Our first conversation is with Linus Torvalds the legendary inventor of Linux and founder of the Open Source crusade. Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland the grandson of poet Ole Torvalds. Though he prefers to tell people he was named after the “Peanuts” character, the truth is he was named after Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel Prize-winner. His computer experience began with a Commodore, moved to a Sinclair and an IBM 386. He initially used a Minix OS which he swapped with his own Linux OS. Torvalds is married to wife, Tove, a six-time Finnish national karate champion, they have three daughters and live in San Jose, California.
TechView (TV): What excites you in Technology today?
Torvalds: I’m pretty much an “eyes on the ground in front of you” kind of guy, so I get excited by actual new pieces of technology rather than some more fluffy “big trends”.
I love following what the hardware companies do, their newest chips, and what probably motivates me the most (since I’m a software person, after all) is people who come up with new algorithms and software to take advantage of all those new capabilities.
Read more at Huffington Post.
