He is such a good role model for being wealthy.
He is, when it comes down to it, pretty wealthy. But we are talking about the guy who created the kernel that now runs nearly every Internet service, all Android phones, most streaming devices, and a lot of various embedded devices. Anyone else with that much impact would be a billionaire many times over.
But he's got a comfortable amount and has not exercised unreasonable ambition. A man who did someone very valuable and was well rewarded and sees no point in being any better off than he is.
I didn't know any of this man's views, I shouldve started using linux sooner
Here in the Netherlands they accuse people of being a 'deugmens' which literally translates as being a 'virtuehuman', a human with virtues. Except for possible pretentiousness, having virtues is hardly a bad thing, quite the opposite. Being politically correct has negative connotations, but most of the time it's very easy to explain why something is politically incorrect, because the incorrect route has often proven in the past to be disastrous. People used to talk about 'political correctness gone mad' but now very often any political correctness is deemed bad. Woke is considered by some to be one of the worst insults you can get, but waking up and seeing that there is terrible inequity in this world, seeing that we are very whatever-centric in our thoughts/actions and questioning all that, is hardly a bad thing. Now the question is, do we need to reappropriate these words, reclaim and reframe them, or should we ignore them and move beyond them because people have been so deeply conditioned with 'woke=bad' no questions asked.
Well said. The people that have been clamoring "wake up sheeple" are now mad that people are "woke".
In Germany the derogatory term used is "Gutmensch", good human.
It's the narrative the right has created, and you can see it in those terms. The narrative is of course that people on the left pretend to be full of virtue and good but in reality are dreamers full of idoologies that can't survive in the real world. That and not beeing able to practice what one preaches (like still using airplanes while advocating for a more sustainable lifestyle) are part of what they have constructed "woke people" to mean for them, as far as I understand it at least.
Gutmensch in German usually refers to people who try to appear good and make decisions they feel are good without questioning if the side effects are harmful. Also they expect others to do the same without regard for their ability to do so (e.g. I manage to avoid plastic bags, so you must too. Which is at least somewhat reasonable. But I manage to live without a car so you must too is difficult for some part of the rural population.)
It's called "being a decent human". It doesn't take much but the right just can't comprehend that
Hear me out, people who belong to this stupid label "the right" can also hold those values. Shocking, isn't it? I'll even out myself as one of those morally apprehensive people of this homogeneous group, which is the exact opposite to the homogeneous group "the left" (because you're either or, of course), ""the* right". But I still hold the same values as Linus mentions.
Of course there's a spectrum. In the US, the spectrum only applies to the populace, though, as the politicians themselves are behaving so polarized that there only exists "the right" (far-right culture warriors) and "the left" (center-right with lip service to the left).
Linus is my favourite centrist <3
Just how fucking dense do you have to be in order to be surprised that a man who created one of the most popular operating systems on Earth, and then gave it away for free, might be a leftist?
There's some libertarians in the FOSS community as well, so it's not a guarantee, but yeah, generally you'll find that correlation.
Right wingers are extremely stupid and don't really understand what the left stands for, they fall for all fox news strawman arguments and rage bait.
This is unfortunately true of both sides.
For example, conservatives think pro- choicers are callous baby-killers who only care about abortion because it allows them to "whore around" without consequences. Liberals on the other hand, think pro-lifers are misogynists who want to ban abortion because banning it will hurt women and because they want to make the country more like The Handmaid's Tale.
created one of the most popular operating systems on Earth, and then gave it away for free
He didn't created it alone and "then" gave it away for free. Since it's begging Linux was free and that created a community who made it the most popular OS.
Kernel. GNU is the operating system.
I'm sorry Richard, I'm not calling it GNU plus Linux no matter how accurate it is.
Yes, yes, and it's NT/Windows or as I've taken to calling it NT+Windows...
This point is pedantic and tired to the point that it has become an infamous copypasta.
It's also, at least as stated here, not even technically correct. A kernel is an operating system all on it's own. It just can't do much.
GNU just provides the software that the user interacts with.
Additionally, there are a number of Linux distros that are entirely free of GNU software.
Just about everyone understands what you mean when you call Linux an OS. The pedantry is unneeded.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!
i cant believe this guy invented popcorn :o
How so you differentiate with non-Linux GNU systems?
The kernel is the OS
It's times like these where you're reminded that Linus is awesome.
