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I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended.

Linus Torvalds

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Linus Torvalds
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 28
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Linus Benedict Torvalds
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More quotes by Linus Torvalds

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You know, the mark of intelligence is realizing when you're making the same mistake over and over and over again, and not hitting your head in the wall five hundred times before you understand that it's not a clever thing to do.
Linus Torvalds
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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.
Linus Torvalds
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I made very sure that I did not get involved with any of the commercial Linux companies, exactly so that I would be neutral and not ever seen as working for the competition.
Linus Torvalds
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I want my office to be quiet. The loudest thing in the room - by far - should be the occasional purring of the cat.
Linus Torvalds
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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.
Linus Torvalds
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Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.
Linus Torvalds
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When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows,' people just stare at you blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, for free.'
Linus Torvalds
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Whoever came up with hold the shift key for eight seconds to turn on 'your keyboard is buggered' mode should be shot.
Linus Torvalds
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The fact is, there aren't just two sides to any issue, there's almost always a range of responses, and it depends is almost always the right answer in any big question.
Linus Torvalds
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I often compare open source to science. To where science took this whole notion of developing ideas in the open and improving on other peoples' ideas and making it into what science is today and the incredible advances that we have had. And I compare that to witchcraft and alchemy, where openness was something you didn't do.
Linus Torvalds
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People enjoy the interaction on the Internet, and the feeling of belonging to a group that does something interesting: that's how some software projects are born.
Linus Torvalds
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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.
Linus Torvalds
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If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system.
Linus Torvalds
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The way to do good basic design isn't actually to be really smart about it, but to try to have a few basic concepts.
Linus Torvalds
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Turtles are very stable and have been around forever. But they have problems adapting. When humans came along, turtles came under serious threat. Biodiversity is good, and I think it is good in technology as well.
Linus Torvalds
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I see myself as a technical person who chose a great project and a great way of doing that project.
Linus Torvalds
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One of the questions I've always hated answering is how do people make money in open source. And I think that Caldera and Red Hat - and there are a number of other Linux companies going public - basically show that yes, you can actually make money in the open-source area.
Linus Torvalds
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Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.
Linus Torvalds
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The idea of abstracting away the one thing that must be blindingly fast, the kernel, is inherently counter productive.
Linus Torvalds
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It was such a relief to program in user mode for a change. Not having to care about the small stuff is wonderful.
Linus Torvalds