326 Quotes by Linus Torvalds

Once you realize that documentation should be laughed at, peed upon, put on fire, and just ridiculed in general, THEN, and only then, have you reached the level where you can safely read it and try to use it to actually implement a driver.

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".

I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It's the right way to do things.

UNIX has a philosophy, it has 25 years of history behind it, and most importantly, it has a clean core. It strives for something - some kind of beauty. And that's really what struck me as a programmer. Operating systems that normal home users are used to, such as DOS and Windows, didn't have any way of life. Nobody tried to design Windows - it just grew in random directions without any kind of thought behind it. [...] I don't think Microsoft is evil in itself; I just think that they make really crappy operating systems.

I actually don't believe that everybody should necessarily try to learn to code. I think it's reasonably specialized, and nobody really expects most people to have to do it. It's not like knowing how to read and write and do basic math.

In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people.

My name is Linus, and I am your God.

Bill Gates really seems to be much more of a business man than a technologist, while I prefer to think of Linux in technical terms rather than as a means to money. As such, I'm not very likely to make the same kind of money that Bill made.

So I've decided to be a very rich and famous person who doesn't really care about money, and who is very humble but who still makes a lot of money and is very famous, but is very humble and rich and famous...