I think he isn't a leftist, but just reasonable
In the USA the republicans simply are such morons currently that anything reasonable appears to be leftist.
I'm center-right in Austria but US-americans would call me a woke communist (and in many regards I'm more leftist than the democrats).
All it takes to be a leftist these days is to not go out of your way every day to be a raging cunt.
Basic human decency. That's seriously all it takes.
I'm sorry, is my BEING AN ASSHOLE triggering you???
Snowflake.
(do NOT make fun of my $1,000.00 USD trump branded FREEDOM sneakers or I'll get upset 😡 they were NOT a scam)
Or at least show some remorse if you do!
I see a lot of overlap from where I'm standing.
Wait you mean the guy who made a free and open source operating system for everyone to share is left wing!?!?!? WHAT THE FFUUUU
There are a great number of nutjobs running (F)OSS projects, so I wouldn't assume much about any software maintainer. Also, Linus explicitly only cites upsides to FOSS that pertain to developing the software itself, not to any greater social effort.
Soapbox dude
TempleOS comes to mind...
Watching Linus take a big public dump on someone who deserves it is one of life's finest guilty pleasures. It's like a Maya Angelou poem. You can tell he really cared, and meant it, and took some time to get it right.
Reading his words really slams home which side of the political spectrum truly believes in personal freedom and liberty. And it's not the side that promotes fascism and wants to implement a Christian version of Sharia law under the Ten Commandments.
Unfortunately, it's true: Linux is woke. And DEI. And gay.
We need to get Elon Musk and the DOGE team on this, stat!
i think this type of comment works better with a "/s"
No, 'cause the /s cheapens the experience of good sarcasm.
And a ward against the evil eye
"I... I was just asking why my WiFi driver isn't working."
You jest but it's because you chose a manufacturer that made a closed-source driver minefield and the volunteer paramedics haven't been able to get to you yet.
This NIC is woke.
Since I had it handy, here's the source meme for the uninitiated:
Ahh...they had
woke_on_lanenabled. That'll do it.
To be fair what he's described is at most Progressive. The left rejects the current economic model as a start. Workers owning the means of production instead of an owner class.
There's a whole lot of river to swim between fair and equal treatment and full fledged socialism. Not everyone on "the left" sleeps with Karl Marx under their pillow.
I don’t really know much about his personal politics, but his work seems to speak pretty loudly about rejecting the idea of software as private property to be bought and sold by capital, which, you know, that’s more than just progressive, even if it’s just in one area.
I'm just commenting on what's there.
The Right doesn't care what people actually believe.
They happily quote MLK on a daily basis.
Ray Bradbury was always anti-fascist, but he called out President Obama because there were no space missions during the Obama terms. After Bradbury died the Right tried to cherry pick quote to make him look like a life long Republican.
per Bradbury's Wikipedia Article
"Bradbury considered himself a political independent.[83] Raised a Democrat, he voted for the Democratic Party until 1968. In 1952, he took out an advertisement in Variety as an open letter to Republicans, stating: "Every attempt that you make to identify the Democratic Party as the party of Communism, as the 'left-wing' or 'subversive' party, I will attack with all my heart and soul."[84] However, Lyndon B. Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War left Bradbury disenchanted, and from 1968 on he voted for the Republican Party in every presidential election with the exception of 1976, when he voted for Jimmy Carter. According to Bradbury's biographer Sam Weller, Carter's inept handling of the economy "pushed [Bradbury] permanently away from the Democrats".[83]
Bradbury called Ronald Reagan "the greatest president" whereas he dismissed Bill Clinton, calling him a "shithead".[85] In August 2001, shortly before the September 11 attacks, he described George W. Bush as "wonderful" and stated that the American education system was a "monstrosity".[86] He later criticized Barack Obama for ending NASA's crewed space flight program.[85]
In 2010, he criticized big government, saying that there was "too much government" in America, and "I don't believe in government. I hate politics. I'm against it. And I hope that sometimes this fall, we can destroy part of our government, and next year destroy even more of it. The less government, the happier I will be".[85] Bradbury was against affirmative action, condemned what he called "all this political correctness that's rampant on campuses", and called for a ban of quotas in higher education.[21][85] He asserted that "[e]ducation is purely an issue of learning—we can no longer afford to have it polluted by damn politics".[21]"
Yeah that's uh... that sounds about right. I wonder a lot about that generation.
