Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds (http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=125)

Linus Torvalds, along with Bill Gates, is one of the world's two best-known programmers. On one hand, Bill Gates is the creator of a very powerful society, Microsoft, and the programmer of the first version of the operating system (OS) called “Windows.” Today, he is the richest man in the world. On the other hand, Linus Torvald is the creator of the Linux's kernel, an “alternative OS” to Microsoft's.

He was born December 28th, 1969, in Helsinki, Finland. His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland's population (roughly 6%). Linus Torvalds entered Helsinki University in 1988. In 1996, he took his final exam of computer science for his master's degree. His thesis was written about “Linux,” an unknown operating system at this time. Nowadays, Linus lives in Portland, Oregon, USA. He works as a software engineer for the “Open Source Development Labs” (OSDL) based in Oregon.

In 1990 he thought about making his own operating system for his IBM personal computer, an Intel 386. In August 1991, he published his creation on a mailing list called “comp.os.minix”. First, reactions were very bad: specialists assumed that his OS would never make a good operating system or something used by a lot of people (a very famous e-mail was the reaction of Andy Tanenbaum, a professor and researcher in the area of operating systems); one can have a look at it at http://www.educ.umu.se/~bjorn/mhonarc-files/obsolete/msg00000.html). What was very uncommon with this operating system is that with the kernel, he also gave the source code of the kernel. Nowadays, where money is the master word, I assume that this was a very significant thing. All around the world, programmers tried to install this new OS and correct it the way they wanted!

Nowadays, Linux has become a really big community all around the world and a slight threat to Microsoft. In fact, its creation has developed a very different ideology in computer circles and allowed to develop an alternative to Microsoft's hegemony. Linus Torvalds assumes that all virtual information, like software or culture on the Internet must be free and accessible for all. We can now describe computer or Internet worlds with two different paths. On one hand, Microsoft and Bill Gates tend to manage their products to make the maximum money, and it works!!! Nowadays, who can say that Microsoft hasn't been the leader of computer products? On the other hand, Mr. Torvalds and his creation incarnate freedom and the right to choose. As a matter of fact when you have Windows installed, how can you choose the programs you want? You also have 12,435 programs which are installed with the basic installation. Of course, when you buy your computer, you buy these programs as well.

But step by step, computer's users tend to criticize their current OS platform. For example, statistics have reported that 25% of people who have Internet are using “Mozilla” or “Mozilla Firefox” instead of using the traditional Internet Explorer given with Windows. And that is a signal to prove that things are changing. I bought, because I wanted to contribute - you can just download it for free - a Linux's distribution for $5 (of course, with documentation and possibility to install all the software one could imagine). How much does it cost, to buy a license for Windows XP? $100 at least? Wow!!

Linux advocates rights for every person in the world to access culture (by the Internet) and to choose how he wants to control his own computer. That's right: this fight isn't as important as the fight against poverty around the world, but it has a very strong meaning about ultra-liberalism and the way to control the world (currently, it's money..)

Why was Linus Torvalds voted as one of the twenty most important men of the twentieth century? Because what he did wasn't just programming a new operating system in a few years or being a genius in programming, but it was the propagation of another way of thinking, related to a certain reject of ultra-liberal ideas. Our world is owned by money, but why does the computer world have to follow this way? Are we sure that's impossible to change? Couldn't this virtual world be an alternative to this poor world? Linux's expansion is due to a melting pot of singular and utopian ideas, not necessarily related to computers, but most generally to the way the world could change. I can't say that Linus Torvalds has definitely changed the sense of my whole life. But what he did and what he said made users, like me and the Linux community, ask for another path for this world, and to begin with the computer world.

Tux

“Tux” is Linus' mascot, and was adopted by the community to be Linux's mascot too.