Linus Torvalds quotes:

I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm also not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords.

Finnish companies tend to be very traditional, not taking many risks. Silicon Valley is completely different: people here really live on the edge.

There are lots of Linux users who don't care how the kernel works, but only want to use it. That is a tribute to how good Linux is.

I don't expect to go hungry if I decide to leave the University. Resume: Linux looks pretty good in many places.

I like to think that I've been a good manager. That fact has been very instrumental in making Linux a successful product.

To be honest, the fact that people trust you gives you a lot of power over people. Having another person's trust is more powerful than all other management techniques put together.

Hey, I'm a good software engineer, but I'm not exactly known for my fashion sense. White socks and sandals don't translate to 'good design sense'.

When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows,' people just stare at you blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, for free.'

The thing I love about diving is the flowing feeling. I like a sport where the whole point is to move as little as humanly possible so your air supply will last longer. That's my kind of sport. Where the amount of effort spent is absolutely minimal.

People enjoy the interaction on the Internet, and the feeling of belonging to a group that does something interesting: that's how some software projects are born.

I'd much rather have 15 people arguing about something than 15 people splitting into two camps, each side convinced it's right and not talking to the other.

I've actually found the image of Silicon Valley as a hotbed of money-grubbing tech people to be pretty false, but maybe that's because the people I hang out with are all really engineers.

The fame and reputation part came later, and never was much of a motivator, although it did enable me to work without feeling guilty about neglecting my studies.

In many cases, the user interface to a program is the most important part for a commercial company: whether the programs works correctly or not seems to be secondary.

No-one has ever called me a cool dude. I'm somewhere between geek and normal.

If you start doing things because you hate others and want to screw them over, the end result is bad.

There were open source projects and free software before Linux was there. Linux in many ways is one of the more visible and one of the bigger technical projects in this area, and it changed how people looked at it because Linux took both the practical and ideological approach.

I'm interested in Linux because of the technology, and Linux wasn't started as any kind of rebellion against the 'evil Microsoft empire.'

I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It's the right way to do things.

In real open source, you have the right to control your own destiny.

Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.

Software patents, in particular, are very ripe for abuse. The whole system encourages big corporations getting thousands and thousands of patents. Individuals almost never get them.

Part of doing Linux was that I had to communicate a lot more instead of just being a geek in front of a computer.

It's a personality trait: from the very beginning, I knew what I was concentrating on. I'm only doing the kernel - I always found everything around it to be completely boring.

I try to avoid long-range plans and visions - that way I can more easily deal with anything new that comes up.

I actually think that I'm a rather optimistic and happy person; it's just that I'm not a very positive person, if you see the difference.

Fairly cheap home computing was what changed my life.

By staying neutral, I end up being somebody that everybody can trust. Even if they don't always agree with my decisions, they know I'm not working against them.

My name is Linus, and I am your God.

I think of myself as an engineer, not as a visionary or 'big thinker.' I don't have any lofty goals.

Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.

I am very happy about Android obviously. I use Android, and it's actually made cellphones very usable.

Artists usually don't make all that much money, and they often keep their artistic hobby despite the money rather than due to it.

Only wimps use tape backup. REAL men just upload their important stuff on ftp and let the rest of the world mirror it.

I've never regretted not making Linux shareware: I really don't like the pay for use binary shareware programs.

Every time I see some piece of medical research saying that caffeine is good for you, I high-five myself. Because I'm going to live forever.

Helsinki may not be as cold as you make it out to be, but California is still a lot nicer. I don't remember the last time I couldn't walk around in shorts all day.

I get the biggest enjoyment from the random and unexpected places. Linux on cellphones or refrigerators, just because it's so not what I envisioned it. Or on supercomputers.

Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.

I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too.

What commercialism has brought into Linux has been the incentive to make a good distribution that is easy to use and that has all the packaging issues worked out.

The cyberspace earnings I get from Linux come in the format of having a Network of people that know me and trust me, and that I can depend on in return.

I started Linux because I wanted to see it on the desktop... I do hope that the desktop people would try to work together ... and work more on the technology than trying to make the login screen look really nice.

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.

The Linux philosophy is 'Laugh in the face of danger'. Oops. Wrong One. 'Do it yourself'. Yes, that's it.

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.

That's what makes Linux so good: you put in something, and that effort multiplies. It's a positive feedback cycle.

Often your 'fixes' are actually removing capabilities that you had, because they were 'too confusing to the user'. GNOME seems to be developed by interface Nazis, where consistently the excuse for not doing something is not 'it's too complicated to do', but 'it would confuse users'.

This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.

I've been employed by the University of Helsinki, and they've been perfectly happy to keep me employed and doing Linux.

Helsinki isn't all that bad. It's a very nice city, and it's cold really only in wintertime.

I've been employed by the University of Helsinki, and that has been paying my bills. Obviously a ''real job'' pays better than most universities will pay, but I've been very happy with this arrangement I get to do whatever I want, and I have no commercial pressures whatsoever doing this.

In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people.

We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds.

The thing with Linux is that the developers themselves are actually customers too: that has always been an important part of Linux.

Before the commercial ventures, Linux tended to be rather hard to set up, because most of the developers were motivated mainly by their own interests.

Linux has definitely made a lot of sense even in a purely materialistic sense.

I never felt that the naming issue was all that important, but I was obviously wrong, judging by how many people felt. I tell people to call it just plain Linux and nothing more.

