Linus BenedictTorvalds

Creator of the Linux kernel and distributed revision control system git.

Early DaysLinus Benedict Torvalds was born on 28th De-cember 1969 in Helsinki, Finland.

He was named after Linus Pauling, the famous physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner.

At age 10 Torvalds began to dabble in computer programming on his grandfather’s Commodore VIC-20.

In 1987 Torvalds used his savings to buy his first computer, a Sinclair QL. This was one of the world's first 32-bit computers for home use.

Education and WorkBetween 1988 and 1996, he studied at the University of Helsinki, from where he obtained a master’s degree in computer science.

In 1991, he purchased the Intel 80386-based IBM PC and obtained a MINIX operating system. With this, he began to work and research on the Linux operating system.

At the age of 21 in 1991 he submitted is master thesis titled, ‘Linux: A Portable Operating System'

On August 25, 1991, he announced his initial creation on the MINIX newsgroup comp.os.minix

In 2005 he developed the software,

Interesting FactsLinus Torvalds has an asteroid and an asteroidmoon named after him.

He has a total of 35 applied and granted patents in-ternationally.

By 2006, just about 2% of the Linux kernel was written by him.

He is listed in The Britannica Guide's 'The 100 Most In-fluential Inventors of All Time'

He is also listed 17th on the Time magazines poll of ‘Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century'.

Views and Opinions

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

When you say ‘I wrote a program

that crashed Windows’,

people just stare at

you blankly & say ‘Hey,

I got those with the

system, for free.’

- Linus Torvalds - Linus Torvalds