Linus Torvalds Quotes - Page 8

I really never wanted to do source control management at all and felt that it was just about the least interesting thing in the computing world .

If you have ever done any security work - and it did not involve the concept of "network of trust" - it wasn't security work, it was - masturbation. I don't know what you were doing. But trust me, it's the only way you can do security, it's the only way you can do development.

I've felt strongly that the advantage of Linux is that it doesn't have a niche or any special market, but that different individuals and companies end up pushing it in the direction they want, and as such you end up with something that is pretty balanced across the board.

I don't think commercialization is the answer to anything. It's just one more facet of Linux, and not the deciding one by any means.

When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver.

I think of myself as an engineer, not as a visionary or 'big thinker.' I don't have any lofty goals.

There are literally several levels of SCO being wrong. And even if we were to live in that alternate universe where SCO would be right, they'd still be wrong.

I've been very happy with the commercial Linux CD-ROM vendors linux Red Hat.

Before the commercial ventures, Linux tended to be rather hard to set up, because most of the developers were motivated mainly by their own interests.

The big thing about distributed source control is that it makes one of the main issues with SCM's go away - the politics around "who can make changes." BitKeeper showed that you can avoid that by just giving everybody their own source repository.

Bill Gates really seems to be much more of a business man than a technologist, while I prefer to think of Linux in technical terms rather than as a means to money. As such, I'm not very likely to make the same kind of money that Bill made.

The thing I love about diving is the flowing feeling. I like a sport where the whole point is to move as little as humanly possible so your air supply will last longer. That's my kind of sport. Where the amount of effort spent is absolutely minimal.

I actually don't believe that everybody should necessarily try to learn to code. I think it's reasonably specialized, and nobody really expects most people to have to do it. It's not like knowing how to read and write and do basic math.

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.

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.

And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports on it, you know they are just evil lies.

The fame and reputation part came later, and never was much of a motivator, although it did enable me to work without feeling guilty about neglecting my studies.

I'm a big non-believer in manual driver and kernel configuration, be it visual or not.

I think that freely available software can not only keep up with the evolution of commercial software, but often exceed what you can do commercially.

If you want an application to be portable, you don't necessarily create an abstraction layer like a microkernel so much as you program intelligently.

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

I've been employed by the University of Helsinki, and they've been perfectly happy to keep me employed and doing Linux.

In many ways, I am very happy about the whole Linux commercial market because the commercial market is doing all these things that I have absolutely zero interest in doing myself.

I've never regretted not making Linux shareware: I really don't like the "pay for use" binary shareware programs.

Github is an excellent hosting service; I have nothing against it at all.