Would Rod Serling, a humanist at heart, who campaigned to bring black actors onto mainstream TV sets, and always sent a message that the individual should always fight against an oppressive regime.... would he too be lost in a sea of republicanism as he got older and the world changed around him?
I'm glad we'll never know.
Bradbury needed to look closer then because Obama was working on NASA to get it built back up. Trump didn't magically make rockets available in a couple years. That stuff takes a very long lead time to get right.
That stuff takes a very long lead time to get right.
Yet somehow, people still think Mr. "We'll be on Mars by 2025," who is still launching rockets that explode mid-air, should be allowed to throw out this tried and true method. Surely, the idea of "move fast and break things" is more financially responsible than polluting debris and waste over the country. Fucking monorail salesman...
"The devil can cite scripture for his purpose."
In Europe, Linus is probably right of centre. Just let anyone do whatever except walk around with a gazillion firearms because that’s just insane.
nah even in Europe being trans friendly makes you at least left leaning
we're not many miles ahead in the societal run towards progress and acceptance, the US is just sprinting the wrong way
LGBT has always been a target.
The "good guys" still (chemically) castrated one of their greatest minds that won the war for ten, just because he happened to like dicks.
Theres a reason people wanted to reduce the victims of the Holocaust to just being Jewish and ignored all the other groups that both sides wanted to persacute.
They did the same thing this time, target LGBT to build the movement and are now expanded to other groups.
Hopefully everyone stands up while we still have the numbers, otherwise they'll keep chipping away fringe groups.
Nah it really depends.
While the right tends to be religious and does not really approve anything LGBTQ-related, they've learned to behave and to mind their own business, which is actually fine. Respect other people, even if you don't agree with them and as long as nobody's getting hurt, we can all live happy lives.
This new wave of "America-style" extreme right lunatics though, that's a different story. Those entitled fuckers feel they're allowed to mess with other people's lives, and they're due a harsh lesson in civility.
TIL Linus is capable of decency. Occasionally.
As long as the code you submit is quality. Otherwise brace for impact.
He's also mellowed as he's gotten older
makes you wonder what the reply would have been like 10 years ago. probably something along the lines "just breathing the same air as you already makes me feel stupider..."
Idk, it's more of a Dr. Cox from Scrubs situation. Clearly not the "villain" but definitely abusive on his way to do good works.
I guess it's "Jerk With a Heart of Gold" but it's not very zippy.
Must... Resist... TVTropes... Link...
He is offensively decent.
A compassionate misanthrope. I can relate.
I'm sorry, and I don't want to be disrespectful or rude, but as a person who has no clue about computers I am very surprised the creator of Linux is still alive. I somehow thought he is super old and probably dead by now or at least not using the internet. I'm so sorry for my ignorance.
Edit: Thank you everyone for the many interesting replies, I've learned a lot of random stuff which I greatly appreciate!
He's 55 years old
The people that invented the internet are still using it!
Al Gore is still alive!
Computer aren’t very old! Most of the pioneers are still alive and kicking
That's the thing, my dad was one of the first informatics people (computer based algebra in Russia and Germany) and my mom did her thesis on how to design a cigar shaped body in 3D on a computer. But they are in their mid to late 60s now and my dad went from being a professor of IT to "how do I open the internet" so my confusion is based on bias from my family. All his former colleagues also didn't stay up to date with technology and they worked for an elite university in Germany.
Anyway, good that they are alive and kicking! And glad their kicks are not so random as my folks'.
A good benchmark is Windows 95, and that was only 30 years ago.
It's easy to remember because the 95 means 1995. And 19 means the before fore times our ancestors are from.
Don’t feel shameful, you’re one of the lucky ten thousand
Dude wrote the first Linux kernel in grad school in his early-mid 20s. He's like 50 something now.
Unix predates Linux by a bit, but most of those old guys made it to at least the Obama era.
Vint Cerf is still around, and he got to see himself portrayed in one of the Matrix films.
Linux was "invented" in 1991, FYI, and Linus was a student at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux#The_creation_of_Linux
Your ignorance is adorable; keep it up and don't stop being inquisitive or apologetic of it.
Thanks man, I'll try my best
Linux is not that old. There's a reason why the "Actually it's GNU+Linux.." meme exists, because Linux is built using tools that were already around, he didn't start entirely from scratch.
spoiler
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
@RedSnt @volvoxvsmarla Well... not all of them. There is <strong>at least one</strong> <a href="https://chimera-linux.org/">Linux distribution</a> that's decided to use a BSD userland instead of a GNU one, so I guess it could be called BSD/Linux...
