Linus Torvalds – The man who changed the world

Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator, and for a long time, principal developer of the Linux kernel, which became the kernel for operating systems such as the Linux operating system, Android, and Chrome OS. He also created the distributed version control system Git and the scuba diving software Subsurface. He is also the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award.

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Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds – License

Early life of Linus Torvalds

Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland, on December 28, 1969. He is the son of Anna Matilda (née Tositani), a translator, and Nils Torvalds, a professor of computer science at the University of Helsinki. His paternal great-grandfather, Juho Hamalainen, was Finnish, and his other grandparents were Estonian. Linus grew up in the neighborhood of Katajanokka in central Helsinki.

As a child, Torvalds was fascinated with computers and programming. He did not play much with other children his age, preferring to be alone in his room with his Commodore VIC-20. At the age of eleven, he programmed his first computer game, “Space Invaders.”

Where the Linux was born

In 1988, Torvalds enrolled in the University of Helsinki, where he studied computer science and engineering. In his second year of studies, he bought an IBM Personal Computer and began to use the MS-DOS operating system. He became interested in Unix after reading about it in a magazine.

In 1990, he transferred to the University of Helsinki’s Department of Computer Science, where he studied for two years before taking a leave of absence to work on his own operating system, which he named “Linux.”

In 1991, Torvalds released the first version of Linux, and in 1992, he released the source code for Linux under the GNU General Public License. Linux got i’s populatiry really fast, and by 1994, it was being used by millions of people around the world.

Linus Torvalds – Creator of the most puplar operating system

Today, Linux is used in everything from smartphones to servers to supercomputers. Numbers says that Linux powers more than 95% of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers.

Torvalds still developing Linux, and he is currently the project’s chief architect. He is also the maintainer of the Git version control system.

In addition to his work on Linux and Git, Torvalds is also the author of a number of books, including “Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary” and “The Linux Programming Interface.”

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Torvalds has been married three times and has three children. He currently lives in the United States with his family.

2 thoughts on “Linus Torvalds – The man who changed the world”

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