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.

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.

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

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

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

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.