I was never a "big thinker". One of my philosophies in Linux has always been to not worry about the future too much, but make sure that we make the best of what we have now - together with keeping our options open for the future and not digging us into a hole.

Linux has more than satisfied any small initial expectations I had. It's simply incredible how successful Linux has been, and how good a time I've had developing it and leading the project. It does take a lot of my time, but it's time I really enjoy spending, and Linux has continued to be challenging both technically and from a managing standpoint.

I don't actually follow other operating systems much. I don't compete - I just worry about making Linux better than itself, not others.

If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.

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.

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

I've tried it a couple of times over the years, mainly because the thing Ubuntu did so well was make Debian usable. I always felt that Debian was a pointless exercise because to me, the point of a distribution is to make everything easy. Easy to install, to be pretty and to be friendly and Ubuntu did that to Debian.