Linus Torvalds Quotes

With software, you really can replicate and do a lot of very real and active development in parallel, and actually try it out and see what works.

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.

Working in lock-step simply isn't a good idea. Never has been, never will be.

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

I'm a technical manager, but I don't have to take care of people. I only have to worry about technology itself.

Other people have other goals, and sometimes the BSD style licenses are better for those goals. I personally tend to prefer the GPL, but that really doesn't mean that the GPL is any way inherently superior - it depends on what you want the license to do.

The bulk of all patents are crap. Spending time reading them is stupid. It's up to the patent owner to do so, and to enforce them.

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.

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.

There are "extremists" in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I don't call what I do "free software" any more. I don't want to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred.

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

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

I'm a huge believer in evolution (not in the sense that "it happened" - anybody who doesn't believe that is either uninformed or crazy, but in the sense "the processes of evolution are really fundamental, and should probably be at least thought about in pretty much any context").

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'd argue that everybody wants to do something that matters, and the fact that Linux has had a huge impact on the tech market and is used virtually everywhere is obviously very personally satisfying. I think programming is fun, and the community around the kernel is great, but a project has to be relevant too.

Right now some people are just running around in circles and claiming that moving things to the kernel automatically makes it more stable. I'm telling you that the kernel is stable not because it's a kernel, but because I refuse to listen to arguments like this.

When somebody who is different shows himself to be different in a good way, that's how development happens.

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.

Excusing bad programming is a shooting offence, no matter what the circumstances.

Generally, the best way to learn git is probably to first only do very basic things and not even look at some of the things you can do until you are familiar and confident about the basics.

I can't say that I like MicroSoft: I think they make rather bad operating systems - Windows NT is just more of the same - but while I dislike their operating systems and abhor their tactics in the marketplace I at the same time don't really care all that much about them.

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

If it is relevant there is always somebody else out there.

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.

Don't hurry your code. Make sure it works well and is well designed. Don't worry about timing.