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Geek God: Linus Torvalds

Posted on 15. May, 2009 by Jake in Geek God

If you meet someone for the first time and need to determine if they’re a fellow geek, there’s a simple way to do this. Just ask them what OS they’re running. If they know that OS stands for Operating System, there’s probably a good chance that they’re a fellow tech traveller. If they answer “Linux” then you’re dealing with a 100% certified geek!
Linux was the brainchild of Swedish computer scientist Linus Torvalds. Torvalds developed the first Linux kernel as part of his Masters thesis at Helsinki University. He wrote the first version of Linux as a way to access his university servers and quickly realised that the program he had written could actually function as an operating system.
Many people in Torvalds’ position would have immediately dropped out of university and rushed to the nearest patent office. Torvalds, however, remained committed to to principle that software should be free and accessible to all.

A year after writing the prototype for Linux, he released Linux 0.99 under the GNU General Public License, which meant that the source code of Linux was available to anyone who needed to modify it to their specific purposes.
The growing influence of Linux and the philosophy associated with free software cannot be ignored. Today, many governments around the world are running Linux systems in order maintain the independence of their information infrastructure.

Recently, South Africa’s own Geek God Mark Shutlleworth’s Linux-based Ubuntu operating system has been laying claim to a share of the desktop market, while the advent of smartphones has seen a surge in the popularity of portable Linux systems. As of this 2006, almost 17% of smartphones sold worldwide were running Linux.
Since writing the first version of Linux, Torvalds has been one of the most prominent advocates of the free software movement. His advocacy has been so powerful that one of the movement’s guiding principles has become known as Linus’s Law, which states that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”
Torvalds was anticipating a world in which the sum total of human knowledge could be harnessed; where the greatest minds on the planet could collaborate and build on their ideas in a free and open exchange of knowledge. His lasting contribution was to develop a platform on which this exchange could take place, and, as the flow of information becomes faster and more powerful, Torvalds’ vision is seeming more and more prescient

Tags: linus torvalds, linux