If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.

Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did.

I don't try to be a threat to MicroSoft, mainly because I don't really see MS as competition. Especially not Windows-the goals of Linux and Windows are simply so different.

I do get my pizzas paid for by Linux indirectly.

You know, the mark of intelligence is realizing when you're making the same mistake over and over and over again, and not hitting your head in the wall five hundred times before you understand that it's not a clever thing to do.

Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.

I'm simply too content doing what I want to do to really have a very negative attitude towards MicroSoft. They make bad products - so what? I don't need to care, because I happily don't have to use them, and writing my own alternative has been a very gratifying experience in many ways.

In my opinion MS is a lot better at making money than it is at making good operating systems.

If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system.

If you think penguins are fat and waddle, you have never been attacked by one running at you in excess of 100 miles per hour.

While I may not get any money from Linux, I get a huge personal satisfaction from having written something that people really enjoy using, and that people find to be the best alternative for their needs.

Portability is for people who cannot write new programs

I'm generally a very pragmatic person: that which works, works.

Talk is cheap. Show me the code.

I want my office to be quiet. The loudest thing in the room - by far - should be the occasional purring of the cat.

OK, I admit it. I was just a front-man for the real fathers of Linux, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.

I've been very happy with the commercial Linux CD-ROM vendors linux Red Hat.

One of the questions I've always hated answering is how do people make money in open source. And I think that Caldera and Red Hat - and there are a number of other Linux companies going public - basically show that yes, you can actually make money in the open-source area.

You won't get sued for anticompetitive behavior.

The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.

It was such a relief to program in user mode for a change. Not having to care about the small stuff is wonderful.

Software is like sex: It's better when it's free.

A lot of people still like Solaris, but I'm in active competition with them, and so I hope they die.

Theory and practice sometimes clash. And when that happens, theory loses. Every single time.

So I would not be surprised if the globbing libraries, for example, will do NFD-mangling in order to glob "correctly", so even programs ported from real Unix might end up getting pathnames subtly changed into NFD as part of some hot library-on-library action with UTF hackery inside.

So I've decided to be a very rich and famous person who doesn't really care about money, and who is very humble but who still makes a lot of money and is very famous, but is very humble and rich and famous...

Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it.

Developers have the attention spans of slightly moronic woodland creatures.

In open source, we feel strongly that to really do something well, you have to get a lot of people involved.

Turtles are very stable and have been around forever. But they have problems adapting. When humans came along, turtles came under serious threat. Biodiversity is good, and I think it is good in technology as well.

I often compare open source to science. To where science took this whole notion of developing ideas in the open and improving on other peoples' ideas and making it into what science is today and the incredible advances that we have had. And I compare that to witchcraft and alchemy, where openness was something you didn't do.

I'm perfectly happy complaining, because it's cathartic, and I'm perfectly happy arguing with people on the Internet because arguing is my favourite pastime - not programming.

I personally think of Linux development as being pretty non-localized, and I work with all the people entirely over e-mail - even if they happen to be working in the Portland area.

There's innovation in Linux. There are some really good technical features that I'm proud of. There are capabilities in Linux that aren't in other operating systems.

I spend a lot more time than any person should have to talking with lawyers and thinking about intellectual property issues.

The economics of the security world are all horribly, horribly nasty and are largely based on fear, intimidation and blackmail.

I used to be interested in Windows NT, but the more I see it, the more it looks like traditional Windows with a stabler kernel. I don't find anything technically interesting there.

I don't think I'm unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light.

I've felt strongly that the advantage of Linux is that it doesn't have a niche or any special market, but that different individuals and companies end up pushing it in the direction they want, and as such you end up with something that is pretty balanced across the board.

Every once in a while an issue comes up where I have to make a statement. I can't totally avoid all political issues, but I try my best to minimize them. When I do make a statement, I try to be fairly neutral.

What I find most interesting is how people really have taken Linux and used it in ways and attributes and motivations that I never felt.

I don't actually go to that many conferences. I do that a couple of times a year. Normally, I am not recognized; people don't throw their panties at me. I'm a perfectly normal person sitting in my den just doing my job.

Shareware tends to combine the worst of commercial software with the worst of free software.

An individual developer like me cares about writing the new code and making it as interesting and efficient as possible. But very few people want to do the testing.

Programmers are in the enviable position of not only getting to do what they want to, but because the end result is so important they get paid to do it. There are other professions like that, but not that many.

When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver.

Any program is only as good as it is useful.

A computer is like air conditioning - it becomes useless when you open Windows

A consumer doesn't take anything away: he doesn't actually consume anything. Giving the same thing to a thousand consumers is not really any more expensive than giving it to just one.

A lot of people want to have market share numbers, lots of users, because that's how they view their self worth. For me, one of the most important things for Linux is having a big community that is actively testing new kernels; it's the only way to support the absolute insane amount of different hardware we deal with.

All operating systems sucks, but Linux just sucks less

An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program.

And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports on it, you know they are just evil lies.

And what's the Internet without the rick-roll?

Avoiding complexity reduces bugs.

Being open source meant that I could work on the technical side (along with lots of other people), and others who had the interest and inclination could start up companies around it.

Bill Gates really seems to be much more of a business man than a technologist, while I prefer to think of Linux in technical terms rather than as a means to money. As such, I'm not very likely to make the same kind of money that Bill made.

C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it.

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.

Don't ever make the mistake [of thinking] 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.