Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Linus Torvalds
177 quotes
“I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, with a subject like this, I'm afraid I'll have to reply. Apologies to minix-users who have heard enough about linux anyway. I'd like to be able to just "ignore the bait", but … time for some serious flamefesting!”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of Minix.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“Portability is for people who cannot write new programs.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, I probably won't get too good grades even without you: I had an argument (completely unrelated – not even pertaining to OS's) with the person here at the university that teaches OS design. I wonder when I'll learn :)”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dijkstra probably hates me.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“You know you're brilliant, but maybe you'd like to understand what you did 2 weeks from now.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU Emacs would never make a good program.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's a bird … it's a plane … no, it's KernelMan, faster than a speeding bullet, to your rescue. Doing new kernel versions in under 5 seconds flat …”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100 mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too ;-)”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Traducción: "Sólo los débiles hacen copias de seguridad en cintas: los hombres de _verdad_ tan solo suben sus cosas importantes a un servidor ftp, y dejan que el resto del mundo las replique." (1996)
“If you still don't like it, that's OK: that's why I'm boss. I simply know better than you do.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Traducción: "Si aún no te gusta, está bien: Es por eso que soy el jefe. Sencillamente, sé más que tú." (1996)
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“…the Linux philosophy is "laugh in the face of danger". Oops. Wrong one. "Do it yourself". That's it.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The main reason there are no raw devices [in Linux] is that I personally think that raw devices are a stupid idea.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“(In answer to the question: In the extreme case, if it was just you doing all the code, and the rest of the world quietly used it, would it make sense to give it away free? Unless you're particularly grateful for other free things you've got off the Net, would the answer be No?":)”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Regression testing"? What's that? If it compiles, it is good; if it boots up, it is perfect.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My name is Linus Torvalds and I am your god.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in: Young, Robert; Goldman Rohm, Wendy (1999), Under the Radar: How Red Hat Changed the Software Business – and Took Microsoft by Surprise, p. 111
“If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was thrown out of fourth grade because I couldn't write my own name, and it's been all downhill from there.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'd like to say that I knew this would happen, that it's all part of the plan for world domination.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“Note that nobody reads every post in linux-kernel. In fact, nobody who expects to have time left over to actually do any real kernel work will read even half. Except Alan Cox, but he's actually not human, but about a thousand gnomes working in under-ground caves in Swansea. None of the individual gnomes read all the postings either, they just work together really well.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“Talk is cheap. Show me the code.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work, if it just results in what I consider to be a better system. And I'm not just saying that. I'm really not a very nice person. I can say "I don't care" with a straight face, and really mean it.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“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.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The single nicest thing about Linux as far as I'm concerned has been how it has evolved in ways I hadn't expected it to. People are doing things with Linux that I never envisioned. People are doing things with Linux that I'm frankly not that interested in. And that's fine.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's no question that development of technology is just going to make Linux obsolete at some point. The question is just: "How long will it take?" Will it be in 5 years, or 15 years, or will it be 50 years?”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yeah. And as Linus once said: most numerical problems today in pure CPU cycles are actually 3D games. … It's not "incorrect" to say that you want the result faster, even if that result doesn't match your theoretical models.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Traducción: "Brevemente: sólo di NO A LAS DROGAS, y quizás no acabes como la gente de Hurd." (2001)
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“Hey, that's not a bug, that's a FEATURE! You know what the most complex piece of engineering known to man in the whole solar system is? Guess what – it's not Linux, it's not Solaris, and it's not your car. It's you. And me. And think about how you and me actually came about – not through any complex design. Right. "Sheer luck". Well, sheer luck, AND:”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I allege that SCO is full of it.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“They are smoking crack.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“Those that can, do. Those that can't, complain.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Traducción: "De verdad, no estoy tratando de destruir a Microsoft. Ése será tan sólo un efecto colateral no intencionado." (2003)
“Modern PCs are horrible. ACPI is a complete design disaster in every way. But we're kind of stuck with it. If any Intel people are listening to this and you had anything to do with ACPI, shoot yourself now, before you reproduce.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are literally several levels of SCO being wrong. And even if we were to live in that alternate universe where SCO would be right, they'd still be wrong.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested. 99% of that I run tends to be open source, but that's my choice, dammit.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here) is a disease.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A lot of people still like Solaris, but I'm in active competition with them, and so I hope they die.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Traducción: "A mucha gente todavía le gusta Solaris, pero estoy compitiendo activamente con ellos, así que espero que mueran." (Febrero 1, 2005)
“2.6.: still a stable kernel, but accept bigger changes leading up to it (timeframe: a month or two).”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was such a relief to program in user mode for a change. Not having to care about the small stuff is wonderful.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't bother. Bram doesn't know what he's talking about.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Which mindset is right? Mine, of course. People who disagree with me are by definition crazy. (Until I change my mind, when they can suddenly become upstanding citizens. I'm flexible, and not black-and-white.)”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I chose 1000 originally partly as a way to make sure that people that assumed HZ was 100 would get a swift kick in the pants.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 林纳斯·托瓦兹 (zh)
“I'm always right. This time I'm just even more right than usual.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source