(and no, I'm not associated with them. Right now I run Ubuntu, but project #3 on my list of personal projects is customizing either CachyOS or OpenMandriva to my taste, complete with custom repos, I haven't decided yet.)
Oof for someone who isn't tech savvy this was a hard read but I appreciate it!
My experience with Linux - and as I now know, probably GNU? - is limited to not pressing a button while my dad's computer at work turned on so that I would end up in not in Windows. He had one amazing game on Linux where some troll had to roll stones (I wish I could find it again). I came to work with him every now and then and was allowed to play while he would half desperately half violently try to get rid of the chaos on his desk, which consisted of about 700 pounds of paper and occasional random paper clips.
I loved these days. And the canteen's gravy with rice for some reason.
(Edit: this was in the mid to late 90s)
You might be thinking of Unix, which is what Linux is based on but not really. Unix was created in the 1960s and for sure the people who created it are passed
Brian kernighan is still writing code, at least as of 2022:
The cognitive dissonance of just how fast technology has advanced is pretty crazy huh
Heh, back in the early 2000s when I was busy reading up on computer history I was very surprised that a lot of Internet standard pioneers and computer science giants were still alive. Like, people from the stone age. This is such a young field.
I seriously thought John McCarthy (creator of Lisp programming language) had reached such a status of existence that he would probably never die. (sadly, he did.)
I got all excited cause I saw that Linus had a mastodon account and I went to follow and saw that I already followed and he hasn't posted since early last year..... ah well, good on ya 2023 Torvalds
Despite him not posting, I visit his Mastodon profile from time to time. It has such a cute sea turtle banner. Glad to see that despite him being a kernel developer titan, he still spares a thought for the humble shell programmers too.
Exact same boat...
What a legend. Had a similar rant to my Aunt a few months ago
Oh please give me more Daddy Linux!
I hate both religon and atheism but agree with everything else Linus has to say
Edit:
I would have edited my comment to explain why but the existing downvotes would cast a negative view of any explanation I do give since people online tend to disregard comments with downvotes
Also the downvotes killed any mental will and motivation to type up and clearly think of an explanation in addition to the reasoning above
Maybe I'll come back later and edit my comment again if I actually get that mental will and motivation back but it's not likely
Atheism includes both those that passionately disagree that gods exist and those that simply do not believe in deities. So you hate both people that believe in deities (religion), and all atheists. I guess you left out non-religious non-theist's.. People who don't believe in theism but have some kind of pagan belief system.
That's a very small ellipsis of the Venn diagram you're carving out of people you don't hate.
Crystal girls that list 'spiritual but not religious' on their Tinder?
I can relate to what the person is saying and for me it's more about people knowing something that they can't prove.
Wait, do you mean theism and atheism, or explicitly organized religion and atheism?
Because the first just means you hate /~gestures vaguely~ and the second makes me question how you can hate a lack of belief in something.
And Linux usage skyrockets to record heights.
TIL people still use twitter.
so if he was a nazi, then we should follow the guidance of our lord and savior and agree with everything he thinks because linux. we should advocate for more sheep mentality idiolizing celebs and computer geeks. \s
Pretty sure people admire him because he shares their values, which is not at all what you're describing. Which value that he listed above do you have a problem with and why?
"Well regulated" translated from 1700's speak just means "in good working order", not meaning regulated by a bureaucracy issuing permits.
The intention was for state governors not having to rely solely on National Guardsman or Federal government, and can simply pluck a militia ran by civilians who developed a military-like hierarchy in their organization to answer to said governor of the state in order to address issues withinthe states with threats of violence.
“Well regulated” translated from 1700’s speak just means “in good working order”, not meaning regulated by a bureaucracy issuing permits.
Assuming that to be true, what does "militia" mean when translated from 1700's speak?
A militia in 1700's speak is simply a group of able-bodied males who own and are trained to use their own personally procured firearms, and serve their local government (village, city, or state). That way the local government doesnt need to pay money out of local city/state funds to arm them and train them and eventually mobilise them to arms.
What exactly do you think that militia was for? Because I'll give you a hint: it wasn't to fight against a tyrannical government.
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment
