Linus Torvalds

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Linus Benedict Torvalds; роден на 28 декември 1969г во Хелсинки (Финска) е софтверски инженер познат по тоа што го започна и разви Linux јадрото. Сега ја има улогата на координатор на проектот.

Linus, инспириран од Minux (оперативен систем), започна да развива клон на Unix оперативниот систем кој може да работи на домашните персонални компјутери. Linux исто така сега има свои верзии речиси за сите компјутерски архитектури и хардверски платформи и важи за систем со најголема база на драјвери и модули за хардвер, напишани од хакери професионалци кои го помагаат Linux проектот.

Историја

Linus роден во Хелсинки, Финска, е син на новинарите Anna и Nils Torvalds. Неговата фамилија припаѓа на малцинството Финци кои зборуваат Шведски јазик во Финска. Linus е крстен по Linus Pauling, американски добитник на нобелова награда за хемија, иако тој сака да каже дека е крстен според Linus van Pelt од познатиот стрип на Charles Schulz - Peanutes/Snoopy/Charlie Brown.

Торвалдс учеше на универзитетот во Хелсинки, насока Информатика, од 1988 до 1996, кога и се здоби со магистерска титула. Неговата магистерска дизертација беше крстена Linux: Пренослив оперативен систем. Од 1997 до 1999 беше вклучен во проектот 86open, помагајќи да се избере стандардниот бинарен формат за Linux и Unix.

Неговиот интерес за компјутерите започна со Commodore VIC-20. Потоа тој набави Sinclair QL компјутер кој драстично го подобри, особено неговиот оперативен систем. Има напишано асемблерски јазик и текстуален уредувач за QL, плус неколку игри. Познат е по тоа што има напишано клон на играта Pac-Man, наречена Cool Man. Во 1990 доби Intel 80386 базирана машина од IBM каде често ја играше играта Принцот од Персија, непосредно пред да добие копија од Minix, што претставува пресврт во целокупната негова работа на Linux.

Подоцни години

Linus е оженет со Tove Torvalds, шесткратен карате шампион во Финска, која ја сретна есента 1993.

Linus is married to Tove Torvalds (born Monni). She is a six-time Finnish national Karate champion, whom he first met in the autumn of 1993. Linus was running introductory computer laboratory exercises for students and instructed the course attendants to send him an e-mail as a test, to which Tove responded with an e-mail asking for a date. "Tove and Linus went on to have three daughters, Patricia, Miranda and Daniela." (http://www.linux.org/info/linus.html) They also have a cat named Randi (short for Mithrandir, the Sindarin name for Gandalf, a wizard in The Lord of the Rings).

Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading developers of Linux-based software, presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation. In 1999, both companies went public and Torvalds' net worth shot up to roughly $20 million [1].

Torvalds moved to San Jose, California and lived there for several years with his family. In June of 2004, Torvalds and his family moved to Portland, Oregon to be closer to Linus' place of work.

He worked for Transmeta from February 1997 until June 2003, and is now seconded to the Linux Foundation, a Beaverton, Oregon based software consortium.

His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux, which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of the Linux kernel.

Unlike many open source evangelists, Torvalds maintains a low profile and generally refuses to comment on competing software products. Torvalds generally stays out of non-kernel-related debates. He has been criticized for his neutrality by the free software movement, specifically for having worked on proprietary software with Transmeta, and for his use and alleged advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software for version control in the Linux kernel. However, Torvalds has since written a free-software replacement for BitKeeper called git. Torvalds has commented on official GNOME developmental mailing lists that, in terms of desktop environments, he encourages users to switch to KDE [2] and he explained why [3].

Torvalds often finds himself in the middle of competing ideologies: on one hand he is an established icon of open-source and free software, yet on the other he has supported the use of the proprietary software BitKeeper to help manage the Linux kernel and has stated that Linux may include technology supporting digital rights management for pragmatic reasons.

The Linus/Linux connection

Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system which he replaced with the Linux OS. He first named it Freax (a combination of "free", "freak", and the letter X to indicate that it is a Unix-like system), but his friend Ari Lemmke, who administered the FTP server where the Linux kernel was first hosted for downloading, gave Torvalds a directory called linux (Torvalds & Diamond 2001:88).

Authority on Linux

About 2% of the current Linux kernel is written by Torvalds himself. Since Linux has had thousands of contributors, such a percentage is very respectable. Torvalds remains the ultimate authority on what new code is incorporated into the Linux kernel.Предлошка:Fact

Linux trademark

Torvalds owns the "Linux" trademark, and monitors [4] use of it chiefly through the non-profit organization Linux International. Linux's wide and passionate userbase makes trademark abuse difficult as misuse is rapidly detected.

Recognition

• In 1996 Asteroid 9793 Torvalds was named after Linus Torvalds.
• In 1998 he received an EFF Pioneer Award.[5]
• In 1999 he received honorary doctor status at Stockholm University.
• In 2000 he received honorary doctor status at University of Helsinki.
• In the Time magazine's Person of the Century Poll, Torvalds was voted at #17 at the poll's close in 2000. [6]
• In 2001, he shared the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Well-Being with Richard Stallman and Ken Sakamura.
• The 2001 film Swordfish contains a Finnish character - the number one computer hacker in the world - named Axl Torvalds.
• In 2004, he was named one of the most influential people in the world by the Time magazine article "Linus Torvalds: The Free-Software Champion" by Lawrence Lessig, Time Magazine, posted Monday, Apr. 26, 2004, retrieved October 3, 2006.
• In the search for the 100 Greatest Finns of all time, voted in the summer of 2004, Torvalds placed 16th.
• In 2005 he appeared as one of "the best managers" in a survey by BusinessWeek. [7]
• In August 2005, Torvalds received the Vollum Award from Reed College. [8]
• In 2006, Business 2.0 magazine named him one of "10 people who don't matter" because the growth of Linux has shrunk Torvalds' individual impact. [9]
• In 2006, Time Magazine names him one of the revolutionary heroes of the past 60 years. [10]

References and footnotes

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• Предлошка:Cite book
• Предлошка:Cite book

See also

• Linus's Law can refer to two notions, both named after Torvalds.
• Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate, a famous debate between Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Torvalds regarding Linux. Despite this debate, Torvalds and Tanenbaum appear to be on good speaking terms; Torvalds wants it understood that he holds no animosity towards Tanenbaum.
• Revolution OS, a 2001 documentary featuring Torvalds