of the Linux kernel the entire open source movement was reinvented. Many different versions were created, the different versions or "flavours", enable GUI and more features than the basic linux flavour. Linux is also used on servers. It is actually a very popular and superior alternative to Windows NT and yes, even Sun OS. Because no one wants a java run server. Even Google uses Linux. And without Google we would defiantly be at a disadvantage. So it's pretty safe to say that Linus has made several important contributions to the IT field. Linus has also coded several programs for various Linux flavours and for QL. Although not huge contributions they also helped. Torvalds has also spent a large chunk of his time promoting Linux; he's even had commercials aired during the Olympics in the past. Torvalds has proved that a monolithic kernel can be just as, if not more effective than a micro kernel in an operating system. Linus actually regularly states that he's purposely continued to use a monolithic kernel because of its convenience and relative speed when compared to a micro kernel. For the un-informed a microkernel is a minimal computer operating system kernel providing only basic operating system services (system calls), while other services (commonly provided by kernels) are provided by user-space programs called servers. Commonly, micro kernels provide services such as address space management, thread management, and inter-process communication, but not networking or display for example. Advantages of the microkernel approach to system design: (a) adding new service does not require modifying the kernel, (b) it is more secure as more operations are done in user mode than in kernel mode, (c) a simpler kernel design and functionality typically results in a more reliable operating system. Where as a monolithic kernel is a kernel architecture where the entire kernel is run in kernel space in supervisor mode. In common with other architectures (microkernels, ect.), the kernel defines a high-level virtual interface over computer hardware, with a set of primitives or system calls to implement operating system services such as process management, concurrency, and memory management in one or more modules. More modern monolithic kernels such as Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris can dynamically load (and unload) executable modules at runtime. This modularity of the kernel is at the binary (image) level and is not at the kernel architecture level. The two can be completely independent, but are sometimes confused. Modular monolithic kernels are not to be confused with the architectural level of modularity native in micro kernels. By choosing the monolithic kernel Linus has ensured that Linux will continue to be superior to anything else, Whether it be Windows or Mac. More Mac than Windows.
My View of Linus Torvalds:
Torvalds lived a good and respectable life. By inventing Linux he brough the UNIX kernel to a new audience. Without Linux I'd probaly be out of work. As my server manangement will involve knowing how to use Gentoo Linux. I use Ubuntu and the KDE alternative, Kubuntu, in my day to day computing. Without linux I wouldn't have a free OS to do this on.