Linus Benedict Torvalds (born on December 28th, 1969 with Helsinki in Finland -) is a Informaticien Finnish. He is known to have created the Noyau Linux in 1991 and to have directed his development since.

Biography

Linus Torvalds belongs to the community of the Finns suédophones (Finlandssvensk) , a population accounting for 6% of the inhabitants of Finland.

Inspired by the system Minix developed by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, it decides in 1991 to create a Operating system which fully benefits from the functionalities of its new Personal computer, a PC compatible equipped with a Microprocesseur Intel 80386. He speaks quickly about his creation on Usenet and other people test her core and improvements subject to him. Thus is born the Noyau Linux.

After having left the University of Helsinki, Linus Torvalds worked of February 1997 to June 2003 at Transmeta, a company of the Silicon Valley which manufactures microprocessors with low electricity consumption. At Transmeta, it was authorized to devote part of its time to the development of the Linux core.

He currently lives in Beaverton in the Oregon (the USA) with his Tove wife and their three daughters. He is employed Open Source Development Lab, a laboratory financed by a consortium of companies which market Linux.

Contrary in the majority of the proselytes of the Open Source, Linus Torvalds remains relatively discrete and generally refuses to comment on the advantages and disadvantages of the other operating systems, like the system Windows of Microsoft. It reacts on the other hand with strength when one calls into question technical qualities of Linux.

Books

• Linus Torvalds, David Diamond: Just for Fun: The Story off year Accidental Revolutionary , New York, HarperBusiness, 2001, ISBN 0066620724

• This book also exists in French: Linus Torvalds with David Diamond: It was once Linux: Extraordinary history of an accidental revolution , OEM, 2001, ISBN 2-74640321-8

Homage

• the asteroids (9793) Torvalds and (9885) Linux were named in its honor: The source code of Linux having been placed at the disposal of its creation, it was used by various analysis and, detection systems of measurement of asteroids.

See too

External bonds and documents

• personal Page of Linus Torvalds
• First reference to the Linux project on Usenet

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Simple: Linus Torvalds